Before he passed away, he suffered a mild heart attack backstage on The Tonight Show after smoking marijuana. A year later, he was back on The Tonight Show to perform when he was 81 years old.
However, as his health declined, he needed a number of operations, including brain surgery. Before the surgery, Dangerfield was asked how long he would be in the hospital. He famously responded "If all goes well, a few weeks. If not, about an hour and a half."
Joan Child, his wife at the time, had the word "respect" emblazoned in the sky as each guest of the funeral was given a live Monarch butterfly to release into the wild.
