Comic Benny Rubin Dies at 87

Benny Rubin, the rubber-faced comic whose flair for dialect and dance kept him active through the decades spanning vaudeville and on into films and television, died today at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He was 87.

Rubin, raised in a Boston slum, learned to tap dance by watching other children perform for pennies on street corners. He parlayed that into his first paying job at 14, then gradually moved from revues to the vaudeville circuit. An early friend was Jack Benny, who later used him regularly on his TV shows as characters ranging from Jewish comedians to Arab sheiks.

His film credits began in 1929 with “Naughty Baby” and extended to 1976 with “Won Ton Ton--the Dog Who Saved Hollywood.”