Catherine O’Hara

Would Catherine O’Hara have done better had she not hated New York and returned to Canada rather than become a cast member on Saturday Night Live? Probably not; when’s the last time you thought of Mary Gross or Tim Kazurinsky, who would have been her castmates? No, Canada was the right choice, as it has been for so many of its comedic icons. She has made a lot of American media even so, starting if I’m not mistaken with After Hours, meaning she launched out of Canada and into Scorsese, and good on her. But even today she remains a Canadian icon.

She was born in Toronto, the sixth of seven in an Irish Catholic family. At twenty, she started at Second City, initially as Gilda Radner’s understudy. When Radner left for New York, O’Hara became a regular, and when SCTV started up, O’Hara was one of its stars. She did fifty episodes in three years. She was sixth-billed, but that’s higher that Rick Moranis. She was billed ahead of him on SCTV Network 90, too, a show which happened because of contract issues about the original show that I’ll admit to not understanding. Still sixth-billed, though.

Even while doing the assorted Second City stuff, she was doing other things. Canadian things. A special I’ve never heard of starring Sid Caesar called “Intergalactic Thanksgiving or Please Don’t Eat the Planet,” which I’m pretty sure is dreadful, but sure. A theatrical release movie called Rock and Rule that has got to be the only thing to feature Clarence Nash, Iggy Pop, and Maurice LaMarche. After SCTV went off the air, her Canadian comedy connections kept her working, including being second-billed on The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley.

In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, she started being more familiar to American audiences. Never mind After Hours and Betsy’s Wedding—I saw her in the theatre in Dick Tracy, personally, and then at home, I saw Beetlejuice. The first VHS tape I bought was Beetlejuice, at a friend’s yard sale, and I watched it over and over. I still haven’t seen Home Alone, but good Lord does my generation have fondness for her for Home Alone. With Waiting for Guffman, she got into the Christopher Guest stable and has done almost all of his mockumentaries since.

While I haven’t watched SCTV in decades—and honestly was not its biggest fan—I actually hear Catherine O’Hara’s voice regularly. Oh, not just because of things like Schitt’s Creek and Elemental and the other things she’d done in more recent years. But she is the voice of Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas, and she even did the voice for the handful of lines she speaks in Disney Dreamlight Valley. Just bringing a little touch of Canadian greatness to my silly Disney game.