Happy 80th Birthday, Harry Shearer

The above photo depicts Harry Shearer(b. 1943) as I first became aware of him, as a cast member of Saturday Night Live, as a replacement for the void left by John Belushi when he left to become a movie star. Working on this post has been sheer joy. What an amazing career he’s had; he may be the person who I would most want to trade places with – a life full of rewarding projects, spanning several discreet consecutive phases of pop cultural history.

For real! Yep, he’s the little guy in this photo with Jack Benny. As a child actor, Shearer appeared in five episodes of Jack’s program from the early to mid ’50s. Because he began so young, his character actually begins in the classic comedy period! His first movie role was in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars(1953)! And he was in the pilot episode of Leave it to Beaver (1957)! He was also on The Donald O’Connor Show. As a young person he was a friend of Gary Lewis,Jerry Lewis’s son, and this is how he became one of the few people who has ever seen that elusive rarity The Day the Clown Cried (1972).

Shearer shifted gears when he went to college, majoring in poli sci at UCLA in the early ’60s, followed by graduate work at Harvard. He worked briefly in politics and taught high school for about a year.

In 1969, Shearer joined the radio comedy group The Credibility Gap, which is how he met and began collaborating with the team of Michael McKean and David L. Lander. The latter two splintered off in 1976 to work on Laverne and Shirley. Shearer, in turn, worked at SNL, collaborated with Albert Brooks on his 1979 movie Real Life, and wrote for the Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman spinoff Fernwood 2-Night. Shearer would work with show’s star Martin Mull again in The History of White People in America (1984).

During this period he got a couple of movie roles as well. You can see him in the Paul Simon vehicle One Trick Pony (1980), and in The Right Stuff (1983) where he formed a kind of Mutt-and-Jeff comedy team with Jeff Goldblum as a pair of astronaut recruiters.

In 1983, Shearer launched his political comedy radio program Le Show, which is carried on National Public Radio, thus resuming the kind of work he had been doing with The Credibility Gap a decade earlier. The show combines news commentary in the tradition of Mort Sahl, as well as sketches and music. This satirical political association informs some of his later screen work, such as performance as G. Gordon Liddy in Dick (1999), and Richard Nixon in Nixon’s the One (2012), and his first film as director Teddy Bears Picnic (2002).

In 1984, he reunited with McKean, as well as Christopher Guest and Rob Reiner, both of whom he had previously worked with, to recreate the much beloved rock mockumentary This is Spinal Tap (1984), playing the bass in the character of Derek Smalls. Shearer and Guest joined the cast of SNL for the 1984-85 season (Shearer, rejoining, of course). McKean would also briefly be a cast member of the show a decade later. Shearer later went on to work with Guest in his later films A Mighty Wind (2003) and For Your Consideration (2006). And there have been many subsequent Spinal Tap projects, including, I understand, an upcoming sequel.

The Simpsons was launched in late 1989, with Shearer famously providing the voices of both Mr. Burns and Smithers (in whose scenes he is therefore always talking to himself) as well as Principal Skinner, Kent Brockman, Ned Flanders, and a couple of others. He has been doing this for over three decades!

Shearer has over 300 screen credits. Some of the films we haven’t mentioned yet in which he (or his voice) has appeared include: My Stepmother is an Alien (1988), Oscar (1991), The Fisher King (1991), A League of Their Own (1992), Wayne’s World 2(1993), My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), Godzilla (1998), Almost Heroes (1998), The Truman Show (1998), EdTV (1999), et al. He was also made guest appearances in episodes of ALF, Golden Girls, Murphy Brown, Ellen, Friends, Just Shoot Me, and numerous other tv shows.

A long time resident of New Orleans, in 2010 he directed his documentary The Big Uneasy,about the breaking of the levees following Hurricane Katrina, a worthy edition to the subgenre that includes my favoriteSpike LeefilmWhen the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006).

For the latest on Harry Shearer, see his website here.

For more on the history of variety entertainment, including tv variety, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, for more on classic comedy please check out my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube. And stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.