Lady Parts

by Andrea Martin

  During SCTV’s last year, on the US pay-cable station Cinemax, Catherine, who had left the show, came back to do our final episode. We had run out of money and yet had to deliver the eighteenth show. We were in the green room, and Catherine was improvising as Lola Heatherton, who had just got out of rehab. Joe laughed at everything Catherine did. “Look at her,” he said. “She’s just free. She can improvise and go off. It’s like working with a genius.” I said, “What about me, Joe?” He responded, “No, she’s perfect. You, go learn your lines.” And he walked out.

  On second thought, I hope he doesn’t respond to my email.

  When I got in touch with Eugene, he wrote back:

  My memory is worse than yours. Were you on the show?? Need some time. Will get back ASAP.

  Eugene

  xo

  His response was typical Eugene. That’s how he wrote. He would think and ponder and let an idea grow, and when he was ready to write, he’d sit alone and meticulously create a scene for the cast. But it was on his timetable, because he had his own rhythm. He also could be a little stubborn. Marty recalled my talking to Eugene about a piece I had written and Eugene saying to me, “I just wish I understood what the point of it was.” He was being sincere, and it never occurred to him that I might be insulted. I leaned over with a pen in my hand and drew an X on his pants over his penis and said, “That’s so Deb [Eugene’s wife] can find it later.” I loved making Eugene laugh. Out of everyone I contacted, Eugene was the only person to respond literally to the question I posed in my email. After a week, he sent me what he referred to as his “writing assignment” and said he hoped it was what I was looking for. The following is his beautiful and funny recollection of our time together:

  If I were to guess what might have been the most forgettable moments for you during our years doing SCTV, I would have to say it was the table reads—those afternoons or, God forbid, those mornings when the writers and cast members would sit around a board table in a room with no windows and read the newly written scripts that were vying for placement in the next upcoming show. The reason the table reads were probably forgettable for you had nothing to do with how good or bad the scripts were or how good or bad the performance levels were, but pretty much had to do solely with the fact that every single writer and every single cast member smoked except for you. Come to think of it, I’m wrong. One of our writers, Dick Blasucci, also didn’t smoke. But Dick’s writing partner was Paul Flaherty, of the chain-smoking Flahertys, and Dick had spent so much time in a windowless office with Paul that he actually considered himself a smoker.

  As each table read began, everyone would automatically reach for their deck of smokes and light up. By the time we got to the second script, the room was filled with the sweet Canadian scent of Rothmans, du Maurier, and Player’s. At that point, you would reposition yourself to a chair in front of the open doorway. Fifteen people around the table and thirteen cigarettes lit—fifteen lit when you consider the Flahertys would oft times have two going at once. Your first ask to possibly not smoke during the process was always extremely polite, too polite for people to actually listen. Your second ask to put the cigs away was usually more forceful, as in Hey, I’m really not kidding. The response from your friends around the table? “Andrea, shut up!” By the time we were at the halfway point and you couldn’t see people’s faces through the clouds, you were a woman on a mission, citing health warnings, defining the meaning of “fairness,” and protesting the God-given rights of the smoker. At that point, we would listen to your words, take a reflective moment or two, no wait, not two only one, one reflective moment, and give you the same response we would give you at the same point during every single table read: You might be more comfortable in another room!

  Well, what can one say? It was the ’70s. It was the ’80s. It was a different time. Smoking was still cool. And non-smokers had no rights. Especially you. Looking back, it’s a wonder you even showed up to those table reads. But maybe, just maybe, putting up with the ignorance and the arrogance was a small price to pay for the joy you must have felt hearing the laughs cascading through the smoke every time you got to read Edith Prickley! Maybe.

  The first time I saw Marty Short was at the audition for the Canadian company of Godspell. He walked up on stage, at the old Masonic Temple in Toronto, and everyone fell in love with him. Entirely relaxed and uninhibited, he sang “My Funny Valentine” and sounded exactly like Frank Sinatra. He was adorable, with charm and charisma, and unlike anyone I had ever seen. The year was 1972. It was the beginning of all our careers. Marty met his future wife, Nancy Dolman, in Godspell, and they in turn introduced me to Nancy’s brother, Bob, my future husband. We got married within two days of each other, honeymooned together, and have been in each other’s lives for more than forty years.

  Marty and me, many moons ago

  I don’t think it’s possible to be objective about Marty. I worship the little fella. He is fearless and self-assured, and has taught me invaluable lessons in my life. His mantra about show business has always been It’s a business, take nothing personally. Mine has been It’s a business, take everything personally. He walks the talk. I have never met anyone, and especially in the business, less neurotic.

  Here’s an example of how he’s been the voice of reason in my long career: during every rehearsal period, for every play I’ve ever been in, I will at one point call him and say, “Marty, in all seriousness, this time I’ve made a big mistake. I shouldn’t have said yes to this part. I can’t do it. How am I going to get out of it?” His response? “Very good. You’ve been saying the exact same thing since 1972. Look at your history. Have you ever failed? Goodbye.”

  We have worked so many times together only he would be able to accurately recall the places and dates. He has an annoyingly precise memory. From Godspell in 1972 to Chrysler industrial shows, Second City, benefits for Second City, Marty’s various television and animated TV shows, SCTV, commercials, Broadway readings, charity events, sitcoms, films, and skits in living rooms with friends and family across North America, we have developed a comedy shorthand that allows us to communicate and perform together, spontaneously and at the drop of a hat.

  SCTV Fiftieth Anniversary Benefit, 2011

  He and Nancy were second parents to Bob’s and my sons, Jack and Joe. Their devotion and generosity to them over the years were limitless. And their beautiful children, Katherine, Oliver, and Henry, I love like my own. Marty is a great friend, and he’s family. After all the years of hearing the same material, of watching and acting out the same stupid repetitive bits, I still laugh harder with Marty than I do with anyone else.

  I’m hesitant to tell this next story because it makes me seem like a horrible person, but it’s a great example of Marty’s ability to be pragmatic and cut to the chase.

  I was at a taping of a live TV reality show. I thought the host was mediocre. You know what? It’s my book. She sucked. I was badmouthing her to the friends I was with throughout the show: “How the hell did she get this job? They don’t make them less charismatic or less sincere.” And I was saying this loudly. This was punctuated by me doing full-on impersonations of her blandness. My group laughed and laughed. When I got home that night, the producer of the reality show emailed me. He told me that the mother of the host was in the audience that night—in fact, sitting directly in front of me. She didn’t turn around and ask me to stop. Instead, throughout the show, she texted her daughter every word that came out of my mouth. Not since the court-appointed stenographer in Twelve Angry Men has anyone transcribed that many words so quickly and accurately. The host herself wasn’t a shy woman. She didn’t receive the litany of insults and hide, as I would have. Instead, the producer informed me, she had waited in the parking lot to confront me. Thankfully, I had left before she made an appearance in Level Three, Section Bluebird. The producer wrote that he had given me free tickets and how dare I be so insensitive?

  I was mortified and felt like a despicable human being.
I called Marty immediately and told him the story.

  First he laughed. Then he said, “So you got caught. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.” And we moved on.

  About the time that SCTV was ending, Dave Thomas said something to me that I never forgot: we might all have different experiences in our lives and go in different directions, and maybe not see each other often, but we would stay friends, and we’d be at each other’s weddings—and at each other’s funerals.

  “Do you remember saying that, Dave?” I asked when I spoke to him on the phone. He was at home, in Los Angeles.

  “Yes,” said Dave. “Sure I remember. Because we had a pretty strong bond from the work. And those bonds were evident when somebody would come from the outside and interfere with the group. And then it was like arms were locked, and the strengths of each person became the strengths the person from the outside would have to deal with.”

  There was no outside world during SCTV. When we were filming, we spent seventeen hours a day in the studio. To add to the isolation, the studio itself was in the heart of Edmonton, a mere 2,160 miles from our homes in Toronto. We uprooted our families and lived in rented condos, which we basically never saw. Nor did we see any natural light, since the floor we worked on at ITV was completely underground. Nothing has been so dark and windowless since Dorothy Gale’s storm shelter in The Wizard of Oz. When I say we worked seventeen hours a day, it wasn’t just filming our own sketches. We were in each other’s scenes, playing supporting parts or even working as extras, and when we weren’t in the scenes, we would be on the set watching our fellow castmates in their scenes and giving notes, or laughing off camera, or telling them the best take, or suggesting another line. We had no audience at all. We and our crew were the audience. The only way we knew whether a sketch worked was if we made each other laugh. Thankfully, we weren’t as critical as Dave Thomas’s scathingly pithy theatre reporter, Bill Needle, who once reviewed Libby Wolfson’s “I’m Taking My Own Head, Screwing It on Right, and No Guy’s Gonna Tell Me That It Ain’t” by summing it up with: “Libby Wolfson hit a new low by giving an unconvincing performance as herself.”

  Dave also came up with the sketch “Tex and Edna Boil’s Organ Emporium” and selflessly backed up Edna on the organ as she relentlessly pitched the latest bargains and offerings.

  EDNA: Come on down to Tex and Edna Boil’s Organ Emporium, where me and my husband love you to visit us. All this week we got rhythm aces for $199.95, yes, we got rhythm aces and four and a half miles of organs and pianos. So bring the kids, bring the whole family. Right, Tex?

  TEX: That’s right, Edna.

  EDNA: This week Tex will be cooking fresh farm sausages, but keep those fingers off the merchandise, the little piggies are greasy. So come on down. It’s Tex and Edna Boil’s Organ Emporium. That right, Tex?

  TEX: That’s right, Edna.

  My angel, Catherine, Caterina, you darling girl. You gorgeous and talented writer, you brilliant performer, you kind and giving soul. How I loved acting with Catherine, even though we were so different as people, and so different in our approach to the work. I would be waking up when she was going to sleep. She loved improvising, and I loved a script in my hand. She could go off by herself and come back with the brilliant group scene “Night School High Q.” (Who can forget Margaret Meehan’s plaintive “The Beatles?”) I, however, needed to stand and pace and perform and hope that the writers were taking every word down; the thought of being alone and putting pen to paper was terrifying to me. Catherine created some of my favourite sketches, including “Way to Go, Woman!,” which featured me as Mother Teresa and her as Lola Heatherton.

  It juxtaposed a blonde narcissistic Vegas entertainer visiting the most saintly woman in the world. Instead of helping Mother Teresa tend to the poor, she forces her to pose for publicity photos.

  We performed together as talk-show host Libby Wolfson and real estate agent and best friend Sue Bopper Simpson; in “The Miracle Worker” as Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan (played by Edith Prickley); as the maid Mojo and her employer Mrs. MacKay in the soap opera “The Days of the Week”; as two older Jewish sisters in “How Nosy, the Short Haired Terrier Dog, Got His Name”; as Dutch van Dyke and her many unrequited crushes, all played by Catherine, and we sang as Anne Murray and Rita Coolidge in SCTV’s Anne Murray special.

  The list is endless.

  Over the years, the one sketch people ask me about consistently is one I did with Catherine, “English for Beginners.” They ask me how it was created, and here and now, I want to give credit where credit is due. The sketch was originated by Dan Aykroyd and Valri Bromfield on stage at Toronto’s Second City. Dan played the student; Valri, the teacher. We filmed the sketch for SCTV with Catherine as the teacher, now named Lucille Hitzger, and me as the student, a woman of nondescript ethnicity, wearing a winter overcoat and babushka, named Perini Scleroso. Lucille tries desperately to teach Perini common English phrases like “Can you direct me to the hotel?” and Perini tries her best but can only sound out “Can oo eetrac me tu na lo to?” As Lucille gets more and more frustrated, she keeps repeating, “Can you direct me to the hotel?” and Perini keeps repeating “Can oo eetrac me tu na lo to?” until Lucille breaks down and blurts out, “Can oo eetrac me tu na lo to?” There is silence. Perini stares at her for a moment, takes her hand, and says, “Sure, honey. You just go down two blocks. You can’t miss it.”

  I like to think that Catherine and I were a good team, we two women who looked out for each other and complemented each other’s talent. We had such creative freedom on SCTV. Where else could we have filmed an entire twenty-minute segment focusing on two middle-aged marginally talented women who write what they think is a groundbreaking feminist musical manifesto, “I’m Taking My Own Head, Screwing It on Right, and No Guy’s Gonna Tell Me That It Ain’t”?

  The opening number lyrics included:

  Menopause, stretch marks, sagging skin Kinda like the shape that we’re all in!

  This play is by women, for women, full of women and women thoughts!

  [As we flashed our legs.] But men don’t go away, you’re welcome to stay … that’s if you’re man enough … to love … women!

  As her career after SCTV attests, Catherine will not take a job if it does not have meaning to her. She’s discerning and particular and picky, whereas I come from the summer stock mentality—give me a set and a costume and some funny glasses, throw me on stage, and I’ll “put on a show!” It was an honour to work with Catherine, and I continue to be an unwavering fan of hers. It is my dream to one day perform with her in a play on Broadway and have the opportunity to create another dynamic duo, this time on stage. And you can bet I’ll be working my ass off just to keep up with the likes of her.

  I’m grateful for the time Rick Moranis and I had together. Rick was an exceptional writer, a visionary. He created the character Gerry Todd, a VJ … years before there were VJs. In those early days, Rick would come to the studio with legal pads filled with ideas. He was prolific and had a great sense of television. He knew how to use the camera to make a joke land—how to get a laugh by setting a shot a different way. He was way ahead of his time. And I loved performing and writing the Libby Wolfson scenes when he’d join me as another character. Like Dave Thomas, he would let me shine in a sketch where he didn’t have that many lines. He understood and loved the neuroses of Libby Wolfson, a self-centred woman who for some reason had her own talk show, on which she consistently turned the conversation back to herself and her many insecurities. So many of the characters we played on SCTV were based on people we knew. I created Libby Wolfson and her talk show You! from watching Micki Moore, who had her own TV show on CityTV in Toronto during the ’80s. Libby’s set didn’t have chairs. Instead, it was a platform with tons of pillows that she and her guests had to awkwardly sit on.

  One of Libby Wolfson’s many neuroses was her obsession with smells. Her talk show always began something like this:

  Music: “You Are So
Beautiful.”

  Libby sits uncomfortably on the many pillows. She speaks directly to the camera.

  LIBBY: Is there a cat in here? It’s that male spray thing I don’t like the smell of. What is it, onions? (She smells her fingers.) Wait, no, I’m sorry. It’s tabbouleh, serves me right for eating with my fingers.

  Rick joined me a few times on the show as the in-house psychiatrist, Sol Rubin.

  LIBBY: Dr. Sol Rubin is here to talk about a problem that affects so many women today … women’s problems.

  Rick begins to give an overview of women’s issues in the context of modern-day feminism as Libby is distracted, nervously fixing her hair and makeup and smelling her underarms.

  She then asks him, “What about weight? You see a lot of women who are fat, right?”

  He is perplexed by the question but responds in a professional manner.

  DR. SOL RUBIN: Well, I see a lot of women who have compulsive issues. Some women are overweight and some are anorexic.

  LIBBY: (Leans forward.) You know what? I’d kill to be anorexic for one week, can I tell you that? (He doesn’t respond.) Continue.

  (He begins a sentence and Libby yet again cuts him off.) Why can I not stop eating? You’re a doctor, you should know. If there was a roll there, I’d eat it. Is that not sick?

  He tries to reposition himself on the pillows and before he answers, the theme music comes up, prompting Libby to close the show. But she praises him for how enlightening it’s been to have him as a guest.

  We knew those characters inside out, and improvising their dialogue was, dare I say, second nature for us. It was also delirious fun working together with Rick as Libby’s boyfriend, businessman Lenny Schectman.