Boston-born comic Norm Crosby, who drew perspiration from misused words, dies at 93

“And that was the beginning. I came back home and started making the rounds of the clubs of the area, sleazy and otherwise,” he told the Globe in 1974.

“I played to an audience of three one night in Lowell,” he added, “and that included the janitor and the light man.”

From such humble beginnings, Mr. Crosby built a decades-long career that included appearances on “The Tonight Show” and a beer commercial that brought his malapropisms to the masses. He was 93 when he died Saturday in Los Angeles of heart failure.

Misusing words that often sounded somewhat alike made his reputation, drawing laughter whenever he performed for what he’d call a “very extinguished audience.”

TV host Mike Douglas called Mr. Crosby “the king of scrambled syntax.”

Ed Sullivan introduced him by saying: “Wanted for the cold-blooded murder of the English language — Norm Crosby.”

In Mr. Crosby’s hands, nearly any word could be mangled for comic effect, sometimes in more than one way.

Inspiration could suddenly be a sweaty business: “It’s perspiring, the things they would do.” And kids? They “look for insulation,” he said.

Of his friend Dean Martin, Mr. Crosby joked: “He’s got a certain continental save-your-fare.”

Born in Boston on Sept. 15, 1927, Norman Lawrence Crosby grew up in Dorchester and graduated from Dorchester High School.

“We used to play ball in a filthy lot where the first base was a garbage can cover, and second base was a rock, and third base was like a wino sleeping in the grass,” he told Douglas.

Mr. Crosby enlisted in the Coast Guard during the end of World War II. Assigned to a submarine chaser, he suffered permanent hearing loss from the concussions of exploding depth charges.

When he became successful as a performer, Mr. Crosby was a spokesman for the Better Hearing Institute, hosted annual golf tournaments to raise money for the cause, and was influential in raising awareness.

“I was never shy about my hearing loss, probably because I got it from military service,” he said in 1993, according to the Associated Press. “I got thousands of letters from people who said they would never get a hearing aid, but had changed their minds after they saw me being open about it.”

Mr. Crosby, who studied illustration at what was then the Massachusetts School of Art, took a job in advertising after the war.

“I was 22 and I thought I was pretty well set for a guy my age, since I had worked my way up from commercial artist to advertising manager of a local firm with a half-million-dollar budget to play around with, though I was only earning 60 bucks a week,” he told the Globe in 1974. " ‘I have an office, I have a secretary, and I have a future,’ I told myself. ‘This funny stuff I used to wow them with in the poolroom, it’s not for me.’ "

Then the opportunity to work in the Catskills arrived and everything changed as he headed into show business. Initially, he borrowed material to fill out his own act.

“I would take a joke or a gag or a line from all the comics,” he said in an interview with Kliph Nesteroff, adding that he would use “just a thought, an idea, a gag, a line. Just something — not stealing, really.”

When his work in local clubs led to a weeks-long gig at the Latin Quarter club in New York City, he realized he needed routines purely his own.

One evening, a club owner took an interest in a dancer and said to Mr. Crosby: “Find out if the girl is staying over or if she communicates.” That stray misuse — communicates, rather than commutes — inspired Mr. Crosby’s finesse with comedic malapropisms.

His success led to him to befriend others in show business, land movie cameos, and get booked for numerous TV variety and talk show appearances, including on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson.

“I’m into things. I’m into extra sensible reception. And I’m into yogurt,” he said during one guest spot.

“Yogurt?” Carson asked.

“Oh, I love yogurt,” Mr. Crosby said. “You sit on the floor, you medicate.”

In 1967, he married Joan Foley, a chorus line dancer.

“We were married at the Sahara in Vegas and it was quite an event,” Mr. Crosby said in 1974. Among the celebrities in attendance was Frank Sinatra, who “took us to dinner that night. To this day, my wife doesn’t remember it as our anniversary, but as the night Sinatra took us to dinner.”

In addition to his wife, Mr. Crosby’s survivors include two sons, Daniel and Andrew, and two grandchildren, according to The New York Times. Service information was not immediately available.

Along with being a regular on talk shows, Mr. Crosby had TV roles on “Adam-12” and “The Love Boat” in the 1970s, and “The Boys” in the 1980s. He made a final movie appearance in Adam Sandler’s “Grown Ups 2” (2013).

Mr. Crosby’s starring role in commercials for Anheuser-Busch Natural Light beer, however, brought his comic word-mangling to a new level of fame.

“This is a great tasting light beer,” he said in one, pointing the can in his left hand. “But even a good articulator like me has trouble renouncing the name. So I just ask for a Natural. That’s easy to vocalize.”

Douglas asked if it bothered Mr. Crosby that “the most recognition you have had came from a commercial?”

“It bothered me until I went to the bank,” Mr. Crosby quipped.

And he didn’t solely rely on misusing words. Mr. Crosby could banter wittily with the best of them, such as in a “Tonight Show” exchange.

The World War II injury that left Mr. Crosby reliant on hearing aids was, for him, another opportunity for sly jokes.

“I was a war hero,” he told Carson. “I saved the entire crew of my ship. Did you know that?”

“How’d you do that?” Carson asked.

“I shot the cook,” Mr. Crosby deadpanned.

Were all his comic anecdotes tall tales? Not according to Mr. Crosby.

“These are not things I make up,” he said. “These are proved fallacies.”

Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.