LOS ANGELES — Comedian Avery Schreiber, who with his partner Jack Burns was a fixture on television in the 1960s and '70s, died Monday of a heart attack. He was 66.
Schreiber had recently been in declining health, said his wife, Rochelle Isaacs Schreiber. He died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Burns and Schreiber appeared often on a number of television shows, including "The Ed Sullivan Show" and Hollywood Palace." They also had their own summer comedy-variety series, "The Burns and Schreiber Show," on ABC in 1973.
Among Burns and Schreiber's works was the album "The Watergate Comedy Hour."
After the duo went their separate ways, Schreiber became a popular fixture in Doritos commercials, appearing as a chef, sultan, judge, pilot or other character who would be distracted by people crunching on the chips.
But his forte, his wife said, was skewering politicians in his stand-up routine.
"He was a very good and gentle man but politics got him," she said.
Schreiber also appeared on stage in such plays as "Hamlet," "Showboat," "Fiddler on the Roof," and "Ovid's Metamorphoses."
His last stage appearance was on Broadway in "Welcome to the Club," a 1989 Cy Coleman musical about divorced men who refuse to pay alimony.
He had been working on a screenplay, "Julius and Ethel," about the Rosenbergs' 1950s espionage trial and execution, his wife said.
"He loved theater. He loved comedy. He loved his act and he lived his art all the time," she said.