The Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association mourns the death of Jim Abrahams x’66, comedian, filmmaker, and health advocate, who passed away on November 26, 2024, at the age of 80.
Part of the ZAZ trio, Abrahams often partnered with two of his UW classmates, the brothers Jerry ’72 and David Zucker ’70. The group formed the Kentucky Fried Theater troupe on campus and then took their act to Hollywood, where they had hits with such film spoofs as Hot Shots!, Top Secret!, and The Naked Gun. Airplane!, the ZAZ parody of disaster movies, was the fourth highest-grossing film of 1980.
A native of Shorewood, Wisconsin, Abrahams arrived at UW–Madison during the upheaval of the 1960s. Campus’s countercultural ethos helped inspire the anarchic comedy of Kentucky Fried Theater. When the Zuckers graduated, the three moved to California. Abrahams wrote or directed more than a dozen films between the 1970s and 2000s. But after his son Charlie started having severe seizures in 1993, Abrahams began to feel that he wanted to do more serious work. In 1994, he and his wife, Nancy, established the Charlie Foundation for Ketogenic Therapies. He believed that a high-fat, low-carb ketogenic diet helped cure Charlie’s seizure disorder and became an advocate for the health benefits of that diet.Abrahams maintained connections with the UW long after he left campus, particularly with the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies. In 2021, he spoke at a virtual event for the UW chapter of Hillel. Abrahams will be greatly missed, but his legacy of bringing laughter to the masses will live on.
