Just a few months after the death of Ed McMahon, we learn today that another of Fr. Gilbert Hartke's drama students has died.  Henry Gibson, of Laugh-In fame, passed away Monday at the age of 73.  You can read his obituary here in today's New York Times. 

Fr. Gilbert Hartke, O.P., founded the drama department at the Catholic University of America, where he taught many of the late twentieth century's most notable entertainers.  The Dominican priest remained an active and revered figure in Washington, DC, until his death in 1986.

Henry Gibson obtained his bachelor's degree from CUA in 1957.  While in school, he met and befriended Jon Voight, another Hartke student, and the two of them began their acting careers together.  After graduation, Gibson went on to record comedy albums and appear in several television programs and motion pictures, including The Nutty Professor, The Blues Brothers, and Wedding Crashers.  His became famous, however, when cast as a regular on Laugh-In, often appearing in sketches as a cleric.

The following excerpt from Mary Jo Santo Pietro's Father Hartke: His Life and Legacy to the American Theater contains Henry Gibson's evaluation of his professor's teaching style.

Father also claimed to love classroom teaching, but he seldom talked about it; nor for that matter did his former students.  And when they did, there were not especially flattering.  "You couldn't really take his classes seriously," Henry Gibson said in a PBS film about Father Hartke.  "I mean, they were surreal in many ways.  Father would grab his notes and come in five minutes after the hour, and he'd glance through them and then at us, and say, very solemnly, 'Space!'  And we were supposed to take a few minutes to imagine what he meant.  Then he'd say, equally solemnly, 'It must be filled.'

"I mean this this could be mysterious, or . . . well, we didn't know what it meant!  Then he would talk about 'Motion.'  He would talk about the most abstract concepts you've ever heard, but in as few words as possible.  And then he'd say, 'We will go into this further next week,' and disappear."

But would Gibson and the others say that Father was not a good teacher?  "Father's best teaching was never in the classroom," Gibson said.  "With Father you learned by example."  (p. 199)