By David Raether
In the fall of 1977, I went to see Steve Martin perform at the 5,000-seat Northrop Auditorium in Minneapolis. Martin performed two sold-out shows that night as part of a national tour. It was a solo show—just him, his banjo, some floppy bunny ears, balloon animals, and a spotlight. At the time, Martin was as big a comedian as there may have ever been in the United States of America. His appearances on Saturday Night Live drew enormous ratings, and he also had a hit album and best-selling book.
It was one of the best stand-up performances I have ever seen in my life (and believe me, I’ve seen a lot of them). Martin, in his white, vested suit, banker’s haircut, and enormous, toothy smile, looked like a guy you would have seen at a golf club summer party talking about how he handled that bunker to the left of the 13th green.
And then he pulled out his banjo and balloon animals and began 45 minutes of manic, absurdist, utterly brilliant stand-up comedy.
Martin and Richard Pryor were the two great stand-ups of the 1970s and early ‘80s. Pryor put out two remarkable concert films: Richard Pryor Live in Concert (1979) and Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip (1982). I recommend both of them. Pryor had a film career as an actor, but his best work was these concert films, particularly the latter one. Martin never did a concert film, which is too bad because his stand-up shows were always raucous, outrageous fun. In 1979, he moved almost full-time into a movie career. It started out well within the parameters of his stand-up—absurdist stories that were very funny and intensely silly. By the late 1980s, his films began to trend towards traditional storytelling, often touched by an underlying melancholy.
Steve Martin was born in Waco, Texas, in August 1945, making him one of the earliest of the Baby Boomers. He grew up in Orange County, California. Now, the Orange County he grew up in is not one of the luxurious beach cities like Laguna or Newport Beach. Martin grew up in Garden Grove, a working-class town, where he attended public schools and graduated from Garden Grove High School. During his teenage years, Martin worked at Disneyland and became fascinated with the magic shows there. He developed himself into a magician.
After high school, Martin enrolled in nearby Santa Ana Community College and studied philosophy. “If you're studying geology—which is all facts—as soon as you get out of school, you forget it all,” he said. “But philosophy, you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life.”
While in school, Martin remained active in local theatrical productions, including comedy productions he often co-wrote. Eventually, in 1967, he decided to make the big move north up the 405 freeway and entered UCLA, where he switched his major to theater. A former girlfriend, who had appeared on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, brought his writing to the attention of the showrunner, Mason Williams, who hired him as a writer on the show.
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was one of those then-popular “variety shows,” similar to The Ed Sullivan Show (which introduced The Beatles and Elvis Presley to national audiences), The Lawrence Welk Show, The Carol Burnett Show, and The Arthur Murray Dance Party. If you were looking for old-fashioned, staid entertainment, you couldn’t go wrong with a variety show.
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was aimed at a much younger audience, setting it apart from the rest. The show often featured political satire and edgy humor. It was a huge hit for CBS and won an Emmy for the writing staff, which included Martin. It was also a major irritant for the management of CBS because of its political stances on topics like the Vietnam War—which ultimately ended up getting the show canceled.
The writing room on the show is considered one of the greatest in television history.
It was also during his time on the show that Martin appeared as a contestant on The Dating Game. He won a date with Deana Martin, the daughter of Dean Martin(!). The answer that won her over? His response to her question of what kind of store would you like to be locked in overnight. Bachelor #1 said a sporting goods store because he liked to ski. Bachelor #3 said an Italian restaurant because his grandmother was a good cook. Steve Martin (Bachelor #2) said a Goodwill Store because he could try on all the old crazy clothes.
After The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour ended, Martin devoted himself more intensely to stand-up. However, he was a very different kind of stand-up comic from his contemporaries: he didn’t really do jokes. While at Santa Ana Community College, Martin read a treatise on comedy, and it sparked a thought:
“What if there were no punchlines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out sometime. But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation.”
It was around this idea that he built his act. Martin appeared as a stand-up on a number of other variety shows, such as The Glen Campbell Show and The Sonny and Cher Show. However, the biggest boosts to his career were his appearances on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson. College students staying up late went crazy for his anti-traditional stand-up performances. One of my favorite Martin appearances consisted of him coming out in a tuxedo and doing jokes for four dogs. They were terrible jokes, and the dogs wandered off. He then went to panel; that’s showbiz for exiting the stage and going to sit next to Johnny Carson. There, he did a series of card tricks with Johnny Carson that didn’t work—and couldn’t possibly work. It made no sense at all and was riotously funny.
In the late 1970s, he released two comedy albums on vinyl: Let’s Get Small (1977) and Wild and Crazy Guy (1978). Both went platinum. The latter album included his hilarious nonsense song King Tut, which featured these unforgettable lyrics:
“Born in Arizona
Moved to Babylonia
King Tut.”
He toured in support of these albums and published a book of absurdist essays titled Cruel Shoes. It became a New York Times bestseller.
And that’s when his movie career began. In 1979, he had a starring role in the timelessly funny Carl Reiner comedy, The Jerk. Martin followed that up with the brilliant and dark musical Pennies From Heaven (1981), and then a series of absurd comedies: Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), The Man With Two Brains (1983), Three Amigos (1986), and Little Shop of Horrors (1986).
And then, suddenly, his film career shifted into more serious roles. He stepped away from being the comic lead and into the part of a “normal” man in movies such as Roxanne (1987), Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987), Parenthood (1989), L.A. Story (1991), Father of the Bride (1991), and Grand Canyon (1991). Don’t Worry, there were still some silly movies in there, such as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) and My Blue Heaven (1990).
Martin continued making movies throughout the 1990s at a fairly prolific pace. Few of them are particularly notable, and none have the inventive energy of his first few pictures. It’s not that any of these are bad movies. They’re usually pretty good, just not as memorable as his 1980s films.
Other interests have since taken precedence in Steve Martin’s life. He is a legitimate virtuoso on the banjo, as evidenced by three Grammy award-winning bluegrass albums. Martin has toured with the bluegrass band Steep Canyon Rangers and performed at famous venues like the Grand Ole Opry and Carnegie Hall. In fact, he has more Grammys for his bluegrass albums (three) than the two he won for his early comedy albums.
As a writer, Martin has published a number of books, written several highly-regarded plays, and has regularly contributed essays to The New Yorker. He also wrote the book and lyrics to the musical Bright Star (2016) and the comedy Meteor Shower (2017), both of which premiered on Broadway.
Martin’s other chief interest is art collecting. He began to collect art in 1968 while still a student at UCLA and working at The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. His collection has included works by Picasso, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, and Edward Hopper. In 2006, he sold a Hopper from his collection (Hotel Window) for $26.8 million.
As for his love life, Martin dated Bernadette Peters and Mary Tyler Moore in the 1970s and was later married to English actress (and L.A. Story co-star) Victoria Tennant from 1986 to 1994. In 2007, he married writer and former New Yorker staffer Anne Stringfield in a surprise ceremony at his home, officiated by SNL’s Lorne Michaels and attended by friends such as Tom Hanks and Diane Keaton. Stringfield gave birth to Martin’s only child in 2012 when he was 67.
Now in his mid-70s, he still looms as a substantial and important figure in American film and still occasionally stars in movies and television shows. Below, I’ve picked a group of Steve Martin movies for you to rent—and most likely, watch again. And again.
This movie, for me at least, is one of the funniest comedies ever made. I watched it again recently and still laughed at the exact same spots. So many jokes. In his first-ever starring role, Martin plays the role of Nevin, the white adopted son of Black Mississippi sharecroppers who somehow makes it to adulthood before realizing that he is, in fact, not Black. Nevin decides to head off to St. Louis to “find himself,” and hilarity ensues.
The film was directed by the late Carl Reiner and co-written by Martin, Carl Gottlieb, and Michael Elias. Martin met Gottlieb when they were writing on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and Martin met Elias when both were writing on a short-lived variety show, The Pat Paulsen Show. Let me just say this: every single joke works. Every single one. The film is also graced by Bernadette Peters, who plays Martin’s trumpet-playing girlfriend. And who can forget Jackie Mason as Martin’s first employer, a gas station owner in Missouri? I am chuckling thinking about this movie as I type this. If you’ve never seen this, fix that immediately. If you have, rent it again.
I’ll admit, I am not as big a fan of this movie as virtually every other person I’ve met. I watched it again recently, and the people with me were giggling the entire time, so I’ve concluded that I am just plain wrong about it. Being wrong about movies happens with me from time to time.
Set in 1919, the Three Amigos are silent film stars whose fictional adventures showcase their swashbuckling ways in Mexico, where they save innocent people from the bad guys. Chevy Chase and Martin Short star alongside Martin as the other two Amigos. The trio is invited to a village in an earnest request to save the community from a local villain and go there assuming it is a promotional event for their latest movie—except the bad guy is real. Oops.
I am a major fan of the mariachi band outfits the Three Amigos wear—I’ve had a secret desire to wear one of those ever since I first visited Mariachi Plaza in Los Angeles in 1992. Good grief, they are spectacular! John Landis directed this film, and it was co-written by Martin, Lorne Michaels, and Randy Newman. Now there’s an unlikely writing room if I ever heard of one. Anyway, this is a fun movie to watch with your family. It’s good, clean, silly fun.
Raise your hand if you don’t love this movie. Interesting, no one has raised their hands. What kind of person doesn’t love this? The film marked a change in direction for both writer and director John Hughes and for Martin. Hughes moved away from making movies about teenagers (Sixteen Candles (1984), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), etc.) to a heartfelt comedy about adults. John Candy is absolutely terrific as well-meaning yet obnoxious shower curtain salesman Del Harris, and Martin plays a high-strung advertising executive trying to get home from New York to Chicago two days before Thanksgiving. Fate brings the two men together—and keeps them together as they try to get to Chicago. Sure, many of us watch this around Thanksgiving, but why wait? It’s such an endearing and hilarious film. You have full authority to watch it whenever you want.
This is a Steve Martin movie that often gets overlooked. Based on Cyrano de Bergerac, the 19th-century verse play by the French poet Edmond Rostand, Roxanne was adapted by Martin himself. Both the play and film feature a brilliant and articulate man with an enormous nose who helps a handsome dolt (Rick Rossovich) pursue the beautiful Roxanne (Daryl Hannah) by ghostwriting love letters for him. Directed by Fred Schepisi, Roxanne is simply a sweet and good-natured romantic comedy. It includes a cast with Shelley Duvall as the owner of Dixie’s Cafe and the inimitable Fred Willard as the town mayor. The prosthetic nose Martin wears in this movie is pretty amazing, besides.
This is definitely one of the best movies about the complexities of being a parent. Martin is at the center of this ensemble comedy about a family struggling with all the things families struggle with. Martin again plays a stressed-out mid-level executive in the Midwest—St. Louis, this time. He’s working too much, his oldest son (Jasen Fisher) is having emotional issues, his wife (Mary Steenburgen) is pregnant with their fourth child, his siblings are having problems, and his emotionally distant dad (Jason Robards) is not of much help. It all feels like real life.
The brilliant script is by the longtime writing partners of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. These two are among the most outstanding writing teams in Hollywood history, having also penned Night Shift(1982), Splash (1984), City Slickers (1991), A League of Their Own (1992), and Forget Paris(1995). The film was directed by Ron Howard, who always works well with ensemble casts and multiple storylines (think 1994’s The Paper or his work on the Arrested Development series). If you’re a parent, a child, a grandparent, an aunt or uncle, or a sibling, you should probably watch this movie. If you’re none of these, check with the robot factory to see when they want you back for servicing.
David Raether is a veteran TV writer and essayist. He worked for 12 years as a television sitcom writer/producer, including a 111-episode run on the ground-breaking ABC comedy “Roseanne.” His essays have been published by Salon.com, The Times of London, and Longforms.org, and have been lauded by The Atlantic Magazine and the BBC World Service. His memoir, Homeless: A Picaresque Memoir from Our Times, is awaiting publication.