Rip Taylor Is Not Dead, Social Media Users Confuse Comedian With Late Actor

Rip Torn, a prolific character actor and Emmy and Tony winner, passed away Tuesday at the age of 88, per The Inquisitr.

Rip Torn, however, is not to be confused with Rip Taylor, another longtime celebrity, known as “Rip,” who is also in his 80s. Despite some social media confusion following Rip Torn’s death, Rip Taylor is in fact still alive.

Several Twitter users, however, made that mistake following the news of Torn’s passing.

“RIP Rip Taylor,” Brendan Miller tweeted. “The only person to hit that [expletive] Norman Mailer with a hammer.”

It was Rip Torn, per Esquire, who hit the famous novelist with a hammer during production of the 1970 film Maidstone.

Twitter user Buffalo Tracer posted about the death of “Rip Taylor,” while including a clip of Rip Torn from the film Defending Your Life.

Meanwhile, many other people noted either that they’ve confused Rip Torn and Rip Taylor for most of their lives, or that it hadn’t occurred to them previously that the two Rips were not the same person.

“Rip Torn should be named Rip Taylor, and Rip Taylor should be named Rip Torn,” radio host Josh Gilbert tweeted.

Rip Taylor-real name Charles Elmer Taylor Jr.- is a comedian and actor, perhaps best known for shooting confetti while performing. A staple of old TV shows like The Ed Sullivan Show, Taylor was strongly associated with the television game shows of the 1970s, such as Hollywood Squares and The Gong Show. In subsequent decades, he would often make appearances as himself on TV shows and in movies, such as the Jackass franchise, where he appeared at the very end of each of the three movies. He performed a one-man show, It Ain’t All Confetti, in 2010.

“Rip has headlined in Las Vegas, appeared on hundreds of television shows, played the lead in various plays and musicals, and frequently taken a dramatic turn in feature films,” his official bio says. “It is no exaggeration to say that Rip Taylor has succeeded in every facet of the entertainment industry.”

It also claims that he has made over 2,000 television appearances over the course of his career.

Taylor is currently 84-years-old. His website claims that a documentary about him is scheduled to arrive soon.

It doesn’t appear that there’s any indication that the two men named Rip were friends or had ever met each other, despite showbiz careers that spanned the same several decades.