On the Superhuman Andrea Martin

Today is the birthday of the lovely and hilarious Andrea Martin (b. 1947). It’s been so exciting to see her emerge as a Broadway star in recent years, but of course I’ll always revere her most for her work of 30 years ago…

As in most sketch comedy ensembles (especially back then) the ladies of SCTV had to do an inordinate amount of heavy lifting, there being only two of them (Martin and Catherine O’Hara). And while guys do love to dominate, there do have to be SOME female characters, unless your sketch is set in a men’s prison or something (or, as in Monty Python, the men do drag). Martin and O’Hara divided them all amongst themselves. Usually O’Hara took the babe roles, and Martin (though she’s not any less attractive than O’Hara) would take the crazy old ladies, severe looking academics, thick-accented foreigners, and of course many female celebrities (especially the ones with prominent proboscises, i.e., Barbara Streisand, Liza Minnelli, etc). Her keystone role on the show was Edith Prickley (see above), but she had a million memorable moments in other characters besides. A particular favorite of mine was a parody of Evita called Indira, with Martin as Indira Gandhi. 

The interesting thing about the SCTV cast was that they managed to find a single voice, a house style. One thing that every single player in the cast would radiate in almost every performances was doubt and insecurity. There’s no way to put into words why it was so funny, but their eyes would get all shifty and they would look sort of “caught”. Martin was especially skilled at this “deer caught in the headlights” quality. She also had (has, of course) an interesting ability to play characters who were really smart…or really stupid.

I am delighted to discover today that I can add her to my list of really cool people who are from Portland, Maine (the others include John Ford, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the 19th century humorist Artemus Ward). She went to Emerson College, then moved to Toronto, where she wound up in that legendary 1972 production of Godspell where she met many of her future SCTV cast mates. One of her first screen credits was the excellent 1974 horror movie Black Christmas.

After SCTV, Martin won a Tony for her performance in the 1992 musical based on My Favorite Year, her Broadway debut. She won a second Tony for the 2013 Broadway revival of Pippin, and has also starred in revivals of Candide,Fiddler on the Roof, Oklahoma!, and Noises Off, and was in the Broadway premier of Mel Brooks’Young Frankenstein, and an original 2019 version of A Christmas Carol. Her movies have included Wholly Moses (1980), Club Paradise (1986), Anastasia (1997), Wag the Dog (1997), The Rugrats Movie (1998, playing the same character she played on the show) Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002, as well as the later sequels and TV version), The Producers (2005), etc etc. She had her own sitcom for half a second in 1987 called Roxie (a spin-off of Kate and Allie), and has scores of other tv credits, some of the most exciting of which have been RECENT, like her regular roles on Difficult People, Great News and Evil. 

Martin’s elusive real-life ethnicity, it may surprise you to know, is neither Jewish nor Greek, but Armenian; her grandparents came to North America as refugees from the Turkish genocide.

To find out more about  the variety arts (including television variety), consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And don’t missmy new bookChain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc