Years before Catherine O' Hara, who died yesterday at the age of 71, became so famed as the frenetic suburban mother who's realized she's misplaced one of her sons in the Home Alone films.
Before she appeared alongside her frequent comic co-conspirator, Eugene Levy, as a mismatched couple with a prize-winning dog in Best In Show.
Or as Moira and Johnny Rose, the power couple who have lost their fortune, but not their self regard, and moved to a one-moose Canadian town in the sitcom Schitt's Creek.
I remember waiting to see her perform at the improvs at The Second City in Chicago. Some of the cast had come down from the Toronto Second City. John Candy, Martin Short, Dave Thomas, and yes, Eugene Levy, but the excited talk in line was, "Have you seen her yet — Catherine O'Hara?"
She'd started as a waitress at the company and worked her way on stage. She'd invent the characters of mothers, children, nuns, or space aliens, who stayed calm, reasonable and in control of their emotions … until life … just … boiled over!
Catherine O'Hara told the New Yorker in 2019, "My crutch was, in improvs, when in doubt, play insane. Because you didn't have to excuse anything that came out of your mouth. It didn't have to make sense."
And when she found the roles for which she may be best remembered, she had a great improviser's instinct to react and play off of the lines, grimaces and pratfalls of those around her. She won Primetime Emmy Awards, Golden Globes and more, but once told People Magazine something that sounds extraordinary for a working actor in a tough and competitive enterprise.
"I read scripts and get a gut feeling about whether I want to be a part of them," Catherine O'Hara said. "Do I want my parents to see this? I'd just rather stay home than do something I know is bad …''
I like to remember of Catherine O'Hara with Eugene Levy as the folk singers Mitch and Mickey in A Mighty Wind, singing, as only two comic artists can, a song so painfully sincere that it's utterly hilarious.
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