Steve Martin
Stephen Glenn Martin is an American comedian, actor, writer, producer, and musician. Known for his work in comedy films, television, and [|recording], he has received many accolades, including five Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award as well as nominations for eight Golden Globe Awards and two Tony Awards. Martin received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2005, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007, the Honorary Academy Award in 2013 and an AFI Life Achievement Award in 2015. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Martin at sixth place in a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics.
Martin first came to public notice as a writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award in 1969, and later as a frequent host on Saturday Night Live. He became one of the most popular American stand-up comedians during the 1970s, performing his brand of offbeat, absurdist comedy routines before sold-out theaters on national tours. He then starred in films such as The Jerk, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, The Man with Two Brains, All of Me, ¡Three Amigos!, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, L.A. Story, Bowfinger and Looney Tunes: Back in Action. He played family patriarchs in Parenthood, the Father of the Bride films, Bringing Down the House, and the Cheaper by the Dozen films.
Since 2015, Martin has embarked on several national comedy tours with fellow comedian Martin Short. In 2018, they released their Netflix special An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life which received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations. In 2021, he co-created and starred in his first television show, the Hulu comedy series Only Murders in the Building, alongside Short and Selena Gomez, for which he earned three Primetime Emmy Award nominations, two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, a Golden Globe Award nomination, and a 2021 Peabody Award nomination. In 2022, Martin and Short co-hosted Saturday Night Live together with Gomez making an appearance.
Martin is also known for writing the books to the musical Bright Star and to the comedy Meteor Shower, both of which premiered on Broadway; he co-wrote the music to the former. Martin has played banjo since an early age and has included music in his comedy routines from the beginning of his professional career. He has released several music albums and has performed with various bluegrass acts. He has won three Grammy Awards for his music and two for his comedy albums Let's Get Small and A Wild and Crazy Guy.
Early life and education
Stephen Glenn Martin was born on August 14, 1945, in Waco, Texas, the son of Mary Lee and Glenn Vernon Martin, a real estate salesman and aspiring actor. He has an older sister, Melinda.Martin is of English, Scottish, Welsh, Scots-Irish, German, and French descent. He and his sister grew up in a Baptist family in Inglewood, California, and later in Garden Grove in Orange County; he was a cheerleader at Garden Grove High School. One of Martin's earliest memories is seeing his father as an extra serving drinks onstage at the Callboard Theater on Melrose Place in West Hollywood. During World War II in Britain, his father appeared in a production of Our Town with Raymond Massey. Expressing his affection through gifts like cars and bikes, Steve's father was stern and not emotionally open to his son. He was proud but critical, with Steve later recalling that in his teens his feelings for his father were mostly of hatred.
Martin's first job was at newly opened Disneyland, selling guidebooks on weekends and full-time during summer break. The work lasted for three years. During his free time, he frequented the Main Street Magic shop, where tricks were demonstrated to patrons. While working at Disneyland, he was captured in the background of the home movie that was made into the short-subject film Disneyland Dream, incidentally becoming his first film appearance. By 1960, he had mastered several magic tricks and illusions and took a paying job at the Magic shop in Fantasyland in August. There he perfected his talents for magic, juggling, and creating balloon animals in the manner of mentor Wally Boag, frequently performing for tips.
After high school, Martin attended Santa Ana College, taking classes in drama and English poetry. In his free time, he teamed up with friend and high school classmate Kathy Westmoreland to participate in comedies and other productions at the Bird Cage Theatre. He joined a comedy troupe at Knott's Berry Farm. Later, he met budding actress Stormie Sherk, and they developed comedy routines and became romantically involved. Sherk's influence led Martin to apply to the California State University, Long Beach, for enrollment with a major in philosophy. Sherk enrolled at UCLA, about an hour's drive north, and the distance eventually caused them to lead separate lives.
Inspired by his philosophy classes, Martin considered becoming a professor instead of an actor-comedian. Being at college changed his life. Martin recalls reading a treatise on comedy that led him to think: Martin periodically spoofed his philosophy studies in his 1970s stand-up act, comparing philosophy with studying geology.
In 1967, Martin transferred to UCLA and switched his major to theater. While attending college, he appeared in an episode of The Dating Game, winning a date with Deana Martin. Martin began working local clubs at night, to mixed notices, and at twenty-one, he dropped out of college.
Career
Stand-up comedy
Late night
In 1967, his former girlfriend Nina Goldblatt, a dancer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, helped Martin land a writing job with the show by submitting his work to head writer Mason Williams. Williams initially paid Martin out of his own pocket. Along with the other writers for the show, Martin won an Emmy Award in 1969 at the age of twenty-three. He wrote for The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. Martin's first national television appearance was on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1968. He says: During these years his roommates included Gary Mule Deer and Michael Johnson. Gary Mule Deer supplied the first joke Martin submitted to Tommy Smothers for use on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour show. Martin opened for groups such as The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, The Carpenters, and Toto. He appeared at The Boarding House, among other venues. He continued to write, earning an Emmy nomination for his work on Van Dyke and Company in 1976.In the mid-1970s, Martin made frequent appearances as a stand-up comedian on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and on The Gong Show, HBO's On Location, The Muppet Show, and NBC's Saturday Night Live. SNL audience jumped by a million viewers when he made guest appearances, and he was one of the show's most successful hosts. Martin has appeared on twenty-seven Saturday Night Live shows and guest-hosted sixteen times, second only to Alec Baldwin, who has hosted seventeen times as of 2017. On the show, Martin popularized the air quotes gesture. While on the show, Martin grew close to several cast members, including Gilda Radner. On the night she died of ovarian cancer, a tearful Martin hosted SNL and featured footage of himself and Radner together in a 1978 sketch.
Comedy albums
In the 1970s, his television appearances led to the release of comedy albums that went platinum. The track "Excuse Me" on his first album, Let's Get Small, helped establish a national catch phrase. His next album, A Wild and Crazy Guy, was an even bigger success, reaching the No. 2 spot on the U.S. sales chart, selling over a million copies. "Just a wild and crazy guy" became another of Martin's known catchphrases. The album featured a character based on a series of Saturday Night Live sketches in which Martin and Dan Aykroyd played the Festrunk Brothers; Yortuk and Georgi were bumbling Czechoslovak would-be playboys. The album ends with the song "King Tut", written and sung by Martin and backed by the "Toot Uncommons", members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. It was later released as a single, reaching No. 17 on the U.S. charts in 1978 and selling over a million copies. The song came out during the King Tut craze that accompanied the popular traveling exhibit of the Egyptian king's tomb artifacts. Both albums won Grammys for Best Comedy Recording in 1977 and 1978, respectively. Martin performed "King Tut" on the April 22, 1978, SNL program.Decades later in 2012, The A.V. Club's head writer, Nathan Rabin, described Martin's unique style and its effect on audiences:
On his comedy albums, Martin's stand-up is self-referential and sometimes self-mocking. It mixes philosophical riffs with sudden spurts of "happy feet", banjo playing with balloon depictions of concepts like venereal disease, and the "controversial" kitten juggling. His style is off-kilter and ironic and sometimes pokes fun at stand-up comedy traditions, such as Martin opening his act by saying: Or: "Hello, I'm Steve Martin, and I'll be out here in a minute." In one comedy routine, used on the Comedy Is Not Pretty! album, Martin claimed that his real name was "Gern Blanston". The riff took on a life of its own. There is a Gern Blanston website, and for a time a rock band took the moniker as its name.
Martin's show soon required full-sized stadiums for the audiences he was drawing. Concerned about his visibility in venues on such a scale, Martin began to wear a distinctive three-piece white suit that became a trademark for his act. Martin stopped doing stand-up comedy in 1981 to concentrate on movies and did not return for thirty-five years. About the decision, he said, "My act was conceptual. Once the concept was stated, and everybody understood it, it was done... It was about coming to the end of the road. There was no way to live on in that persona. I had to take that fabulous luck of not being remembered as that, exclusively. You know, I didn't announce that I was stopping. I just stopped."