Martin Short

Martin Short (born March 26, 1950, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) Emmy- and Tony-winning Canadian actor, comedian, and writer known for his work on television comedy shows such as SCTV Network and Saturday Night Live, movies such as Three Amigos! (1986) and Father of the Bride (1991), and, more recently, the streaming crime comedy series Only Murders in the Building (2021–23).

Early life

Short is the youngest of five children born to Olive (née Hayter) and Charles Patrick Short. He grew up in Hamilton, Ontario. His mother had been the concertmaster for the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, and his father was an executive with Stelco, a large Canadian steel company. Growing up, Short idolized Frank Sinatra.

As a boy, Short put on pretend variety shows, playing different roles such as host, guest, and comedian. He also developed his comedy chops in his large, rambunctious Irish Roman Catholic family. He had to deal with a succession of tragedies, starting at the age of 12, when his eldest brother died in a car crash. Five years later he lost his mother to cancer, and, when Short was 20, his father died of a stroke. In his 2014 autobiography, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend, he described how he was able to withstand these emotional blows: “When you’re met with fire early, you develop a certain Teflon quality.”

Short attended McMaster University in Hamilton. Initially, he pursued a premed curriculum, but he switched his course of study and earned a degree in social work. Ultimately, however, encouraged by classmates and future comedy stars Eugene Levy and Dave Thomas, Short decided to try his hand as an entertainer.

Career

Short made his debut as a professional stage actor in 1972 in a Toronto production of Godspell, which also featured Levy, Andrea Martin, Gilda Radner and Victor Garber, alongside musical director Paul Shaffer. Short became romantically involved with Radner during the production, but he wound up marrying her Godspell understudy, actress Nancy Dolman. The couple would adopt three children. Dolman died of ovarian cancer in 2010 (as had Radner in 1989).

In 1977 Short became a cast member of the Toronto branch of the Second City improv company, where he developed a persona that would become among the most beloved of his many hilarious characters: the excitable, spastic Ed Grimley, whose hair rises to a gelled point, trouser waist climbs his midriff, and signature catchphrase is “I must say.” Grimley was a staple character for Short when, after a sojourn in Hollywood, he joined the cast of SCTV Network (earlier known as Second City Television or SCTV) starting with its 1981–82 season, reuniting with former classmates Levy and Thomas, along with other Second City alumni such as John Candy, Andrea Martin, Joe Flaherty, and Catherine O’Hara. Short won an Emmy Award in 1983 for his writing on the show.

Short moved over to Saturday Night Live (SNL) for the 1984–85 season, joining an “all-star cast” that included Christopher Guest, Billy Crystal, and Harry Shearer. In I Must Say, Short described his one season on the show as a “roller coaster of elation and anxiety,” adding, “With thirty years’ perspective, I now recognize that I should have allowed myself to step back for a moment and simply exult in the privilege of doing that show.” One source of anxiety, he wrote, was having to be “funny on demand.”

The pace of SNL’s production was so harried that Short almost never saw his family: “The kind of show business I wanted was what I saw on The Dick Van Dyke Show,” he quipped in an interview with USA Today years later, “a 9–5 job and go back to New Rochelle.” Still, he had a number of memorable skits on SNL, including one in which he and Shearer played a pair of brothers who aspire to compete in the Olympics in the nonexistent sport of men’s synchronized swimming. Short’s character cannot swim, so he is shown in the pool wearing a life preserver. Guest plays their coach.

After his stint on SNL, Short starred with Steve Martin in the movie Three Amigos! (1986), marking the beginning of a decades-long friendship. The two also collaborated on many other projects, including Father of the Bride (1991). Other movies in which Short has appeared include Innerspace (1987), Clifford (1994), and Mars Attacks! (1996), and he has voiced roles in animated films such as The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About Space! (2017) and The Addams Family (2019). From 2001 to 2003 Short plumped up with prosthetics to take on the role of paunchy passive-aggressive celebrity interviewer Jiminy Glick in the parody television talk show Primetime Glick.

Short has also acted on Broadway, winning a Tony Award for his multiple roles in the 1999 musical Little Me after being nominated for best actor in a musical for his performance in The Goodbye Girl (1993). However, he turned down a chance to play Leo Bloom in The Producers, Mel Brooks’s hit Broadway musical based on his earlier film. Matthew Broderick wound up with the part. Nonetheless, Short did get another chance, playing the timid accountant in a 2003 Los Angeles production opposite Jason Alexander. In 2006 Short returned to Broadway in the spurious autobiographical musical Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me.

In 2021 he and Steve Martin teamed up with singer-actress Selena Gomez in the streaming Hulu series Only Murders in the Building, in which their three characters come up with a true-crime podcast of that name after a killing takes place in their swanky apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Playing Oliver Putnam, Short “gives the show some comic spark and humanity, making Martin and Gomez his foils, in the most charming way possible,” The New York Times wrote in a 2021 review. “He steals every scene, not through grandstanding but with the steady skill of an old pro.”

Short was awarded the Order of Canada in 2014 and has a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame.