My life has been defined by round numbers. I was born in 1950, was orphaned at the age of twenty (in the year 1970), and was widowed at the age of sixty (in the year 2010).
The forty years bracketed by those last two events constitute the better part of my adulthood. They were an extraordinary four decades, throwing more experiences at me than that unusual boy in the Whitton Road attic could ever have imagined: success, failure, friendship, first love, true love, marriage, fatherhood, fame, fortune, misfortune, euphoria, grief.
When I look back on my life—and, by the way, if I do say so myself, I have a pretty remarkable memory; or, as I said to someone the other day, “I remember where I was in the third month of my twenty-seventh year, just like that Taxi actress renowned for her ‘super-memory,’ Marilu . . . um . . . uh . . . what’s her name?”—I see moments where it might have been understandable had I turned to drugs or ice cream.
But I never succumbed. My natural tendency, no matter what difficult period I’m going through or have been through, is to be happy. No doubt this is a trait coded in my DNA, a likely inheritance from my mother. I must also give credit to my blessed, sweet, lunatic siblings. They too have the happy gene, so, being the youngest, I’ve also been the beneficiary of trickle-down happiness. My sister, Nora, and my brothers Michael and Brian maintained their positivity after David and my parents passed, and they’ve remained beacons of support and love every moment since. To this day, when the four of us are together, we love nothing more than to drink rum and Cokes, play card games (Oh Hell being our favorite), and laughingly taunt each other, going way too far under the protective guise of “Only kidding!” Hanging with my brothers and sister is still one of my greatest joys.
Scott Wittman likes to joke that, of all the comedy people he knows, and he knows many, I am “the only one who’s truly laughing on the inside.” But my upbeat nature is also a function of resilience: a firm belief in what I told my son Henry that night before Nancy died—that tough experiences Teflon-coat you and strengthen you against further adversity. This lesson is, I suppose, a major reason I wrote this book: because along the way I’ve picked up the wisdom that bad things happen, and yet the sun still comes up the next day, and it’s up to you to carry on living your life and keeping your setbacks in perspective. You also have to understand that on some level, these horrible and sad things happen to everyone; the mark of a man is not just how he survives it all but also what wisdom he’s gained from the experience. My cheerfulness on TV talk shows isn’t faked, but it is also far from the product of a life gone perfectly.
As I write this, I am sixty-four years old, with, I hope, many more years to live and lots more to do. And, by the way, no face work. I know you’re thinking, “No kidding.” But cosmetic surgery just doesn’t work on a man. Were I to take the plunge, no one would ever say, “Whoa, who’s that really hot thirty-eight-year-old dude?” They’d say, “Who’s that sixty-four-year-old who’s been in a fire?”
Being in one’s sixties isn’t the same as it was in my father’s time. (And he only made it to sixty-one.) The actor David Niven was three years younger than me when he wrote one of the great Hollywood memoirs of all time, The Moon’s a Balloon, in 1971, but it seemed the book of a man ruminating on a life that he was consciously winding down. I don’t feel that I’m at that place yet, and thankfully there are nice people in show business who reassure me constantly that I am not deluding myself. Some of them aren’t even on my payroll.
When you start your career, you worry about how you’re going to pay the rent. But when that’s covered, you feel an even greater pressure: How do you stay interested? For me, the answer has always lain in the theater. Live performance—in its potential for danger, fun, and anarchy—is what sustains me. So I do solo concerts all the time. These shows are alternately billed, as the mood fits, An Evening with Martin Short; A Party with Marty; Sunny von Bülow Unplugged; If I’d Saved, I Wouldn’t Be Here; Marty with a T; A Short Day’s Journey into Night; Sunday in the Park with George Michael; Stroke Me, Lady Fame; No Lump Yet; and Marty Christ, Superstar. “Solo,” though, is something of a misnomer; I’m joined by my adept and funny pianist and musical director, Jeff Babko, who worked with me on my talk show and now plays keyboards in Jimmy Kimmel’s band. Someday Jeff, Paul Shaffer, and Marc Shaiman will form a band that won’t necessarily do great business but will be a reliable crowd-pleaser, especially with their opening number, “Mr. Sunshine Could Also Be a Prick.”
Two years ago, at the age of sixty-two, I hosted the Christmas episode of Saturday Night Live. I opened with a musical number: a mildly raunchy version of the holiday song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” I hopped atop the piano (played by Paul Shaffer, returning to his roots and on temporary loan from CBS), then hopped off, and proceeded to jog through the hallways of the eighth floor of 30 Rock, a pretext for cameo appearances by Tom Hanks, Jimmy Fallon, Kristen Wiig, Samuel L. Jackson, and Tina Fey. I had an elaborate plan for that opening number in which, after hopping off the piano, I’d step into a harness and swoop over the audience. During some of my swoops, while I was suspended up high, the camera would cut away to some pretaped segments, mid-song. In one, Jiminy Glick was going to be interviewing Lorne Michaels, asking him the tough questions, such as, “Why don’t we hear so much about John Belushi? Is it bad management?”
As the week went on, the whole routine got whittled down and simplified, with no harness or flying or cutaways. Lorne correctly reminded me that SNL, as its name implies, is live, and that to pretape half the monologue would run counter to the spirit and energy of the show. Besides, I got to have my special on-camera moment with Lorne after all: a misdirection joke in which I chanced upon him with Tina and held up a sprig of mistletoe, with the audience expecting that it would be Tina I’d kiss. In dress, I merely gave Lorne a gentle peck. But live, I totally surprised him, dipping him in my arms and planting a wet smacker right on his lips. Whether or not there was a hint of tongue involved shall remain entirely between Lorne and me.
That experience, of me submitting a ton of material beforehand, only some of which got used on the show, is not atypical. I’ve become known as a performer who obsessively overprepares, even for a talk-show appearance. The guest spots I do unfold loosely, but not without careful preparation—I always send ahead pages upon pages of material, their gist being, “What if the host asked me this? Might that be a rich, fruitful area where the two of us will find common ground and have a good TV moment?”
I’ve done more of these guest appearances with David Letterman than with any other host, for two reasons. The first is that he is, in my opinion, the smartest and funniest and hippest of them all. I shall miss seeing him on TV every night, now that he’s easing into his well-deserved retirement. The second reason I’ve kept coming back to Dave’s show is my long, unbroken friendship with his bandleader, Mr. Paul Shaffer. It never ceases to astound Paul and me that, forty-plus years later, we’re basically carrying on our late-night goofing off from Avenue Road in Toronto, only on national television. We still feel like we’re getting away with something, and every time I come to New York to do a Late Show, Paul and I celebrate after the taping by hitting the town. We customarily keep the limo that Late Show has provided (thanks, Dave!), visit three hot places that Paul has selected, grabbing a drink, having a meal, and usually closing down some bar or cabaret, where we take over the piano and alarm the unwitting patrons by putting on an improvised show.
The question I get asked the most these days—in private, not on TV—is: Will I ever remarry? Fix-ups are suggested, and JDate profiles are created on my behalf. (For the last time, I’m not Jewish!)
I appreciate the good intentions, and in no way do I dismiss the idea of companionship. But here’s the issue: for me, it’s very tricky to separate the idea of moving on from the act of forgetting, of closing the chapter on something. And at this point, I’m still very much married to Nancy. My life in our house in the Palisades these days is a bit like Roland Young’s in the 1930s comedy Topper, in which he was blissfully haunted by the ghosts of two deceased friends, a fun-loving couple played by Cary Grant and Constance Bennett. In my case, it’s Nancy with whom I happily converse, even while the rest of the world can’t see her.
As I’ve already mentioned, I’ve become adept, having lost my brother and parents early, at keeping people alive who have passed. And it’s more natural for me to do this with Nancy than with anyone else, because in our thirty-six years together we became so intimately familiar with the workings of each other’s minds that I can convincingly play out the conversations we would be having today, about things that postdate Nancy’s death—the continued adventures of our three kids, the arrival of HRH Prince George of Cambridge, the Chris Christie “Bridgegate” scandal, and such curiosities as twerking, Ted Cruz, streaming original series on Netflix, and the cronut.
Then there are the personal experiences that I want to share with Nan before anyone else hears about them—the little episodes that she, most of all, would get a kick out of. I was in Baltimore not too long ago doing one of my concerts, and I was staying in a nice suite in a luxury hotel. A private foyer separated the suite from the main hallway. I opened the door to retrieve my newspaper one morning to see that the paper was not right at my feet, where it should have been, but leaning against the inside of the other door, the one that opened onto the hallway. So I jogged up the private foyer to get the paper—only to hear the door to the actual suite slam shut behind me. Which would not have been such a big deal, except for the fact that I was naked. And by “naked,” I mean without so much as a stitch or a timepiece.
I pathetically turned around and tried the door to my suite—but, as I’d already suspected would be the case, it was locked. Yes, I was living that nightmare that everyone fears their whole life, and/or believes is a ludicrous premise that only ever happens in sitcoms: I was locked out, naked, in public!
So what else could I do? I peeked out the other door, looking into the main hallway, and surveyed the scene. Not too far down the hall was a courtesy telephone resting on a little stand. Well, it was something. So I picked up the paper, held it over myself strategically—though I was grateful that it was the Sunday New York Times, it still didn’t cover everything that needed covering—and set off in the direction of the phone. Just before I got to it, I noticed a housekeeper’s cart by a room with a door open. Oh, good. Poking my head through the open door, I said, “Hello?” This prompted a guy in the next room to open his door, see a naked Martin Short standing before him, and then slam his door shut as fast as he possibly could.
Finally the maid came out of the room she was cleaning and saw me. “Oh, Mr. Short!” she said. “You have made my day!” She didn’t let go of the moment quickly. She circled around me slowly, looking at me from behind, and went, “Ohhhhhh.”
Once I got over the embarrassment, I was let back into my suite, and put a robe on (which is now my strategy in hotels at all times, even when I’m fully clothed in a suit), I thought, Nan, how the hell did I let that happen? And I could hear her laughter—loving, but with a touch of “Serves you right”—in my ears.
I think this is healthy. I can’t stand when the dead are talked about in hushed tones or banished from our thoughts. I go back to that line that my brother David spoke to me in that strange Technicolor dream: “I’ll see you in a fleeting moment.” Meaning, I’m not far away. After Nancy died, I read a 1910 sermon by the Oxford theologian Henry Scott Holland that has evolved over time into a funeral prayer. It begins:
Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Everything remains as it was.
The old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no sorrow in your tone. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Nancy has only slipped away into the next room. So some nights, when I’m really missing her, I’ll grab a rum and Coke at twilight and sit on the couch on our front porch, or perhaps upstairs, on the balcony off of our bedroom, with the Pacific Ocean in view. I’ll call out, “Hey, Nan!” Forming the words just feels good in the throat. Or I’ll do this thing we did in the car, when I was driving. Nancy would say “Hand of a hand,” a cue for me to place my right hand in her left. “Kiss the hand,” I’d say in response, and she would lift my hand to her lips. I still offer my hand to Nancy—it’s how I initiate our conversations.
These, our talks, go on internally, not out loud. You won’t find me sitting out there chattering away, switching seats, schizophrenically playacting both parts. But we do talk, Nancy and I, and I can totally hear where she agrees with me and where she disagrees. I can sense the moments when she’s had enough of Marty and wants to summon Ed. And then I can hear Ed say, for the thousandth time, “He’s to be pitied, Miss Nancy, ’cause, like, he just won’t let things go, I must say.” And finally Ed will be dismissed, and Marty will come back.
“Hey, Nan.”
“Hey, baby. Hand of a hand.”
“You see, Nan, it’s like I always told you: it’s better to have loved a Short than never to have loved a tall.”
“Who made that up?”
“What do you mean, ‘Who made that up?’ I did!”
“No, you didn’t. I think your brother Michael did.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve been saying that for years.”
“Oh, I know you’ve been saying it. But who wrote it? I thought it was Michael.”
“Well, you thought wrong.”
“Gee, you’re an arrogant little thing, aren’t you?”
“I think I’m sweet.”
“Tell me if this wouldn’t piss you off.”
“What, Nan, did FDR just say something?”
(Laughter.)
“It’s an awfully pretty house, isn’t it, Mart?”
(As Ed Grimley.) “It surely is, Miss Nancy.”
“Go away, Ed!”
(Still as Ed.) “Yes, Miss Nancy.”
“Mart?”
“Yeah?”
“Are the kids really okay?”
“Nan, they’re fine.”
“Why do you always say that?”
“’Cause they are. They’re doing the best they can.”
“Anything in my teeth?”
“Nan, can you believe that you’ve been gone for four years?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well you’d know, with that Rain Man memory of yours.”
(Robotically, like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.) “. . . married on a snowy Monday on December 22, 1980.”
“Are you having a cocktail, baby?”
“I sure am.”
“Is that your first?”
“It sure isn’t. And it may not be my last. So judge not!”
“Hey, I don’t judge.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Aren’t you a happy boy!”
(Pause as the cocktail glass is refilled.)
“Nan?”
“Ya, Mart?”
“Where’d you go?”
No answer this time. And none expected. Because I’ve asked the unanswerable. But not to worry. There’s still life to be lived, laughs to be had, children to cherish, dear friends to be gossiped about, and costars to be upstaged. As for the grander questions, their answers will surely reveal themselves. Someday. In a fleeting moment.