Alan Grigsby Sues was born on March 7, 1926, in Ross, Calif., to Peter and Alice Murray Sues. His father raised racehorses, requiring him to move the family frequently, uprooting Alan and his brother, John, from one school after another. Alan Sues served in the Army in Europe during World War II.
After the war he used veteran’s benefits to pay for acting lessons at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he performed during the late 1940s before moving to New York in 1952. He made his Broadway debut in 1953 in Elia Kazan’s “Tea and Sympathy.” He met and married Phyllis Gehrig, a dancer and actress, while the play was running.
When the production ended in 1955, he and his wife started a Vaudevillian nightclub act in Manhattan, then took it on the road across the country. Characters he developed for the act would appear in “Laugh-In.”
After they divorced in the late 1950s, Mr. Sues settled in California, where he appeared in “The Masks,” a memorable episode of “The Twilight Zone,” and other television shows and films like “The Americanization of Emily” in 1964.
Later in the ’60s he joined Ms. Worley in the Off Broadway musical comedy revue “The Mad Show.” His performance caught the attention of the producer George Schlatter, who cast him in Edie Adams’s Las Vegas act and then “Laugh-In,” which he was also producing.
Mr. Sues was in New York when he learned Mr. Schlatter wanted to work with him.
“When I heard that he wanted to talk to me, I called him in Los Angeles,” Mr. Sues was quoted as saying in “From Beautiful Downtown Burbank: A Critical History of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, 1968-1973,” by Hal Erickson. “His secretary said he was on the other line, so I said, ‘Well, tell him I’m in a phone booth and it’s filling with water.’ ”
After “Laugh-In,” Mr. Sues appeared in an original one-man play, “No Flies on Me,” in 1993; television shows like “Punky Brewster” and “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch”; and a popular commercial for Peter Pan peanut butter in the early 1970s.
Returning to Broadway in 1975, he had a successful dramatic turn playing Moriarty in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s revival of William Gillette’s “Sherlock Holmes.”
Mr. Sues, who lived in West Hollywood, is survived by a sister-in-law, Yvonne Sues. His brother, John, died several years ago.