Born Dominick DeLuise in Brooklyn, NY on Aug. 1, 1933, he was the son of civil servant John DeLuise and his wife Vincenza, whose culinary skills inspired several of his cookbooks. After graduating from Manhattan’s High School of the Performing Arts, he was a regular in New York theater and children’s television like “The Shari Lewis Show” (NBC, 1960-63). He made his off-Broadway debut in 1960s “The Jackass” before treading the boards on the Great White Way three years later in a production of “The Student Gypsy.” By that point, DeLuise was also making the rounds as a comedian on national variety shows like “The Garry Moore Show” (CBS, 1964-67) and “The Entertainers” (CBS, 1964-65). The “Moore Show” gave him one of his most memorable bits, a disastrously inept magician named “Dominic the Great,” which made him an audience favorite on numerous programs – most notably “The Dean Martin Show” (NBC, 1965-1974). DeLuise’s feature film debut came with Sidney Lumet’s nail-biting nuclear drama “Fail-Safe” (1964), where he played an understandably terrified soldier.

DeLuise balanced his television career with regular returns to the stage in the mid and late 1960s and early 1970s, including a stint in Neil Simon’s hit “The Last of the Red Hot Lovers;” one of these productions introduced him to actress Carol Arthur, whom he married in 1965. He got a shot at his own variety series in 1968, but “The Dom DeLuise Show” (CBS, 1968) proved short-lived, and he returned to regular guest appearances on “The Glenn Campbell Goodtime Hour” (CBS, 1969-1972) and Dean Martin’s variety show and roasts. In 1970, he made “The Twelve Chairs,” an eccentric comedy based on the satirical Russian novel of the same name, which marked his first collaboration with Mel Brooks. DeLuise would soon be a member of Brooks’ regular company for most of the features that followed. He was film director Buddy Bizarre in “Blazing Saddles” (1974), played Brooks’ nitwit assistant Dom Bell in “Silent Movie” (1976), and was the obvious choice to play Emperor Nero in “History of the World Part 1” (1981). Deluise later voiced Pizza the Hut – a monstrous mound of cheese and pepperoni – in Brooks’ “Star Wars” parody “Spaceballs” (1987) and delivered his tried-and-true Marlon Brando imitation in “Robin Hoods: Men in Tights” (1993). Brooks’ frequent collaborator Gene Wilder later brought DeLuise aboard for his own comic efforts, including “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother” (1975), which gave audiences a taste of the actor’s vocal talents in his turn as a hilariously vain opera singer.

In 1978, DeLuise made his first feature with longtime friend Burt Reynolds – the broad comedy “The End,” which saw both actors as mental patients who attempt to aid each other’s suicide attempts. It was not a sizable hit, but the pair had undeniable chemistry, and would team up on screen for numerous subsequent films. The most popular of these was undeniably “The Cannonball Run” (1981), an all-star vanity project which allowed Reynolds’ celebrity pals to mug furiously in between car crash sequences. DeLuise consumed the most scenery as Reynolds’ milquetoast mechanic, who transformed into the caped superhero “Captain Chaos” at the most inopportune times. The duo naturally appeared in the lame sequel “Cannonball Run II” (1984), though DeLuise’s best turn in his features with Reynolds was that of an eccentric televangelist who targets the “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” (1982) as a den of iniquity. Both actors would also contribute their immediatel