Henry Gibson, 73, actor and comedian

Henry Gibson, 73, the puckish comic who tickled America as the hippie poet on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and as a cranky judge on Boston Legal, died of cancer Monday at his Malibu, Calif., home.

Born James Bateman in Germantown in 1935, the future stand-up comedian, author, and character actor was a graduate of St. Joseph's Prep and of Catholic University of America.

He began acting professionally at 8. Before formally studying theater at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, he served as an intelligence officer in the Air Force, stationed in France.

Stateside, Bateman adopted the comedy persona of Henry Gibson (a pun on Henrik Ibsen), the pie-eyed poet of Fairhope, Ala.

As Gibson, he appeared on late-night shows and caught the attention of Jerry Lewis, who cast him in The Nutty Professor in 1963. That year, Mr. Gibson made his Broadway debut in Lillian Hellman's My Mother, My Father and Me.

His appearance as the soft-spoken, daisy-clutching poet on the irreverent comedy Laugh-In earned him instant fame. His poetry was collected in the book A Flower Child's Garden of Verses.

A friendship with the filmmaker Robert Altman led to Mr. Gibson's appearance in four of the director's films. Most memorably, he was the snaky psychotherapist Dr. Verringer in The Long Goodbye (1973) and the oily country crooner Haven Hamilton in Nashville (1975), a role that won him supporting-actor honors from the National Society of Film Critics.

Mr. Gibson is survived by three children and two grandchildren. Memorial plans were incomplete.