Steve Martin: One for The Ages

From “The Jerk” to The Banjo, the man can do it all

Very few comedians have had the success that Steve Martin has had. With a career spanning nearly 60 years, he has by far out-lived the typical comedic shelf life. While many comedians get lost in the shuffle after 20 years or so in the game, Martin has managed to escape this pitfall by never sticking with something for too long. When he got tired of TV he moved to stand-up, and when he got tired of stand-up he moved to the big screen. in his own words:

“I never had a vision for my career, so I kind of do what comes along that I like”

In never sticking with one thing for too long he never “got old”. And while he may have moved on from one aspect of career he has proved that he’s not above trying things again, as shown by his resurgence in the stand-up comedy scene as of late.

In spite of the so called comedy shelf-life Steve Martin has never once faded from the limelight. From stand-up, to the movies, to broadway shows Martin has tackled every medium of comedy with his own form of grace and poise. Nothing displays his talent so much as taking a look at the scope of his long and storied career.

The Early Years:

Steve got his start in comedy in college when he joined a comedy troop at Knott’s Berry Farm. However, once he met his girlfriend Stormie Sherk he decided to enroll at California State University where he decided to study to become a professor of philosophy. During his time at university Martin wrote a treatise on comedy that led to the groundbreaking ideas for his stand up shows:

“What if there were no punch lines? 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.”

Martin used his studies to calculate and fuel his act that he would perform at local clubs and at twenty one years old he dropped out of college.

In 1967, Martin secured a writing job with the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, where he later earned his first Emmy award at the age of 23. Martin made his first TV appearance on the show just a year later in 1968. He started opening for well known groups like The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and The Carpenters in his free time. By the mid-70’s he was making frequent television appearances as a stand-up comic. He gained recognition on shows like The Muppet Show, Saturday Night Live, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

Martin made 27 appearances on Saturday Night Live, guest-hosting 15 times. It was due large in-part to the popularity of his TV appearances that the release of his albums “Lets Get Small”(1977) and “A Wild and Crazy Guy”(1978) were so wildly successful just after their release, winning Martin a Grammy for each work. He was praised for his self-deprecating humor and witty use of music and comedic timing to tackle topics like the King Tut tomb discovery and the rightful place of women “on a pedestal so high you can see up her dress”

In 1981 Martin quit the stand up comedy scene to focus on his main goal: acting.

On The Silver Screen:

Heading into the 1980’s, Martin had developed a massive following. When he put on shows thousands of people would show up to see him, and yet this was not what Martin truly wanted. His main goal was to make it big in the film industry.

In the early 70’s Martin had begun making small appearances in films. He had even been nominated for an Academy Award for a short film that he wrote and starred in. But his first major film credit didn’t come until 1979 when Martin starred for the first time in a major feature film: The Jerk.

In this hilarious comedy, Martin plays a man named Navin who was adopted by a kind black family as a child and yet somehow does not know he is adopted despite the fact that he is white. In hilarious fashion, Jerk ditches character development and plot twists in favor of slap stick comedy and lowbrow gags. The result is one of the funniest movies of all time that many others have tried to emulate with very little success.The movie earned over $100 million on a very small budget, and Steve Martin’s acting career was officially launched.

Martin’s next move was not nearly as successful. In an attempt to avoid being typecast as the comedy guy, although let’s be honest that was highly unlikely to ever not be the case when you start your career as a comedian, Martin chose for his second film Pennies From Heaven. A musical romantic drama about a sheet music salesman and his affair with a school teacher that left people confused by what Martin was trying to achieve. The film utilizes the depression-era setting to explore themes from the time that were never fully explored in the middle of such an idealistic period. The film has become some-what of a cult classic, although at the time it was a huge commercial failure grossing barely $9 million.

His return to straight comedy went more smoothly with the release of Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid and The Man with Two Brains. The spoof genre fits right in line with Martin’s forte of physical, unrestrained comedy. The first played spectacularly into the stereotypes that are famous in the 1940’s private eye films, while Brains played off of many mad-scientist tropes. Both were fantastic successes and truly displayed some of Martin’s best work.

In 1986 Martin released a well known classic ¡Three Amigos!. In a goofy take on The Magnificent 7 Martin is joined Chevy Chase and Martin Short to play three unemployed actors who get mistaken for their TV characters by a small town looking for protection from a group of cruel bandits. In hilarious fashion, the three decide to attempt to keep up the ruse and eventually wind up saving the day. The levels of affection and friendship displayed by Martin in this film carried over into his next few films.

With the release of Roxanne in 1987, which he helped write, Martin showed the softer side of his personality. He plays a small town fire chief who fears he will never find love due to the abnormal size of his nose. While the movie is funny, the draw of the film is the raw intensity that Martin brings to his character. He uses humor as a defense mechanism in the movie in such a relatable way that the movie easily connects with almost everyone.

Next came the release of Martin’s most under-appreciated work Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. While this film is definitely a comedy, centered around Martin’s uptight executive and John Candy’s annoying optimist, they’ve packed in so much emotion that at times it almost feels more like a dramedy.

In 1988, Martin returned to pure comedy with Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. In this film with two competing con men Martin returns to his roots of slap-stick comedy in up roaring fashion. In a twist of fate, the unsuspecting victim of their con game turns out to be their direct competition from the beginning.

It was at this point that Martin’s acting career slowed down some. He started doing more supporting roles and family friendly films like Father of the Bride with one or two major blockbusters. This is because around this time Martin had decided that it was time for him to switch mediums again.

The Written Word:

In 1993 Martin release his first fully written play. Picasso at the Lapin Agile displays a meeting between Picasso and Einstein just as they are both set to release world-changing work. When they meet in a bar in France the pair get involved in a debate about the values of art and science while interacting with a slew of other characters all in an attempt to show that in the end both practices have equal importance. While the play has had several successful runs in many different areas, Martin never could get the support he needed for a film production to be attempted.

Throughout the 90’s Martin wrote many short pieces for The New Yorker which he later compiled into a book of short works titled Pure Drivel. The book received rave reviews and Martin’s razor-sharp witty humor is said to leave anyone who reads it rolling on the floor.

In 2000 he released his first novella entitled Shopgirl. It follows the story of a young girl who moves to the city in hopes of finding her true love and yet the only job she can find is selling high end gloves to wealthy people at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills and the only man interested in her is a slacker roadie for a band. She instead starts a relationship with a womanizing millionaire who is in no way looking for a relationship. A review for the New York Times said the novel has a “deep, unassuageable loneliness” to it. Needless to say it was Martin’s most serious work to date, and while highly acclaimed it was a serious shift in what people were used to seeing from him.

In 2007, Martin published his memoir entitled Born Standing Up, which explores the makings of his career in comedy, how it changed him, and why he decided to abandon the art at the height of his success in 1981. Jerry Seinfeld called the book “one of the best books about comedy and being a comedian ever written” and a Time Magazine critic ranked it #6 on his 2007 list of “Top 10 Nonfiction Books”.

Martin’s new play entitled Meteor Shower is set top make its broadway debut on November 28th this year.

Music Man:

From the time he was a young man, Martin had been an avid banjo player. He taught himself how to play by taking bluegrass records and slowing down and then tuning the banjo to match. He utilized his music abilities in his stand-up days as a fresh take on comedy.

His first hit was his parody take on King Tut which was a massive success and resulted in Martin including the banjo in many of his shows from there on out. On his album Comedy is Not Pretty! he included an all instrumental track and on his final comedy album The Steve Martin Brothers an entire side of live performances of his with a bluegrass band.

In 2002 Martin won a Grammy for his banjo playing on Earl Scruggs’ remake of Foggy Mountain Breakdown. In 2009 Martin released his first all-music album titled The Crow: New Songs For the 5-String Banjo which featured stars like Dolly Parton. That album later earned the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album.

Martin released his first collaborative album with Edie Brickell called Love Has Come for You in 2013. The titled track wont the Grammy for Best American Roots Song. In 2015 they released a follow up album titled So Familiar. They also collaborated on the music for a Broadway musical called Bright Star that was based on their first album. Bright Star opened on March 24, 2016. It received nominations for Tony Awards in Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Original Score of a Musical.

In 2010 Martin created the Steve Martin Award for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass to bring more recognition to the talent of bluegrass musicians. Recipients receive a $50,000 cash prize and a bronze statue.

His contributions to so many different mediums of arts are vast and impressive. He is well liked by his peers and his fan base has been loyal for over 5 decades. Steve Martin is and should be known as one of the greatest comedians of all time.