When I heard the news that Catherine O’Hara died this week my initial reaction was the same as yours.
No, no, no, no, NOOOOOO! Why her? Why couldn’t it be……
Well, so many others.
But it was her and it is now a fact that one of the few performers where the very mention of her name made me and my friends and likely all of you instantly laugh was gone.
And that’s because there were so many characters and comic moments she played in so many films and TV shows that immediately come to mind.
Whatever your favorite – and when you begin to think about it there are far too many to mention – there was a slightly askew warmth behind Catherine O’Hara’s eyes telling you that at any moment she might do anything but that no matter what happened you wouldn’t be able to not laugh. She’d get you and she’d keep you – as long as she chose to.
And, well, who doesn’t want to surrender to that.
I can still remember watching a tiny TV set in my bedroom late one night as a young college student and turning the channel to some whacked-out syndicated comedy show where I thought I saw Katharine Hepburn doing “a bit.”
My first reaction was:
Wow, she’s really going for it, and on TV yet, who knew?
(Note: My sole reference for Ms. Hepburn at this point was Eleanor of Aquitaine in the classical film drama, The Lion in Winter, where she parried stinging lethal verbiage with Peter O’Toole much too IMPORTANTLY to be ever be called “bit-ty.” …And yes, I really did think that way as a teenager).
But then I quickly realized:
Wait, this can’t be Katharine Hepburn because this woman is far, far funnier than she is and just a little bit “off.” But in a good way. The affect, the way she tilted her head, and the knowing pretentiousness in her voice. It was a more grand but slightly more fun Kate. The way you’d hope she would be at a dinner party. Someone you could hang with and eventually get drunk with because you knew she’d be a lot more outrageous and would tell you the best stories in the world.
As it turns out, that’s who Catherine O’Hara would be for the next five decades or more.
The kind of performer you always wanted to hang with. A real person onscreen who always made you crack up because you never knew what she was going to do.
Someone who could make insanity into eccentricity that was totally viable. Someone whose presence always guaranteed you a good time, and how often can you say that these days about anyone or anything?
Little did I know when I happened upon her on my little black and white screen back in the 1970s on a little known syndicated Canadian TV called SCTV, the answer would be Zero X No One.
And that I would have years and years of Catherine O’Hara to look forward to.
The Banana Boat Song singing Mom in Beetlejuice, the harried, under appreciated and lovingly careless Mom in the Home Alone films, the impossibly versatile improvisational comic actress in a slew of Christopher Guest movies, including an Oscar-nominated turn in For Your Consideration, all culminating with her master creation – Moira Rose – the penniless matriarch speaking in an accent not of this Earth that we nevertheless all understood in her Emmy award-winning performance in Schitt’s Creek.
It was her grounded insanity in a TV series about a spoiled rich family forced to actually work and need, that got so many of us through a global pandemic and once and for all made Catherine O’Hara a household name.
Still, it somehow felt fitting that when the show swept the Emmys in 2020 and she finally emerged as a headliner instead of a perfect comic foil team player, that it was in a year where she couldn’t accept the award in front of all the industry peers that so admired her.
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Instead, it was in a pared down ceremony, but one that the rest of us were watching in secret glee that Moira – and, as it turns out, Catherine O’Hara – was finally getting the star treatment in the same way you hoped your crazy aunt or insanely funny co-worker, or under-appreciated friend might one day be recognized in front of everyone for being so perfectly one of a kind.
Most recently she played a former studio head turned producer on Apple TV’s The Studio, where she was surrounded by a cast of fellow performers who had admired her ability to be so uniquely and strangely funny for decades. At the top of list was the show’s star and co-creator, Seth Rogen, who several days ago tweeted that in their very first meeting he confessed to her she was the funniest person he had ever seen onscreen.
This is not merely a posthumous accolade but something I’ve heard people say about her for years. There was just nothing like her off-centered, borderline bizarreness and it made her not only a fan favorite but a performer’s performer.
It also made those of us who sometimes feel totally insane just a little bit less alone.
Rather than me go and on – and make everyone sadder – here are some excerpts of some of her more memorable moments..
It’s been a tough week among so many weeks, which means it’s even more important to take a moment and laugh at someone who was fearless enough to get us through it all. And then some.
#1 Canadian TV’s CBC compilation piece on career highlights:
And then some individual clips over the years:
notes from a chair 