Carving Up Dana Carvey

June 2 is the birthday of Charlie Watts, Johnny Weissmuller, Jerry Mathers,Marvin Hamlisch, Max Showalter, Kevin Brownlow, Cagliostro,June MacCloy,Leopoldo Fregoli, and Valaida Snow, et al, but in the event that you’ve already read all those posts, today we celebrate Dana Carvey’s 70th birthday, as well as his 50 or so years in show business, and the fact that next year will mark the 40th anniversary of his Saturday Night Live debut.

If you’re concerned about the title, we “carve” Dana Carvey only in the sense of dissecting the subject for analysis. We won’t be taking the butcher knife to him. I just like wordplay in my headlines. Carvey’s profile is slightly different from the majority of SNL cast members. He didn’t come out of one the improv comedy mills like Second City or the Groundlings. He studied communications in college, then went into stand-up in the Bay Area (where he grew up). Unsurprisingly, though he’s a great sketch comedian, he’s not exactly an actor, and while he’s widely admired, he never quite went over as a movie star. More surprisingly, he’s not very impressive as a stand-up either per se, apart from his one superlative skill, which is doing impressions. At this he is one of the best of the business — has it down to a science. Once he gets the hook to a character he harnesses it, and can riff and riff ’til the cows come home and never stop being funny.

Also unlike most SNL cast members, Carvey actually had several TV credits prior to joining the show, and, while he was far from a household name yet, some of them are pretty impressive. He was a regular cast member on two network TV shows, the sit-com One of the Boys (1982) and the action show Blue Thunder (1984), and had small roles in such movies as Halloween II (1981), This is Spinal Tap (1984), Racing With the Moon (1984), Young Lust (1984), and Tough Guys (1986).

Carvey was an SNL cast member from 1984 through 1993. He was one of a cast that finally pulled the show out of a long doldrums, and now that I think of it, may be the single biggest factor in why celebrity impressions became such an important element in the show’s formula ever afterward. Impersonations had always been a part of the show, but a minor part, and they weren’t always stellar. Carvey set the bar pretty damn high. Once he came in, going forward, they always seemed to have one or more people who could nail public figures. Carvey was beloved for his send-ups of George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot, as well as Johnny Carson and BOTH John Lennon and Paul McCartney, among many others. I was never that impressed with his most popular original character The Church Lady, which seemed facile and derivative without being truly biting. He also teamed with Kevin Nealon in the Schwarzenegger-esque “Hans and Franz” sketches, and with Mike Myers in the “Wayne’s World” bits, co-starring with Myers in the movie adaptations (1992-93).

Carvey’s stint as a movie star in his own right was very brief, starring in the now forgotten Opportunity Knocks (1990) and Clean Slate (1994). He also had a supporting part in The Road to Wellville (1994) and co-starred with Jon Lovitz and Nicolas Cage in Trapped in Paradise (1994).

Next came the now-legendary The Dana Carvey Show (1996) — which actually had a different title for each episode because Carvey followed the format of old variety shows by putting the sponsor’s name in the title, e.g., The Taco Bell Dana Carvey Show, The Mountain Dew Dana Carvey Show, etc. The show had an astounding roster of talent on the team including the likes of Steve Carrell, Stephen Colbert, Louis C.K., Charlie Kaufman, Bob Odenkirk, and many others, but its surreal and edgy sketches were too much for both the sponsors and the audience. It was cancelled after seven episodes. But oh how it’s alumni went on to conquer the world!

In 1997, Carvey had scary heart bypass surgery which was botched, requiring a second operation. He continued to make the occasional film and tv appearance but slowed down the pace considerably. In 2002 he starred in the critically panned comedy The Master of Disguise. After this he stepped away from the business for the better part of a decade to raise his two sons.

Over the past decade or so, he has come back into the spotlight. He’s been in demand on the late night and other talk shows (as well as SNL) on the basis of his contemporary impressions of Biden, Trump, et al. He’s hosted numerous popular podcasts. A few months ago (November, 2023) he suffered a parent’s worst nightmare when his son died of a drug overdose. At this writing, his most recent appearance was back in March on Real Time with Bill Maher.

For more about show business historyconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.