LOS ANGELES>> Ruth Buzzi, who rose to fame as the frumpy and bitter Gladys Ormphby on the groundbreaking sketch comedy series “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” and made more than 200 television appearances during a 45-year career, died Thursday. She was 88.

Buzzi died at her home in Texas, her agent, Mike Eisenstadt, said. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and was in hospice care. Shortly before her death, her husband, Kent Perkins, had posted a statement on Buzzi’s Facebook page, thanking her many fans and telling them: “She wants you to know she probably had more fun doing those shows than you had watching them.”

Buzzi won a Golden Globe and was a two-time Emmy nominee for the NBC show that ran from 1968 to 1973. She was the only regular to appear in all six seasons, including the pilot.

“Ruth Buzzi was a comedic genius,” Nancy Sinatra posted on X. “Working alongside her on Laugh-In was the most fun I ever had working. I treasured her friendship and I am heartbroken to wake up to the news that she is gone. I love you, Ruthie.”

Singer Deana Martin posted, “Her laughter and warmth touched us all, leaving an everlasting void.”

Buzzi was first spotted by “Laugh-In” creator and producer George Schlatter playing various characters on “The Steve Allen Comedy Hour.”

Schlatter was holding auditions for “Laugh-In” when he received a picture in the mail of Buzzi in her Ormphby costume, sitting in a wire mesh trash barrel. The character was clad in drab brown with her bun covered by a hairnet knotted in the middle of her forehead.

“I think I hired her because of my passion for Gladys Ormphby,” he wrote in his 2023 memoir “Still Laughing A Life in Comedy.” “I must admit that the hairnet and the rolled-down stockings did light my fire. My favorite Gladys line was when she announced that the day of the office Christmas party, they sent her home early.”

The Gladys character used her purse as a weapon against anyone who bothered her, striking people over the head. On “Laugh-In,” her most frequent target was Arte Johnson’s dirty old man character Tyrone F. Horneigh.

“Gladys embodies the overlooked, the downtrodden, the taken for granted, the struggler,” Buzzi told The Connecticut Post in 2018.

“So when she fights back, she speaks for everyone who’s been marginalized, reduced to a sex object or otherwise abused. And that’s almost everyone at some time or other.”

Buzzi took her act to the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts in Las Vegas, where she bashed her purse on the heads of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Lucille Ball, among others.

“Ruth Buzzi brought a singular energy and charm to sketch comedy that made her a standout on ‘Laugh-In’ and the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts. Her characters, especially the unforgettable Gladys Ormphby, captured the delightful absurdity of the era,” said Journey Gunderson, executive director of the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, N.Y.

Her other recurring characters on “Laugh-In” included Flicker Farkle; Busy-Buzzi, a Hollywood gossip columnist; Doris Swizzler, a cocktail-lounge regular who got drunk with husband Leonard, played by Dick Martin; and an inconsiderate flight attendant.

“I never took my work for granted, nor assumed I deserved more of the credit or spotlight or more pay than anyone else,” Buzzi told The Connecticut Post. “I was just thrilled to drive down the hill to NBC every day as an employed actor with a job to do.”

Buzzi remained friends through the years with “Laugh-In” co-stars Lily Tomlin and Jo Anne Worley.

Born Ruth Ann Buzzi on July 24, 1936, in Westerly, R.I., she was the daughter of Angelo Buzzi, a nationally known stone sculptor. Her father and later her brother operated Buzzi Memorials, a gravestone and monument maker in Stonington, Conn., where she was head cheerleader in high school.

Buzzi enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse at age 17. Two years later, she traveled with singer Rudy Vallee in a musical and comedy act during her summer break. That earned her an Actors’ Equity union card before she graduated from the playhouse’s College of Theatre Arts.

Buzzi moved to New York and was immediately hired for a lead role in an off-Broadway musical revue, the first of 19 such shows she performed in on the East Coast.