Henry Gibson, whose gentle poet persona on 1960s classic TV show Laugh-In made him one of the original flower children, died Monday in Malibu after a brief battle with cancer. He was 73.
A favorite of director Robert Altman, the diminutive, soft-spoken actor more recently had a five-season stint as Judge Clark Brown on Boston Legal and provided the voice of newspaperman Bob Jenkins on King of the Hill.
Gibson developed the persona for which he became known -- the humble poet laureate of Fairhope, Alabama, whose name was a pun on the name of Henrik Ibsen -- while working in New York in the early 1960s. His appearances on The Tonight Show and The Joey Bishop Show caught the attention of Jerry Lewis, who cast him in The Nutty Professor.
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