Steve Martin celebrates its 80th birthday: From Disneyland-Job to a cult comedian

The guy is simply a laugh. But why? He doesn’t know that exactly himself. Is it this helpless look? Or his wide grin? Steve Martin shrugs his shoulders, that means: no idea. But people laugh when they see him. This has been going on since the late 1960s, the actor has been in business for that long. He turns 80 on August 14th, and that is a certain problem, because an elderly gentleman shouldn’t be a laugh. That would be due to his dignity, which this great, sometimes brilliant comedian.

From the beginning, he took a very extraordinary concept: he tried to avoid punch lines during his appearances. This was an almost suicidal idea for a starting stand-up comedian, but not a stupid. Steve Martin thought: If I bring a joke with a punch line and then don’t laugh at people, I was hopelessly lost. But if I just tell crazy, stupid things without targeting punch lines, the tension will become so unbearable for them that they start to laugh on their own and determine what is strange.

This concept has risen brilliantly. Steve Martin became one of the best comedians in the United States, made a breathtaking film career, successfully wrote scripts, short stories, plays, a musical, a novel and became a first -class musician. A multi -talent that is second to none in Hollywood.

The native Texan (from Waco), who grew up in California in the greater LA area, would never have found the way onto the stage and in front of the camera before Disney. During his school days, the first Disneyland in Anaheim was opened in the neighborhood in 1955. The young Martin played on weekends and during the summer holidays in the huge amusement park, sold travel guides, learned juggling, magic tricks – and the feeling for the audience.

After the high school, he initially studied acting and English poetry at Santa Ana College, but then took the main subject philosophy at California State University. This studies changed his life, he said later. It became clear to him: “Hey, there is no cause and effect! There is no logic! There is nothing!” According to this knowledge, everything had become “very simple”. By that he meant his decision for the stage.

He broke off his studies at 21 and tin as a stand-up comedian through the clubs in the Orange County, always with the indication that he still remembered so much of his philosophy training to “ruin the rest of life.” After all, that was the touch of a punch line that he otherwise steadfastly tried to refuse – until people annoyed tasks and to laugh out of pure self -defense, as he had predicted.

It took a while, and there were also reviews such as “this so -called ‘comedian’ ‘in the local leaves that jokes must have punch lines”. But then he himself could read names from the phone book or tell four dogs on the stage – people found him hilarious ,.

They even roared with pleasure when he presented them the following number: “I stood on the stage and took five bananas out. I peeled them up, put one on my head, put one in every pocket and pressed one in every hand. Then I read the last line of my last bad criticism: ‘This week, the comedian Steve Martin is also on the program … his 25-minute number could not build up that that Audience would have reminded him or the content. ‘”

Then he was a star, had won an Emmy, worked in the “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour”, for the talk show by Johnny Carson (1925-2005) and for similar famous formats. The legendary show “Saturday Night Live” had a million more spectators when he appeared, his comedy albums were sales rockets on the charts, and his shows were laid in stadiums. When he appeared in his white suit, over 20,000 people cheered.

People loved him like a rock star, his irony, with whom he moved comedy customs through the cocoa, was a cult. Once he opened an appearance like this: “I think there is nothing better than doing the same for two weeks. […] I will always make the same joke in the same show, it will be like something new. “The audience was out of the house.

After a feature film appearance in “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” Steve Martin received the leading role in “Wealth is not a shame” in 1979, and he also wrote the script for this film. Over the next 25 years he made a new film almost every year, including Steve Martin classics such as “Solo for 2”, “Three Amigos!”, “A ticket for two”, “Roxanne”, “A mad family”, “Father of the Bride”, “Housesitter”, “Sleepless in New York”, “in the dozen cheaper”.

He was able to celebrate a huge comeback in 2006 with “The Rosarote Panther” and “The Rosarote Panther 2”, in both films he played the confused inspector Clouuseu, which did not find critics so sparkling, but was gigantic to the audience.

Then again in the early 2020s a highlight: Steve Martin Ersann (with John Hoffman) the highly acclaimed series “Only Murders in the Building”, in which he has been playing the main role in addition to Selena Gomez (33) and Martin Short (75) – with Martin for many years. That will be his last appearance, he announced. After that he would no longer film or stand on stage.

He was never nominated for the Oscar, but he moderated the award ceremony (2001, 2003, 2010). In 2014 he received an honor Oscar for his life’s work. He rated an award of his old university higher, which gave him the honorary doctorate.

The actor, author and musician – he is a brilliant banjo player who toured through the USA – is so popular and popular. After a first marriage to the English actress Victoria Tennant (1986-1994), in 2007 he married the writer Anne Stringfield, who gave birth to a daughter in 2012 and made Martin a father at 67.

The family lives in Los Angeles, in a house with numerous works of art, because Steve Martin is a passionate art collector. He can afford that, because materially he got pretty much everything he wanted. And that was in his own words: “An honest weekly wage for an honest day work”.

Friends say he is no longer the glowing, wild and crazy guy, but now a fatherly appearance. He himself thinks that was pretty good: “The time helped me to make my peace with the famous being. At the beginning I was not famous enough, then too famous and now I’m just really famous.”