Northern hilarity

>> The Second City reveals Canada's contribution to American comedy

by JULIET WATERS

Vanity Fair writer Nick Tosches once made a small but glaring error in an article about Ed Sullivan. After describing Wayne and Shuster, Sullivan Show regulars, as "two Canadian comedians" he sniped in parentheses: "If you can believe there are actually two." Needless to say, truckloads of mail from the North promptly arrived at VF offices proudly listing all the Canadian comedians who have been well known to Americans for decades--Dan Aykroyd, John Candy and Martin Short, to name just three--and pointing out the profile of Mike Myers in the same issue where Tosches made his lame joke.

There are a lot of plausible theories for why Canadians have produced so much talent over the last few decades. Like: Canadians have a special gift for parody that compensates for our insecurity as dwarfs to American and British culture. Or there's something in the water. Or as Catherine O'Hara claims in The Second City, a recently released history of the renowned improv company started in Chicago in 1959, "Canada is a good straight man."

But certainly one of the major reasons for the success of Canadian comics in the U.S. was the opening of the Toronto branch of The Second City in 1973. Just looking at some of the names that emerged from the first five years of Second City Toronto is evidence enough: Aykroyd, Brian Doyle-Murray (Bill Murray's brother), Joe Flaherty, Gilda Radner (both Americans who came up to start their careers in Toronto), Candy, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, and Short.

In the summer of '74, the Toronto company switched homes with the Chicago comedians in what might be one of the first and most successful free-trade agreements between Canada and the U.S. Though "free" was a literal term, as illustrated in the anecdote told by James Belushi: "After I made About Last Night... I got a big black Mercedes. I'm driving it from the dealers and John Candy pulls up right next to me--in a big black Mercedes. He says 'America... it's a good country, yeah?' We'd worked together in Second City for nothing."

The Second City, a beautiful, expensive coffee-table history of the company (with accompanying CDs) is one of the few histories of an American institution that gives Canada more than just a passing mention. Author Sheldon Patinkin credits the success of SCTV (created in 1976 and syndicated in the U.S. a year later as an answer to Saturday Night Live) for harbouring the Chicago branch through a difficult financial period. Anyone who agrees with the New York Times writer who claims that "the entire recent tradition of American theatrical satire can be summed up in three words: The Second City," would have to concur, after reading this book, that Canada has been a significant partner in that tradition.

Of course The Second City is mostly a history of the American branch, which has spawned talent like Mike Nichols, Alan Arkin, Joan Rivers (looking and sounding remarkably human), Robert Klein, Harold Ramis and Chris Farley. It's also been the major farm team for actors and writers who ended up on Saturday Night Live and many classic sitcoms.

At times it reads more like an epic playbill than the behind-the-scenes exposé hinted at in the subtitle "Backstage at the World's Greatest Comedy Theater." But it does offer some interesting insight into the evolution of North American comedy and some great insight into the nature of comedy improv.

As Ramis writes, "Second City makes it possible for performers to experience every actor's nightmare--to be in a play and not know what play you're in or what your dialogue is... it inspires a general feeling of delightful hysteria." A feeling that may be one of Second City's largest contributions to American satire.

The Second City by Sheldon Patinkin, Sourcebooks, hc, 200pp, $65.99 (contains 2 CDs)