He's a director's dream, and he's the one who played a 10-year-old at 44.
He is a brilliant comedian, Martin Short. The actor has a special view of the world,
particularly concerning how the terrible losses he survived as a teen, impacted his life. But
did it prepare Martin for losing the love of his life after 30 years of marriage?
Martin Short is the youngest of five, and it’s the best position to be in,
according to the actor. Everyone told him that he was the most brilliant, fascinating,
adorable person, so even if he wanted to have self-esteem issues, it just wasn’t possible.
There was tremendous humour in the house growing up — a lot of laughing.
But there was tragedy during his teenage years as well. First, when Martin was 12,
his brother David died in a car accident. Then, when he was 17, his mother died from cancer,
and two years later, his father died from a stroke. Whoa! We might need a minute here...
The 71-year-old comedy actor harbours no bitterness and even views this heartbreaking
trifecta as a gift of sorts. Martin believes that because he had such a solid foundation in life,
the tragedy and loss didn’t throw him sideways. “Those kinds of situations are horrible,
but I think that you are either empowered by them or you become a victim of them.”
According to Short, he was given almost an insight early into what life was — which is,
whether we like it or not, we think the world has ended that day, but the sun goes up.
“There’s an assumption that out of my childhood came my need to perform. But it’s just a
coincidence. But you do tap into things in your life to duplicate emotions in your work,” he says.
Once, Stephen Colbert , his friend, went really far with his material at a
Whitehouse Correspondents’ Dinner. George W Bush was not finding it funny at all.
Martin said, “Weren’t you scared?” and Stephen replied, “When I was 12,
my father and two brothers were killed in a plane crash together.
That day I was scared.” And when he heard the story, he thought, “I know from what you speak.”
Strangely, the sadness early in life made him stronger, and more resilient. And
that insight helped Martin when his beloved wife, Nancy Dolman, died of cancer in 2010.
“The night before my wife died, I was in the jacuzzi with my son and I told him,
‘This is the weirdest night for you because it’s the worst night of your
life and yet you’re being empowered,’” he recalls. Before his wife Nancy died, they were together for
36 years, but the actor says he would have been divorced five times if he hadn’t found the right
person. He wouldn’t have faked it and played a game just because he didn’t want to be divorced.
“This is the thing of life that we live in denial about, that it will never happen to us or our
loved ones, and when it does, you gain a little, and you suffer a little. There’s no big surprise.”
The whole story is recounted in Short’s heartfelt memoir, I Must Say: My Life as
a Humble Comedy Legend. The book tracks the comedy and tragedy of his rich and varied showbiz career:
from working in Toronto in 1972 with Eugene Levy and Gilda Radner to starring on
Broadway and winning a Tony in 1999 and beyond. He gets brutally honest, even talking about his
relationship with Gilda Radner, one of the seven original cast members of Saturday Night Live.
Martin dated Gilda on and off for a couple of years,
and admitted he had difficulty understanding her struggles with insecurities and eating disorders.
It caused a great deal of conflict for the couple. Nevertheless, they remained good friends,
and it was Radner who championed her ex to producers as a cast member of SNL.
Short’s next serious relationship was with future wife Dolman, which lasted 36 years.
“We really did have a great relationship,” Short said. “We had a great time and the
party continued from the beginning to the end.” The actor is in no rush to marry again and has
told friends not to set him up. “I go out, I’m not a monk,” he admits. Martin knows Nancy would
want him to be happy, but, quote, “it’s a tough act to follow, and you can’t fake what you had.”
His career has been almost as successful as his love life.
Short admits that it has been a case of wavering on the precipice of stardom. His first big film,
Three Amigos, was not considered a hit, though it has become a cult favourite.
Clifford — with Short playing a 10-year-old boy — performed miserably when released in 1994,
but it has become… something. The thing he’s enjoyed the most
about show business is that the smartest way to be in it for so long is not to take it personally.
“You just show up, and you do an eclectic array of things, from commercials to radio to TV to movies,
and that’s the course of an actor. That’s always been my career.”
Short is friends with heaps of celebrities. Every year, he, Steve Martin, Tom Hanks and producer
Walter Parkes have a colonoscopy together (We’ll get to that, we promise!). Still, his memories of
Nora Ephron), who he describes as “endlessly curious” and “fascinating”, are particularly
bittersweet. They were such good friends that the When Harry Met Sally screenwriter requested Martin
to be the first speaker at her memorial service. Not only is he an absolute sweetheart around
people in real time, but Short also doesn’t include a single nasty story about anyone
in his memoir, not even a hint. He just doesn’t like books that rip people to shreds.
“I have not had any experience of working with horrible people, and I think part of it is what
I give off. I don’t like tension when I work at all,” Short says. “To me, it’s all just fun.”
In the opening passage of his memoir, the actor describes a fight in 1977 with his partner,
Nancy, who would soon become his wife. Short had just joined the Second City comedy
troupe in Toronto. He had started to develop characters that made use of his compact physique
and his ability to contort his voice and face with rubber-band elasticity.
One such character was Ed Grimley , an overenthusiastic dork in high-waisted pants.
During the fight — which Martin notes was about nothing at all, as most relationship
squabbles are — Nancy did something unexpected. She asked to speak with Ed rather than with
Martin. He immediately transformed into his alter ego. When Nancy asked Ed what her boyfriend’s
problem was, he suggested that Martin was “jealous of your beauty and wisdom and saddened by his own
tragic limitations.” He then added, “Although his endowment has certainly been blessed by the Lord.”
Nancy thanked Ed and told him to go away. The argument was over.
The scene provides a small yet powerful window into Short’s approach to life in comedy and in
general. He’s always going bigger, broader, rushing head first for the joke to break the
tension. But his flamboyance carries sweetness and boyish play that has never really left him.
Short seems as excited about his work today, at seventy-one years old,
as he was when he first joined the cast of the Canadian sketch show SCTV in 1982.
He is a beloved late-night-show guest who is always trying to one-up his previous appearance.
It may be tempting to see his all-round cheerfulness as a compensation for a
challenging personal history. No, no. Short is empathetic that he doesn’t
use his humour to cover any kind of pain. Ah, the moment for the special party is right
here! Back in 2018, the legendary comedians, Steve Martin Short, as no one calls them,
told Jimmy Kimmel that they get together with Tom Hanks and another friend for some fun the
night before their colonoscopies. Of course, at this kind of party, everyone is a pooper.
“We thought, everybody at our age ... at a certain age, you want to get a colonoscopy,” Martin said.
“We all came over, we played poker, and we watched some funny movie, and you drink all this stuff.”
They go through avoiding solid foods, consuming liquids and clearing their bowels to get ready.
There is a certain portion of the party that isn’t so fun, though. “What’s shocking is with Steve,
you know, he’s a wealthy man,” Short said. “Who would think he would have one bathroom?
I thought the bathroom ended up looking like a Jackson Pollock ,” Martin added.
The four friends share one car on the ride to get their colonoscopies the next day, playing cards
to determine who has to go last for his exam. “It’s a great way to do something that you should
do,” Martin said. Short
and Martin’s friendship is palpable. Martin says that if he and his wife, the journalist
Anne Stringfield, are planning a dinner party and Short can’t come, “we’ll cancel the dinner party”.
Every generation gets its own Martin Short. Gen X kids know him from Three Amigos,
in which he, Steve Martin and Chevy Chase play out-of-work actors who are mistakenly
recruited to fight Mexican gangsters. For millennials, he is a flamboyant wedding
planner from the Father of the Bride. Now, gen Zers can meet him in the Hulu
comedy-mystery series Only Murders in the Building. Short, along with Steve Martin
and their unlikely co-star Selena Gomez), play true-crime obsessives who decide to
investigate a murder that has occurred in their fancy Manhattan apartment building.
That’s all we have for you today, Juicers! What do you think? Should we do more stories
on our favourite comedians? Drop your opinions in the comment section below.
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