Bob Saget

Bob Saget was an American stand-up comedian, actor, and television host best known for playing widowed father Danny Tanner on ABC's Full House from 1987 to 1995 and for hosting America's Funniest Home Videos from 1989 to 1997. He was born Robert Lane Saget on May 17, 1956, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, into a Jewish family, and grew up in Norfolk, Virginia, and Encino, California. He graduated from Temple University with a film degree in 1978.

He performed stand-up comedy throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s in Los Angeles clubs, where his on-stage material was notably explicit — a contrast with the wholesome television persona he later adopted.

From 1987 he played Danny Tanner, a sportscaster raising three daughters with help from his brother-in-law and best friend, on the ABC family sitcom Full House. The show ran for eight seasons and 192 episodes and became a fixture of the Friday-night TGIF block. From 1989 to 1997 he simultaneously hosted ABC's America's Funniest Home Videos, the long-running clip show built around viewer-submitted videotapes. He returned to the role of Danny Tanner for Netflix's sequel series Fuller House from 2016 to 2020.

He continued to tour as a stand-up comic, with material that retained the explicit edge of his early club work, and directed the 1998 film Dirty Work starring Norm Macdonald. He hosted the ABC game show 1 vs. 100 from 2006 to 2008 and the Bob Saget podcast from 2020. He was found dead in a hotel room in Orlando, Florida, on January 9, 2022, at age 65; the cause was determined to be accidental head trauma.

His given name Bob is a short form of Robert, from the Germanic Hrodebert meaning "bright fame," formed by combining the elements hrod ("fame") and beraht ("bright"). The rhyming pet form Bob became established in medieval English use alongside Rob and Robin.