The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Bob Saget
Bob Saget may have been America's favorite sitcom dad, but unlike the hit sitcom "Full House," his life wasn't always full of laughs. As he revealed in "Dirty Daddy," his 2014 autobiography, Saget "always had a fascination with death" after his family suffered so many losses while he was a child. Three of his uncles had unexpectedly died from cardiac arrests, which was a severe blow for the young boy. "All these men were my childhood heroes," Saget wrote, recalling how one of his uncles had been trying to make it in the entertainment industry. "He was the coolest."
His favorite teacher also died young, after giving him some life-changing advice. "A few years after she taught me, she was in a fatal car accident," Saget shared in his book, thinking back to the "miraculous" Elaine Zimmerman. "I owe a lot to her. I was about to go to college, had enrolled in premed classes, and Mrs. Zimmerman literally told me, 'Do not become a doctor. You need to make movies and perform and write. You need to make people laugh.'"
Keep reading to find out more about how Bob Saget's life unfolded after these early tragedies.
He nearly died from an appendix issue
After high school, Bob Saget followed his favorite teacher's advice and became a film student at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he started creating his own movies, per Biography. In 1978, Saget even received an award from the Student Academy Awards for a short film called "Through Adam's Eyes." As he recounted to Ability Magazine, the documentary was "about someone to whom I'm very close who had reconstructive facial surgery." Then, the young filmmaker secured a spot at the University of Southern California.
However, a health scare made Saget re-evaluate his choices, as he told the Saturday Evening Post in 1990 (via Biography). "I quit after a couple of days," the actor recalled, sharing that he left USC very abruptly before a burst appendix disrupted his life and sent him to the hospital. "I was a cocky, overweight 22 year-old. Then I had a gangrenous appendix taken out, almost died, and I got over being cocky or overweight."
He was fired from his big break
In 1987, Bob Saget got his first big opportunity in daytime television when CBS hired him to help present "The Morning Program." As he told ET at the time, the actor was excited to work on the morning news talk show. "It's the kind of show where four people are on it, and they really like each other," Saget commented. "Well, they don't like me, but I like them a lot."
Only five months later, however, he was fired. In "Dirty Daddy," Saget recounted being "hired as kind of a sidekick," noting that he knew that his time on the show might be coming to a close. "The higher-ups at CBS wanted me out," he continued, recalling how his manager and an executive producer had given him the bad news. Luckily, another job was already being lined up: "What I didn't know until a couple weeks after the firing was that Brad had already been working to help me screen-test for a pilot for a network family sitcom on ABC called Full House." Funny how things can work out.
Bob Saget's first wife almost died in childbirth
A family man on TV and in real life, Bob Saget had three daughters with his first wife, Sherri Kramer. When she was pregnant with their first child in 1987, however, Kramer went through a traumatizing near-death experience.
As Saget remembered in his autobiography, the exhilarated first-time parents rushed to hospital as soon as Kramer went into labor. They ended up spending a long and difficult night waiting for medical intervention, however, and when Kramer finally received an epidural for her emergency C-section, it was administered incorrectly. According to Saget, his wife's heartbeat was so slow that she had to receive adrenaline, which then caused her to flatline. Luckily, both Kramer and their oldest daughter survived. But the near-death experience left an impact on Saget and his marriage in the long run. "We had been through hell and back," he observed. "My wife and I would never be the same."
In 1997, 15 years after they tied the knot, Kramer and Saget divorced.
One sister died of an aneurysm
Bob Saget may have gotten his lucky break with the sitcom "Full House," but his family's string of bad luck continued. As CBS News noted, his two older sisters both died young: Andrea Saget, known as Andi, was only 34 when she suffered a fatal aneurysm. The TV star recalled the moment his mother broke the news over the phone in his autobiography, writing that "through the emotion and shock," he felt like she could "be at peace" now. "She had suffered a lot in her short life," he continued. "The sweetest, most emotional girl you could ever meet."
The sitcom actor also described his big sister as "vulnerable, kind, and easily influenced," as well as "a bit lost." Her death affected the whole family, even if they knew she was no longer suffering any pain. "I will always miss Andi; she is forever in my heart," he wrote. "I wish I could've done something to help her live a full life, or even just a better life than she had before we lost her at thirty-four."
His other sister died from a rare disease
Bob Saget's other older sister Gay Saget died when she was 47. After "many disturbing misdiagnoses," as the actor recalled in his autobiography, she had finally been diagnosed with a rare mysterious autoimmune disease that Bob had already been raising awareness about.
According to The Mayo Clinic, scleroderma is a chronic condition that primarily harms the skin but can also gradually affect internal organs. The comic had coincidentally performed at a benefit for the Scleroderma Research Foundation years before, alongside comics like Robin Williams, Ellen Degeneres, and Rosie O'Donnell. "So, just three years after I found out what 'scleroderma' was, my sister was sitting in the audience at the benefit, now actually diagnosed with this orphan disease," he revealed in an essay for Today. "One year later, Gay lost her life to it."
As he said in his autobiography, he struggled with losing "two of the most important women in my life." But he coped with his grief by trying to help other women suffering with scleroderma by fundraising for the foundation. "I wanted to do something about it — to share our family's story with others and let them know that they aren't alone in this battle," the actor wrote for Today. "No one should have to suffer as my sister Gay did."
He found creative ways to grieve
Bob Saget became an advocate for people with scleroderma following his sister's death, serving on the Scleroderma Research Foundation Board for over two decades, per CNN. And in 1996, his two worlds collided when he used his show business ties to make a television movie about his sister.
Dana Delaney starred in "For Hope," which aired on ABC in November of that year. The film showed a family going through the stages of a beloved daughter dealing with scleroderma. "It's hard to make gallows humor out of something, which is what we always fall back on, which was what my dad instilled upon me. Make people feel better during this horrible time," Saget reflected to CBS News, observing that he used his creative instincts to deal with grief.
"I think that kind of opened me up filmically and made me want to make movies even more," he remarked, "because that got me into the zone of, why am I doing this? What story do I want to tell?"
He drove while drunk after his divorce
In 1997, Bob Saget and Sherri Kramer divorced. "You do second-guess yourself. Is it a midlife crisis, am I living a Blake Edwards movie?" he said to Howard Stern following his split from Kramer. "It wasn't that all. We weren't happy together. We weren't living an honest past few years."
Following the end of his marriage, he went through a period where he engaged in dangerous behavior. As he wrote in his autobiography, the actor considered himself "lucky to be alive" after he "repeatedly committed a sin against humanity: drinking and driving."
"I was a fool. One of those idiots who brags to people while intoxicated, that he can drive better than he's drunk," Saget admitted. "I was divorced, dumb, sometimes drunk and the luckiest a–hole in the world for not doing anything that wound up hurting anyone." He came close to being arrested once after a cop pulled him over for speeding, but the officer decided to let him off the hook after hearing that Saget had been driving to fetch his daughter's toy rabbit. "To this day, I am appreciative of his compassion," the comedian added.
Bob Saget died on tour
On January 9, 2022, TMZ reported Bob Saget died at the age of 65. The Orange County Sheriff's Office arrived at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando to find the actor dead in his hotel room, as they confirmed on Twitter, where there were "no signs of foul play or drug use."
During his final days, the comedian had been performing stand-up in Florida and was planning to travel across the country for more dates. Saget's most recent Instagram post said he was "loving every moment" of appearing on stage again, which made him feel 26 years old again. And on his Twitter, Saget announced that he was back to feeling "happily addicted" to performing.
In another tragic twist, the day he died would have been Gay Saget's 75th birthday, according to People. "We are devastated to confirm that our beloved Bob passed away today," his wife and kids announced in a statement. "He was everything to us and we want you to know how much he loved his fans, performing live and bringing people from all walks of life together with laughter."