O’Hara: three (or more) gifted actresses in one

One day, long ago, Andrea Martin’s neighbor bubbled with praise.
She really liked Martin’s work in “SCTV,” she said. Also, she liked “the three other women” in the show.
Martin laughed and explained that the “three women” were Catherine O’Hara.
That story — from Dave Thomas’ “SCTV” (1996, McClelland & Stewart) — comes to mind now, with O’Hara’s death Friday, at 71, after a brief illness. For generations, she had richly varied roles.
Many people knew her from the “Home Alone” films and her Emmy-winning work in “Schitt’s Creek” (shown here). Long before that, however, she was part of Canada’s great comedy convergence. The quotes here are from Thomas’ book.
It all started when Second City, the Chicago improv troupe, started a stage show in Toronto. Thomas would go there regularly, to watch Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Joe Flaherty and more.
“Catherine O’Hara, who was fresh out of high school, … waited on tables there,” he wrote. “We were all drawn to the brilliance of this company and watched it avidly, waiting for our chance.”
One Toronto house became a gathering spot for funny people, natives of Canada (John Candy, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Paul Schaffer, Aykroyd, Martn, O’Hara) or the U.S. (Radner, Flaherty, Bill and Brian Murray).
Many became part of the Second City stage show and then the “SCTV” show; Thomas and O’Hara did both simultaneously.
That meant leaving for the TV studio at 6 a.m., after being onstage the night before. For O’Hara, it sometimes meant all-nighters.
“I wasn’t a heavy drinker,” she said. But “I had to be awake and doing something. I still can’t stand going to bed right after work.”
With little or no sleep, she made it work. “Other than Marty Short, no one else made me laugh so much that I had to leave the stage …. She used her rubber face, the twinkle in her eye and a wit that was as unpredictable as a tropical storm,” Thomas wrote
Still, she didn’t always get credit for it. “There was a kind of rampant sexism that always pervaded Second City,” Harold Ramis said.
People were told that everyone got the same pay. They learned that some were getting paid extra as writers; O’Hara, Martin and Candy weren’t, even though they kept coming up with comedy ideas.
After two intense season, Thomas wrote, O’Hara “decided that the show had become too demanding and was taking too much of her personal life. So she took a year off.”
That turned out to be the show’s final year, but she was back for “SCTV Network 90” (which NBC inserted in the “Saturday Night Live” slot) and other follow-ups.
Throughout it all, Thomas said, O’Hara and Martin soared. “They are the most talented women I’ve ever met …. They had to fight with the guys over fair representation of women’s material. And they were constantly being forced to defend themselves as writers.”
Often, O’Hara took full control. “Catherine wrote the best stuff when she did it by herself,” Paul Flaherty (a writer and Joe’s brother) said. “She understood her characters so well.”
They were unique, John McAndrew, a writer, said. “She specializes in neurotic victims, one puff of wind away from a breakdown.”
In a way, O’Hara said, that spoiled her for working with other people’s material. “I felt that if it didn’t come from my head, it wouldn’t be right.”
One compromise involved Christopher Guest’s semi-improvised movies; she did at least four of them.
But she also got used to working with outside scripts. She did the two “Beetlejuice” movies. (She also married the “Beetlejuice” production designer, Bo Welch; they had two children.) She did the first two “Home Alone” films, guested in most of the good TV shows and was a key part of two Emmy-winning series, “Schitt’s Creek” and “The Studio.”
O’Hara won two Emmys — as a writer (“SCTV Network 90”) and as best actress (“Schitt’s Creek”). She had eight more nominations — including two this past year — as supporting actress in a comedy (“The Studio”) and guest actress in a drama (“The Last of Us”).
A half-century after “SCTV” began, she continued to be a richly varied actress.