Career

Crosby went solo as a standup comedian, adopting a friendly, blue collar, guy-next-door attitude in the 1950s. Norm Crosby refined his standup monologues by interpolating malapropisms. He first appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in December 1964. In 1968, he co-starred on The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show, an NBC-TV summer series. In 1974, he co-hosted a Canadian variety television series, Everything Goes. From 1978 to 1981, Crosby hosted the nationally syndicated series, The Comedy Shop, aka Norm Crosby's Comedy Shop.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Crosby became a commercial pitchman for Anheuser-Busch Natural Light beer.

From 1983 until the program's disassociation with Jerry Lewis, Norm Crosby co-hosted and contributed to the annual Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6560 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Personal life

Crosby has been a Freemason since 1956, having served as Master of at least one lodge and participated in many charitable activities. As of September 2005, he was a member of Ionic Composite Lodge #520 in Los Angeles, California.

Crosby is a native of the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. He is the son of Ann (née Lansky) and John Crosby.

While serving on a submarine chaser in the North Atlantic during World War Two, Crosby suffered permanent hearing damage due to loud depth charges. As a consequence, Crosby is almost completely deaf without the use of powerful hearing aids.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]