Charles Elmer "Rip" Taylor Jr. (January 13, 1931 – October 6, 2019) was an American actor and comedian, known for his exuberance and flamboyant personality, including his wild moustache, toupee, and his habit of showering himself (and others) with confetti. The Hollywood Reporter called him "a television and nightclub mainstay for more than six decades" who made thousands of nightclub and television appearances.
Charles Elmer Taylor Jr. was born in Washington, D.C., on January 13, 1931, the son of Elizabeth Sue Evans (1911–2000), a waitress and former government clerk, and Charles Elmer Taylor (died 1933), a musician. His father died when he was two years old. As described in his 2010 one-man show It Ain't All Confetti, Taylor had a tough childhood, which included being molested while in foster care and having to deal with bullies in school. As a teenager he attended Capitol Page School. Taylor worked as a congressional page before serving in the Korean War; he was in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Although assigned to the Corps, he was sent to Special Services, the entertainment wing of the military, where he performed for the troops in Tokyo and Korea.
Taylor's career in show business began when he joined the U.S. Army, where he started performing stand-up in clubs and restaurants abroad while also performing for the troops. After his military service, and back in the U.S., he focused on a nightclub career. His mainstay material was "pantomiming records, his favorites were Yiddish folk songs and Spike Jones tunes." He said that ended one day when the record player broke, "I haven't shut up since." In the mid-1950s he worked the strip clubs all along the Eastern coast of the U.S. Although much of his material included jokes stolen from acts he saw in USO shows, his first signature piece would be to pretend to cry while begging the audience for laughs. He found he could get a bigger response that way. His bookings started to get more upscale and he played all over Miami Beach, Florida, which had become a winter destination for the wealthy. Taylor was also a mainstay in the summer playground of the wealthy in the Catskills Mountains. A booking agent from The Ed Sullivan Show attended his show one night. Taylor would spend a week's salary on champagne to get the audience boisterous. He first appeared on the show in 1961 and made about twenty appearances. Sullivan would forget his name, saying "Get me the crying comedian."

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