Martin Short

• 1. Introduction

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  In March 1972, Martin Short landed his first paid acting job. He played a plastic credit card, tucked inside a woman's purse, in a television commercial for Chargex. It was a speaking part for a piece of plastic, and nobody watching could have guessed where it would lead.

  Martin Short is a Canadian comedian, actor and writer, and his career has since spread across sketch comedy, Broadway, animated films, talk-show parody and prestige drama. He built a name on frantic, oddball characters, yet he also earned a reputation as a serious stage performer. How does a young man with a social work degree end up with that kind of range? Who were the people around him as it happened? And what do his best-loved creations, from a talk-show host to a triangle-playing man-child, reveal about the way he works?

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• 2. Hamilton Roots

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  Olive Grace Short, born Olive Grace Hayter, was a concertmistress with the Hamilton Symphony Orchestra. She was the person who encouraged her youngest son's early creative efforts. Martin Hayter Short was born on the 26th of March 1950 in Hamilton, Ontario, the youngest of five children.

  His father, Charles Patrick Short, came from Crossmaglen in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. According to the record, Charles reached Canada as a stowaway during the Irish War of Independence. He later worked as a corporate executive at the steel company Stelco. Short has spoken openly about his father's struggles with alcoholism.

  The household was Catholic. Martin had three older brothers, David, Michael and Brian, and an older sister named Nora. In 1962, when Martin was 12, David was killed in a car accident in Montréal.

  More loss followed while he was still a student. Short attended Westdale Secondary School, and his mother died of cancer in 1968. His father died two years later from complications of a stroke. In 1971, he graduated from McMaster University with a Bachelor of Arts in Social Work.

  His brother Michael would eventually follow him into comedy. Michael became a comedy writer, spent time at Second City Television, and has been nominated for an Emmy seventeen times, winning three.

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• 3. Godspell and the Long Way Round

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  Stephen Schwartz personally cast Short in the new 1972 production of the Broadway hit Godspell at Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre. Short had moved to Toronto as his university days ended, planning to give acting a temporary try before settling into social work. The company around him was remarkable. It included Victor Garber, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin, Jayne Eastwood and Gerry Salsberg, with Paul Shaffer as musical director.

  Radner and Short dated on and off during the run. Short says so in his 2014 memoir, and the 2018 documentary Love, Gilda tells the same story.

  He kept busy beyond the show. In 1972 he played a tough, predatory prison inmate in John Herbert's drama Fortune and Men's Eyes. The 21-year-old commuted to and from Hamilton for it. By late 1972, Godspell had moved to the Bayview Playhouse, where it ran for 488 performances.

  Television noticed him too. He appeared on Right On, a live CBC program aimed at teenagers and broadcast after school. He also played Smokey the Hare on the TVOntario children's program Cucumber.

  Then came a fork in the road. In June 1973, Chicago's Second City opened a Toronto sister company, and many of his Godspell colleagues joined its first cast. Radner, Levy, Eastwood, Salsberg, Valri Bromfield and Dan Aykroyd all signed on. Short held back from auditioning. He described a "phobia of being funny on demand" and saw himself as a "traditional song-and-dance performer".

  In 1974, he took a writing job on Everything Goes, a nightly variety show hosted by Norm Crosby, Mike Darow and Catherine McKinnon. It aired on the newly launched Global Television Network, reached only Southern Ontario, and was cancelled in under six months. The Second City stage he had avoided was about to come calling again.

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• 4. Sketch Comedy Breakthrough

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  In March 1977, Short finally joined the Second City company in Toronto. He took over from John Candy in The Wizard of Ossington, the troupe's ninth revue. His McMaster classmates Eugene Levy and Dave Thomas had pushed him toward comedy.

  Film came first in a modest way. In early 1978, he played a supporting role in the British romantic comedy Lost and Found, directed by Melvin Frank and starring George Segal and Glenda Jackson. Shooting took place in Banff National Park and Toronto. The film reached North American audiences in a limited release in June 1979, to lukewarm reviews and poor box office.

  His American break arrived that same year, after seven years working only in Canada. He starred in The Associates, a sitcom about novice lawyers at a Wall Street firm. In 1980 he joined the cast of I'm a Big Girl Now, a sitcom starring Diana Canova and Danny Thomas.

  The real breakout came with Second City Television, known as SCTV. Short appeared in 1982-83 and built a gallery of characters. One was the elderly songwriter Irving Cohen. Viewers guessed he was modeled on Irving Caesar, Irving Berlin or even Leonard Cohen. In his autobiography, Short says the inspiration was actually Sophie Tucker.

  There was also the defense attorney Nathan Thurm. Then came the albino Las Vegas singer Jackie Rogers Jr. His father, Jackie Rogers Sr., was mauled to death by a mountain lion during a comeback special staged in the woods.

  Most durable was Ed Grimley, an oddball man-child. Hanna-Barbera turned him into an animated series, The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, which aired for one season in the fall of 1988. It remains the only animated series adapted from characters on both SCTV and Saturday Night Live.

  Saturday Night Live was the next stop. Short joined for its 1984-85 season, the tenth, and the last produced by Dick Ebersol. The show's audience had drifted away after Eddie Murphy's departure, and Short's roster of characters helped win viewers back. Many of those characters were carried over from SCTV. Grimley, obsessed with Wheel of Fortune and fond of playing the triangle, became the standout. Short also did impressions of Jerry Lewis and Katharine Hepburn.

  He has kept returning. He took part in the 40th anniversary special in 2015. On the 9th of March 2013, he joined Steve Martin and Chevy Chase in a Five-Timers Club sketch, but only as a waiter. He had hosted just three times, so he was not yet a member.

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• 5. Films, Voices and Epcot

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  A man in a wedding-planner's wardrobe stole scenes in Father of the Bride. Short played Franck in the 1991 remake and again in its 1995 sequel. He had already been building a film career through the 1980s and early 1990s. Credits included Three Amigos in 1986, Innerspace in 1987 and Three Fugitives in 1989, directed by Francis Veber and starring Nick Nolte and James Earl Jones. He also appeared in Captain Ron in 1992 and Clifford in 1994.

  Tim Burton cast him in Mars Attacks! in 1996 as Jerry Ross, a lascivious press secretary. In 1997 he played the male fairy godmother Murray in A Simple Wish. That same year he appeared as the Wall Street broker Richard Kempster in Jungle 2 Jungle, opposite Tim Allen. He and Allen reunited in 2006 for The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause.

  His voice found as much work as his face. He was Stubbs in We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story in 1993 and Hubie in The Pebble and the Penguin in 1995. He was Huy in The Prince of Egypt in 1998, and the robot B.E.N. in Treasure Planet in 2002. Later roles included Stefano the sea lion in Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, and Kurokawa in the English dub of Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises. From 2010 to 2013 he was the Cat in the Hat in the PBS Kids series The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!

  Television guest spots stretched across Arrested Development, Muppets Tonight, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Weeds. In 2010 he joined the FX drama Damages as the lawyer Leonard Winstone. In 2011 he played Marshall's manic boss on How I Met Your Mother.

  Some of his most curious work happened at Walt Disney World. He hosted O Canada!, a Circle-Vision 360° film in the Canada pavilion at Epcot. He also hosted a 15-minute film about how pregnancy occurs, called The Making of Me, in the park's Wonders of Life pavilion.

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• 6. Broadway and Jiminy Glick

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  Neil Simon's musical The Goodbye Girl brought Short to Broadway in 1993, in a lead role. It earned him a Tony Award nomination and an Outer Critics Circle Award. Six years later he led the 1999 Broadway revival of the musical Little Me. That performance won him a Tony Award and another Outer Critics Circle Award.

  Then television gave him his most unsettling creation. From 2001 to 2003, Comedy Central aired Primetime Glick, in which Short played the bloated celebrity interviewer Jiminy Glick. In 2002, The New York Times called Glick "the most unpredictable and hilariously uninhibited comic creation to hit TV since Bart Simpson was in diapers." In 2004, Short wrote and starred in Jiminy Glick in Lalawood, with Jan Hooks as Glick's wife, Dixie.

  In 2003, Los Angeles audiences saw him in a critically acclaimed run of The Producers. He played the accountant Leo Bloom opposite Jason Alexander's Max Bialystock. Mel Brooks had first approached him about playing the role opposite Nathan Lane on Broadway. Short has said many times that he was thrilled by the offer. But uprooting his family from Los Angeles to New York for a year was a deal-breaker.

  He built his own show instead. Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me was a satirical one-man show with a cast of six. It toured several cities in the spring of 2006 before opening in August at Broadway's Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, and it closed in January 2007. Grimley, Cohen and Glick all appeared. As Glick, Short pulled an audience member, usually a celebrity, on stage for an interview. Jerry Seinfeld filled that seat on opening night.

  The parodies ranged widely. Targets included Celine Dion, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Joan Rivers, Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres and Rachael Ray. He even sent up his own wife, the actress Nancy Dolman. A cast album followed on the 10th of April 2007 from Ghostlight Records.

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• 7. The Martin and Martin Years

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  I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend arrived on the 4th of November 2014. The memoir covers his forty years in show business. Short has also kept touring a one-man show under changing titles. They have included Stroke Me Lady Fame, If I'd Saved, I Wouldn't Be Here, and Sunday in the Park with George Michael.

  From 2014 to 2015, he played Lou Cannon, a game show host and boss of the title character, on the Fox sitcom Mulaney. In 2015, he returned to Broadway in Terrence McNally's play It's Only a Play, replacing Nathan Lane. On the 31st of May 2016, NBC aired the first episode of Maya & Marty, a variety show that also starred Maya Rudolph.

  A partnership with Steve Martin began in 2015. Their tours have included A Very Stupid Conversation in 2015, An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life in 2017, and The Funniest Show in Town at the Moment in 2021. The 2017 tour was filmed for Netflix. The special earned four Primetime Emmy nominations and a Directors Guild of America nomination.

  In 2019, Short went somewhere darker. He played Dick Lundy, a disgraced filmmaker, in the Apple TV+ drama The Morning Show. Damon Wise of Deadline Hollywood wrote that Short is "a damn fine dramatic actor". Short said he was "very fascinated by conversation and discussion" around the MeToo movement. The role brought a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series.

  The pairing with Martin then moved to Hulu. Only Murders in the Building began in 2021, with Short, Martin and Selena Gomez as co-stars, and Short also serving as an executive producer. The series was nominated for a Peabody Award in 2021. In July 2022, Short received his 13th Emmy nomination for it. Mike Hale of The New York Times wrote that Short "gives a master class" in the show.

  He has also played a Leprechaun in Apple TV+'s Schmigadoon! and returned as Jiminy Glick on Real Time with Bill Maher in 2024. In June 2025, he took over hosting Match Game on ABC from Alec Baldwin.

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• 8. Family, Causes and Honours

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  Short met the Canadian comic actress Nancy Dolman in 1972, during the run of Godspell. They married in 1980. Dolman retired from show business in 1985 to raise their family, and they adopted three children, Katherine, Oliver and Henry. Dolman's brother, the screenwriter and director Bob Dolman, wrote for the Emmy-winning SCTV team alongside Short. In 1980 he married Andrea Martin, so Short became uncle to their sons, Jack and Joe.

  Dolman died of ovarian cancer on the 21st of August 2010. Two years later, Short was on The Today Show promoting Madagascar 3 when host Kathie Lee Gifford asked about his marriage. She spoke of it in the present tense, unaware that Dolman had died. Short did not correct her. He said they had been together for 36 years and that he was "madly in love" with her. Gifford later apologized publicly, and he accepted.

  He has campaigned for the Women's Research Cancer Fund. At its 2011 gala he accepted a "Courage Award" on behalf of his late wife. In 2001, he won $32,000 for his charity, Loyola High School, on Celebrity Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, hosted by Regis Philbin. He is also a member of the charity Artists Against Racism. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen who keeps Canadian, Irish and British citizenship, and he is a first cousin of the British politician Clare Short. He also supports his hometown team, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

  Canada has honoured him often. He received the Earl Grey Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995 and the Sir Peter Ustinov Award at the Banff Television Festival in 1999. A star on Canada's Walk of Fame followed in 2000, and a second came in 2002 as part of SCTV. McMaster University gave him an honorary Doctor of Literature in 2001. He was also awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002 and the Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.

  In 2013, the Royal Canadian Mint issued a three-dollar commemorative coin designed by the artist Tony Bianco with Short. It shows his summer home on Lake Rosseau in Muskoka. Canada Post issued a stamp of him in 2015, and in 2016 he received the Canadian Screen Awards Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2019, the social work graduate from Hamilton became an Officer of the Order of Canada.

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