Everything about Steve Martin totally explained
Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin (born
August 14,
1945) is an
American comedian,
actor,
writer,
playwright,
producer,
musician and
composer.
Biography
Early years
Stephen Glenn Martin was born in
Waco, Texas, the son of Mary Lee (
née Stewart), a homemaker, and Glenn Vernon Martin, a
real estate salesman and an aspiring
actor. Martin was raised in
Garden Grove, California, and is of
Irish,
Scottish and
English descent. One of Steve's earliest memories is of seeing his father, as an extra, serving drinks onstage at the Call Board Theatre on Melrose Place. During the war, in England, Glenn had appeared in a production of
Our Town with
Raymond Massey. Years later, he'd write to Massey for help in Steve's fledgling career, but would receive no reply. Yet he wasn't always so helpful. Expressing his affection through gifts of cars, bikes etc, he wasn't emotionally open to his son. He was proud of the boy but extremely critical, Steve later recalling that in his teens his feelings for his dad were mostly ones of hatred. As a teenager, he started out working at the Magic Shop at
Disneyland, where he developed his talents for
magic,
juggling, playing the
banjo and creating
balloon animals. He teamed up with friend and
Garden Grove High School classmate
Kathy Westmoreland to do a
musical comedy routine, performing at local
coffee houses and at the Bird Cage Theater in
Knott's Berry Farm, also at the Golden Bear.
Martin majored in
philosophy at
California State University, Long Beach, and for a while considered becoming a
philosophy professor instead of an actor-comedian. His time at college changed his life:
"It changed what I believe and what I think about everything. I majored in philosophy. Something about
non sequiturs appealed to me. In philosophy, I started studying
logic, and they were talking about
cause and effect, and you start to realize, 'Hey, there's no cause and effect! There is no logic! There is no anything!' Then it gets real easy to write this stuff, because all you've to do is twist everything hard—you twist the
punch line, you twist the
non sequitur so hard away from the things that set it up, that it's easy... and it's thrilling." Martin periodically spoofed his philosophy studies in his 1970s stand-up act, comparing philosophy with studying geology. "If you're studying geology, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life."
In 1967, he transferred to
UCLA and switched his major to theater. While attending college, he appeared in an episode of
The Dating Game. Martin soon began working local clubs at night, to mixed notices. At the age of twenty-one, he dropped out of college for good. Martin's girlfriend in 1967 was a dancer on
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. She 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. Martin also wrote for
John Denver (a neighbor of his in
Aspen,
Colorado, at one point),
The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, and
The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. He also appeared on these shows and several others, in various comedy skits.
Martin also performed his own material, sometimes as an opening act for groups such as
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and
The Carpenters. He appeared at
San Francisco's
The Boarding House, among other venues. He continued to write, earning an Emmy nomination for his work on
Van Dyke and Company in 1976.
He was roommates with comedian
Gary Mule Deer and singer/guitarist
Michael Johnson in the late 1960s.
Fame
In the mid-1970s, Martin made frequent appearances as a stand-up comedian on
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. That exposure, together with appearances on
HBO's
On Location and
NBC's
Saturday Night Live (
SNL) (on which, despite a common misconception, he was never a cast member) led to his first of three comedy albums,
Let's Get Small. The album was a huge success; one of its tracks, "Excuse Me", helped establish a national
catch phrase. His next album,
A Wild and Crazy Guy, was an even bigger success, reaching the #2 spot on the sales chart in the U.S. and featured another catch phrase (the album's title), also featured in a
Saturday Night Live sketch in which Martin and
Dan Aykroyd played a couple of bumbling
Czechoslovakian would-be playboys, the Festrunk Brothers. The album ended with a song "
King Tut", sung and written by Martin and released as a 45 RPM single during the King Tut craze that accompanied the extremely popular traveling exhibit of the Egyptian king's tomb artifacts; the single reached #17 in 1978. The song was backed by the "Toot Uncommons" (they were actually members of the
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band). The album was a million seller. Both albums won
Grammys for
Best Comedy Recording in 1977 and 1978, respectively. Steve performed "King Tut" on the
April 22,
1978 edition of SNL. In his comedy albums, Martin's stand-up comedy was clearly
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. His style is off-kilter and
ironic, and sometimes pokes fun at stand-up comedy traditions, such as Martin opening his act by saying, "I think there's nothing better for a person to come up and do the same thing over and over for two weeks. This is what I enjoy, so I'm going to do the same thing over and over and over....I'm going to do the same joke over and over in the same show, it'll be like a new thing." While on Saturday Night Live, Martin became very close with several of the cast members. One was Gilda Radner. When Radner died from ovarian cancer in 1989, Martin was getting ready to do a SNL sketch when he heard the news. He got rid of the sketch and showed a video clip of him and Radner in 1978. He introduced the clip to the audience and became overcome with grief and started to cry.
Movie career
By the end of the 1970s, Martin had acquired the kind of following normally reserved for
rock stars, with his tour appearances typically occurring at sold-out
arenas filled with tens of thousands of screaming fans. But unknown to his audience, stand-up comedy was "just an accident" for him. His real goal was to get into film.
The success of
The Jerk opened more doors for Martin.
Stanley Kubrick met with him to discuss the possibility of Martin starring in a screwball comedy version of
Traumnovelle (Kubrick later changed his approach to the material, the result of which was 1999's
Eyes Wide Shut). Martin was
executive producer for
Domestic Life, a prime-time
television series starring
Martin Mull, and a late-night series called
Twilight Theater. It emboldened Martin to try his hand at his first serious film,
Pennies From Heaven, a movie he was anxious to do because of the desire to avoid being
typecast. To prepare for that film, Martin took acting lessons from director
Herbert Ross, and spent months learning how to
tap dance. The film was a financial failure; Martin's comment at the time was "I don't know what to blame, other than it's me and not a comedy."
Martin was in three more Reiner-directed comedies after
The Jerk:
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid in 1982,
The Man with Two Brains in 1983 and
All of Me in 1984. In 1986, Martin joined fellow
Saturday Night Live veterans
Martin Short and
Chevy Chase in
¡Three Amigos!, directed by
John Landis, and written by Martin,
Lorne Michaels, and
Randy Newman. It was originally entitled
The Three Caballeros and Martin was to be teamed with
Dan Aykroyd and
John Belushi. In 1986, Martin was in the musical
film version of the hit
off-Broadway play
Little Shop of Horrors (based on a famous
B-movie), as a
sadistic dentist, Orin Scrivello. The film also marked the first of three films teaming Martin with actor
Rick Moranis. In 1987, Martin joined comedian
John Candy in the
John Hughes movie
Planes, Trains & Automobiles. That same year, the
Cyrano de Bergerac adaptation
Roxanne, a film Martin co-wrote, won him a
Writers Guild of America award and more importantly, the recognition from
Hollywood and the public that he was more than a comedian. In 1988, he performed in the
Frank Oz comedy
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels alongside
Michael Caine.
Martin starred in the
Ron Howard film
Parenthood, with Moranis in 1989. He later met with Moranis to make the
Mafia comedy
My Blue Heaven in 1990. In 1991, Martin starred in and wrote
L.A. Story (a romantic comedy, in which the female lead was played by his then-wife
Victoria Tennant) and was a member of the ensemble
existentialist tragedy
Grand Canyon that were both about life in
Los Angeles. In a serious role, Martin played a tightly wound
Hollywood film producer trying to recover from a traumatic robbery that left him injured. In contrast to the serious tone of
Grand Canyon, Martin also appeared in a remake of the comedy
Father of the Bride in 1991 (followed by a
sequel in 1995).
In
David Mamet's 1997
thriller,
The Spanish Prisoner, Martin played a darker role as a wealthy stranger who takes a suspicious interest in the work of a young businessman (
Campbell Scott). In 1999, Martin and
Goldie Hawn starred in a remake of the 1970
Neil Simon comedy,
The Out-of-Towners. By 2003, Martin ranked 4th on the box office stars list, after co-starring in
Bringing Down The House and starring in
Cheaper By The Dozen, each of which earned over $130 million at U.S. theaters. Both were family comedies.
In 2005, Martin wrote and starred in
Shopgirl, based on his own
novella. Martin played a wealthy businessman who strikes up a romance with a
Saks Fifth Avenue counter girl (
Claire Danes). He also starred in
Cheaper by the Dozen 2 that year. Martin's last work to date was the 2006 installment of
The Pink Panther, attempting to stand in
Peter Sellers' shoes as the bumbling
Inspector Clouseau. In 2007, he announced on his website that he'd likely be starting work on the sequel later in the year.
Other work
Throughout the 1990s, after
Tina Brown took over
The New Yorker, Martin wrote various pieces for the magazine. They later appeared in the collection
Pure Drivel. He appeared in a version of
Waiting for Godot as
Vladimir (with
Robin Williams as
Estragon and
Bill Irwin as Lucky). In 1993, Martin wrote the play
Picasso at the Lapin Agile, which had a successful run in several
American cities. In 1998, Martin guest starred with
U2 in the 200th episode of
The Simpsons titled
Trash of the Titans. Martin provided the voice for sanitation commissioner Ray Patterson. In 2001, Martin hosted the
73rd Annual Academy Awards. Also in 2001, he played
banjo on
Earl Scruggs' remake of "
Foggy Mountain Breakdown". Martin called fellow comedian and banjo player
Billy Connolly to tell him, prompting the cry of "you lucky bugger!" Connolly's wife thought he was referring to Martin being chosen as the Oscar's host. The recording was the winner of the
Best Country Instrumental Performance category at
the following year's Grammys. In 2002, Martin adapted the
Carl Sternheim play
The Underpants, which ran
Off-Broadway at
Classic Stage Company. In 2003, Martin hosted the
Academy Awards for the second time.
In 2005, Martin hosted a film along with
Donald Duck,, which was intended to show at Disneyland until the end of
Disneyland's 50th anniversary celebration in September 2006, but it's continuing to run indefinitely. Martin was also honored in 2005 with a
Disney Legend award, acknowledging Martin's early career at Disneyland and connections with
The Walt Disney Company throughout his career. Martin has guest-hosted
Saturday Night Live 14 times, as of his February 2006 hosting (musical guest:
Prince featuring Tamar), breaking his previous record of 13 (now held by fellow frequent host
Alec Baldwin) and retaining his title as
SNL's most frequent host.
Martin has also written two
novellas,
Shopgirl and
The Pleasure of My Company.
Shopgirl was later turned into a film (see above). In 2007, he published a memoir,
Born Standing Up.
Time magazine's Lev Grossman named it one of the Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2007, ranking it at #6, and praising it as "a funny, moving, surprisingly frank memoir." In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, Martin was voted one of the top 15 greatest comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. On
October 23,
2005, Martin was presented with the
Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Art collection
Martin is an avid art collector, particularly
modern American art, and a trustee of the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Martin's personal collection has at one time included the art of
Georgia O'Keeffe,
John Henry Twachtman,
Richard Diebenkorn,
Po Shun Leong,
Willem de Kooning,
Franz Kline,
Cy Twombly,
Helen Frankenthaler,
Edward Hopper,
David Hockney,
Roy Lichtenstein and
Pablo Picasso. In 2005, The
Huntington Library in
San Marino, California, announced that Martin had pledged US$1 million over five years for the museum's American art collection. Three-quarters of the gift will be used for exhibitions, with the remainder being used for acquisitions. Before he made his pledge, Martin loaned paintings to the museum, helped it acquire a sculpture by
John Gregory, and sponsored an exhibition of "sugar paintings" by 19th century American artist
Eastman Johnson.
Jessica Todd Smith, the museum's American art curator, said Martin became an "enthusiastic" supporter of The Huntington after he visited the museum in 2002 while filming a movie nearby.
Marriages
Martin has been involved with artists Allyson Hollingsworth and
Cindy Sherman, and the actresses
Helena Bonham Carter,
Anne Heche and
Bernadette Peters. He was married to actress
Victoria Tennant from 1986 to 1994.
On
July 28,
2007, Martin married Anne Stringfield (born 1973) at his Los Angeles home. Former Nebraska Senator
Bob Kerrey presided over the ceremony.
Lorne Michaels, creator of
Saturday Night Live, was his best man. Several of the guests, including close friends
Tom Hanks,
Eugene Levy, comedian
Carl Reiner, and magician/actor
Ricky Jay were not informed that a wedding ceremony would take place. Instead, they were told they were invited to a party.
Robin Williams was invited, but he felt he was too busy at the time to go to just a regular party.
Awards and honors
Along with the other writers for
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Steve won an Emmy Award in 1969.
In 1978 Steve won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album for
Let's Get Small, and in 1979 for
A Wild and Crazy Guy.
He shared a 2001 Grammy award for Best Country Instrumental Performance with Earl Scruggs (and others) for his banjo performance of
Foggy Mountain Breakdown
On
October 23,
2005, Martin was presented with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Martin was honored at the 30th Annual
Kennedy Center Honors on
December 1,
2007.
Filmography
Bibliography
The Jerk (1979) (Written with Carl Gottlieb)
Cruel Shoes (1979)
Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays: Picasso at the Lapin Agile, the Zig-Zag Woman, Patter for the Floating Lady, WASP (1996)
L.A. Story and Roxanne: Two Screenplays (published together in 1997)
Pure Drivel (1998)
Eric Fischl : 1970 - 2000 (2000) (Afterword)
Modern Library Humor and Wit Series (2000) (Introduction and Series Editor)
Shopgirl (2001)
Kindly Lent Their Owner: The Private Collection of Steve Martin (2001)
The Underpants: A Play (2002)
The Pleasure of My Company (2003)
The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z (2007) (Released October 2007, Children's Books featuring Wacky Couplets for each letter, illustrated by Roz Chast)
Born Standing Up (2007) (Released November 2007 Biography about his Stand-Up Years)
Discography
Let's Get Small (1977)
King Tut (1978, 45 RPM music single)
A Wild and Crazy Guy (1978)
Comedy Is Not Pretty! (1979)
The Steve Martin Brothers (1981)Further Information
Get more info on 'Steve Martin'.
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