Martin Short names his most overlooked movie: “That will be appreciated someday”
Diminutive in name and stature he may be, but Martin Short is something of a giant when it comes to comedy.
For more than 40 years, he’s appeared in some of the funniest films and TV shows around, from sketch comedy to feature-length movies, and the last few years have seen him being discovered by a new audience after the global success of the amateur sleuthing show Only Murders in the Building.
The Canadian Short started out like many of his contemporaries, doing theatre, and found success relatively quickly. After appearing in a show in Toronto he was cast in a TV commercial and then scouted to appear on Broadway in 1972, where he appeared alongside the likes of American Pie star Eugene Levy.
In fact, it was Levy who encouraged him to move into comedy, and he went back to Canada to appear in sketch show SCTV before being poached by the already legendary New York series Saturday Night Live. It was there that he rose to prominence with a string of characters that proved very popular with US audiences and bagged him roles in some major comedies in the 1980s, including sci-fi hit Innerspace with Dennis Quaid and The Three Amigos alongside Steve Martin, sparking a partnership that would eventually go on for five decades and counting.
He starred alongside Martin next in the acclaimed comedy Father of the Bride in 1991 and was at something of a career peak before he returned to theatres and Broadway for a spell. After that, however, success was harder to come by for Short, who began to appear in films that didn’t go down anywhere near as well as a decade previously.
Undeterred, the actor, who had passed through huge personal tragedies as a young man, told The Hollywood Reporter, “I never saw any of these things that didn’t work out with the public as failures. Clifford is a perfect example. That was a film that the critics hated, and no one saw, but I thought was fabulous. I looked at Clifford as a work of art that will be appreciated someday.”
Indeed, Clifford is one of those movies that polarises critics and audiences; a quick glance at the Rotten Tomatoes scores shows it at 17% versus 67%. The story is a black comedy about a ten-year-old boy, played by Short, who is obsessed with visiting a dinosaur theme park and will stop at nothing to get there has obtained cult status in the 30 years since.
Regardless, Short went on to do some fantastic work as fictional chat show host Jiminy Glick on Comedy Central and spent many years doing one-man shows and theatre work in addition to taking on supporting roles in movies like The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause and shows including Weeds and Arrested Development.
He began to really hit the big time again when he rekindled his creative partnership with Steve Martin in around 2010, first with several joint stand-up tours and then since 2021 in the Hulu-produced Only Murders, which has earned him several Emmy award nominations for his role as Broadway showrunner Oliver Putnam.
This year, the actor also began hosting duties for the rebooted 1960s classic network game show Match Game, which was previously helmed by Alec Baldwin. It’s a busy time for the veteran, and no role will ever be too small for the grateful guy.
