Catherine O’Hara was one of the funniest people who ever lived. And the complicated, struggling women she created, all of them trying to force-fit a functioning face atop their uncontrollable problems, were exactly what the landscape of bland television comedy — and even blander television women — of the Seventies had no clue it desperately needed.
This was the same period that comedy took center stage in my own life, leading me to become obsessed with closely examining every new entry to the field. At the same time, I was secretly searching for funny women role models, because growing up, all of my comedy heroes were men. Why? Well, duh. Because comedy was mostly men, men, and more men. And then what to my wondering eyes did appear but an entire show out of Canada full of the funniest comedians and the funniest satirical writing I had ever seen on television. And included in the cast of that show were some extremely hilarious women!
The show was called SCTV and it had such a powerful effect on me that I even remember where I was and what I was wearing when I first became aware of the smart and scrupulously crafted comedy stylings of Ms. Catherine O’Hara. Her multilayered portrayal of deeply disturbed female characters, many of whom had been somehow mangled by show business, fit seamlessly into a series whose format was designed as a weekly X-ray of the kind of superficial, hacky, cliché-ridden commercial television that was omnipresent at the time.
Catherine was the queen of self-abusing, hard-living, and heading-over-the-hill entertainment veterans — women who were trapped behind a façade of slick showbiz tics that barely covered the active volcano of psychosis bubbling right under their surface. Her characters often demonstrated how quickly and seamlessly a cyclone of cheerful mannerisms could morph into a wailing typhoon of uncorked madness.
That very first time I watched SCTV, the sketch that made me laugh the hardest was called “The Dusty Towne Sexy Holiday Special.” It was Catherine’s parody of a bawdy American comedienne from the 1960s named Rusty Warren, who made “naughty adult entertainment” albums, the most famous of which was titled Knockers Up! At the center of it was Catherine, vividly sending up an entire genre of the show-business underbelly that no one ever referenced on polite middle-American network television. Her character, Dusty Towne, was introduced as “raw, raunchy, and a little bit risqué” and sported thin, drawn-on eyebrows, a big swath of blue eyeshadow, a gigantic Marie Antoinette pouf hairstyle, a feather boa, a long cigarette holder, and a lot of cleavage. Since it was a Christmas special, she was also adorned in a puff of red taffeta decorated with holiday gift-wrap accents, white gloves, and a star-shaped earring the size of a human fist. After bursting out of the middle of a snowman, Dusty steps down into the audience to do a little of her famous off-color crowd work.
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“Hi, honey, where you from?” she asks a man sitting at a ringside table. Canada, he tells her. “I have a lot of friends in Canada — what street do you live on, dear?” she asks. “West Glenn,” he replies. “No kidding,” she continues. “Do you know a Dinky Withers at 83?” “No,” he replies, looking uncomfortable. “Well, it does!” Dusty says, laughing raucously at her double entendre before repeating her famous catchphrase: “Isn’t that cute? Isn’t that true?”
I don’t know if I can explain why Catherine muttering “Isn’t that cute, isn’t that true” after every smutty joke Dusty told struck me as the most hilarious thing I had ever seen on television. Maybe it was because what she had just said was neither cute nor true. But from that moment on, I never missed an episode of SCTV. And to this day, I can’t imagine anyone else coming up with a tag to add onto a dirty joke that could possibly be any funnier.
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In a 2019 interview with Vulture, Catherine explained the inner workings of her characters: “I think there’s a lot of… insecure delusional. I love playing people who have no real sense of the impression they’re making on anyone else. But the more I say it, the more I realize that’s all of us, and the internet, social networking, is a desperate attempt to try to control what others think of you.” Perhaps Dusty Towne’s continual repeating of “Isn’t that cute, isn’t that true” after every vulgar story is her trying to convince herself that her shocking remarks make her adorable.
Which brings us to Lola Heatherton, a particularly damaged one of Catherine’s SCTV characters. Seemingly woven from one part dangerously emotional late-stage Judy Garland circa the 1960s and three parts Joey Heatherton, a glamorous variety-show star of that same period (who was also famous for some unfortunate public incidents involving personal difficulties), Lola arrives at her big “Love Spirit” special decked out in silver lamé, an enormous platinum hairdo, white lipstick, huge false eyelashes, and big pieces of statement jewelry. Then she steps out onto her custom-built set, apparently drunk, and immediately falls flat onto her face. But, always a trouper, a few minutes later we see her throwing her whole heart into a song about being so terribly alone. “Oh, go ahead,” she sings, “No one cares. No one dares to. You’re all just parasites, draining me of love….” Yet by the end of the show, she is so high from performing that she announces she has found new love with someone else on the show. So the special ends happily, with Lola shouting to the audience “I love you all and I want to bear your children!”
Clearly, a straight line can be drawn from Lola to Moira Rose, the maniacal former soap-opera star, wig enthusiast, and erratic wife/mom on Schitt’s Creek (for which Catherine won an Emmy and a Golden Globe). And I haven’t even started describing all the brilliantly funny and mostly improvised characters she contributed to the always funny Christopher Guest films, in which she often played the female half of a high-energy married couple with hopeless show-business dreams they will never realize. In Waiting for Guffman, her rendition of “Midnight at the Oasis,” performed at an audition along with her husband and partner in a travel agency, played by Fred Willard, shows her trying so hard to get everything they’ve rehearsed just right that you can see her actually mouthing his lines when he speaks. But as the audition proceeds, she sings too loudly and only sort of gets the dance moves right. Which of course leads to a scene, later that evening at a Chinese restaurant, where she drinks too much and berates her husband for being uncircumcised.
Catherine was also a fantastic physical comedian, making it a given that all her overwrought exhausted ladies, worn out from a frenzy of manic dancing, would end up tripping and falling onto their faces or backward and out of the frame. Even in her iconic “Kevin’s not here” scene from Home Alone, her mother character, Kate McCallister, starts out armed with a cheery self-confidence. But seconds later — not unlike Wile E. Coyote when he runs off a cliff and doesn’t actually start to fall until he looks down and realizes he’s in the air — her eyes widen as her face finally registers that she is she is saying her son is missing. Then her expression turns to horror and BOOM — only then does she fall over backwards.
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In real life, I only met Catherine in person a few times. But once, after chatting with her at a party, I decided to hire her housekeeper because she came so highly recommended. The woman came to my house and cleaned so meticulously that she actually scrubbed all the numbers off my oven dial, then took my entire bed frame apart and polished it, piece by piece. She was so exacting that she only cleaned two rooms in my house. So we parted ways because I couldn’t handle her pace. Thinking of it today, I realize her painstakingly thorough process made her a perfect match for Catherine, comedy’s most consummately off-centered grande dame.
Merrill Markoe is an Emmy-winning comedy writer, author, and essayist. She is the recipient of the 2020 Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award, the Writers Guild of America West’s highest honor for television writing. You can read more of her writing at https://merrillmarkoe.substack.com/.
