By Andreas Kessaris for Curtains Up!
“My Childhood was a blast. It was unequivocally happy. The difficult times were difficult, but they yielded important lessons-they gave me information about life few guys my age had, as well as a certain fearlessness.”
-Martin Short
It’s no secret I am a huge fan of sketch comedy, from my early love for the time “we” had together with The Carol Burnett Show, through the mid to late ‘70’s with Saturday Night Live, and the early ‘80’s with SCTV, then back to SNL for its golden age. Growing up those performers were my heroes and idols; they were always there for me in good times and bad. Now they are older, and some of them have left us, and when they do (like recently and all too soon with the great Jan Hooks), I feel as though I lost a friend. So anytime one of that elite group writes a book, I am thrilled. And so I was again when I got my hands on Emmy and Tony Award-winning comedic actor Martin Short’s memoir, I Must Say: My Humble Life as a Comedy Legend.
I Must Say Short covers the highs and lows of his personal and professional life, from his childhood in Hamilton Ontario to the death of his long-time wife Nancy from cancer, including fascinating stories and anecdotes of the places he’s been and the show business legends he’s known in between, with a smooth and surprisingly skillful writing style.
The serious moments in I Must Say are handled with perfect pitch and tone; never used for cheap sentimentality or milked for sympathy. Short imparts wisdom at times, but is never pretentious. He criticizes himself, but never comes off as truly pathetic or self-hating. He is forthright but never mean. He discusses his pain but is never a basket case.
When the book is funny, it is hilarious; a total scream. I laughed so hard at times that I had to stop reading. He also incorporates biographies of some of his more popular characters, like Ed Grimley, Jiminy Glick and Jackie Rogers, Jr., that are interesting and fun interludes, especially when the subject matter gets a little heavy.
My favorite passages cover the early ‘70’s when he was a struggling young actor and singer in Toronto and all his friends were starving artists but future stars like Paul Shaffer, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy and Dan Ackroyd; when the city “had a Paris-in-the-‘20’s thing going on.” [Page 86]. Oh, to be there at that time!
Whenever Martin Short makes an appearance on a late night talk show, he never fails to entertain (my brother once wryly observed that “the hosts really have to coax him into doing shtick”). If Short goes on a program like The Hour to do a longer, more serious interview, he can be very moving, articulate and intelligent. I Must Say is like a well-crafted amalgamation of both. Definitely worth the time to read, but much more so for people I like to refer to as “serious fans of comedy”.
