I Must Say: My Life As a Humble Comedy Legend Paperback – July 21, 2015

Made you look!Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Easy to read and very"feel-good." Especially his view on life, and love for his wife/family.

A little too much name-dropping...and he makes his success seem Divinely Orchestrated, which might have been how it really must have felt at the time...But he slides over the huge amount of work needed to become "an overnight success. Next time, I will get this kind of book from the library. As it is, it will be passed on as a Christmas gift. There are no deep insights into what it really takes to break-into The Business...His childhood stories are touching, and show how the Canadian System of halthcare and death benefits afforded by their government let him keep his house and not be thrown out onto the street after his father and then mother dies relatively early in his life. Had he grown up in The US at the time his Dad died, he might have been found begging on the street, coping with high medical bills and no insurance coverage. So it does showcase what a well-run government Healthcare Program can work like, to help young orphaned kids still flourish and realize the goals, rather than having to simply drop out and never get ahead, as things now stand in The States. Reads like your high school best buddy wrote about it after making good.

So glad to have read this autobiography and learn more about Martin Short. His writing style is genuine and humorous.

As if I couldn’t love Martin Short more.Hands down one of the most brilliant minds of our lifetime.Incredible

This is a review of the audiobook edition.I bought this book because I was curious to learn more about a fellow Canadian who made it big in American show business, particularly because of his reputation for irrepressible cheerfulness. It seems to be an unusual trait among comedians in their private lives, and apparently is one of the reasons he is popular within the performing community. By the time I finished this book, this favourable impression had been tarnished.As he will remind you throughout this autobiography, the author is a good friend of Steve Martin. Perhaps this is why he decided to follow in his footsteps in writing a memoir. Unfortunately, as with his career, his efforts come up short (sorry, couldn’t resist) compared to his friend. Steve Martin may be stealthily ironic in his endorsement comment that he read the book backwards. The final chapter was one of the few times I felt the author was sincerely connecting with his readers!It’s true that Martin Short is a talented performer. When he appears in voice as one of his many characters, one of the advantages of the audiobook version, I often laughed out loud. It is also true that he overcame the loss of his brother and parents at a relatively young age, and lately his wife, with a grace and resilience that was another inspiration to listen to his story. But I found the goodwill from these attributes slowly eroded by his incessant name-dropping, even though he even mocks this habit himself.At first I thought the name-dropping may have been a deliberate attempt to increase reader interest. But an unsettling pattern emerges. The A-listers are usually mentioned in a way to flatter his own importance. When I got to the part where he describes himself as “a top-feeder, always gravitating to the smartest people in the room”, these anecdotes suddenly turned from titillating to snobbish. Outside of his own circle, people are often referred to in condescending or belittling ways. It turns out that, without exception, all his characters are based on mocking the weaknesses of people he has known. In other words, if he's not top-feeding off people, he's mocking them. This may also explain why he repeatedly tells us about the exclusive areas in which he has bought homes.Personal revelations are sometimes made without any apparent humility or insight. Like when he smugly mentions never having to hold a mundane job as the young heir of a steel company executive. Or when he admits to a rare feeling of depression not over personal losses, but because his career seemed to be stalling. Then there is the candid but creepy discussion of how he spreadsheets his life into nine categories, and subdivides his film career into those in which he considered himself a leading man. Having watched these films, it never occurred to me to think of him as a leading man. I am even starting to wonder if there was any intended irony in his reference to himself in the subtitle as a comedy legend. A better subtitle would be “How to succeed in show business through relentless narcissism”!

Some reviewewrs have criticized the book for the incessent name dropping. Sure, Short is trying to make his book attractive to a large audience. But I think comet of this is good manners. Other actors and comedians want to see their name in print, want to be remembered and acknowledged. As Short himself mentions at one point, you have to have an extraordinary drive to be an entertainer. All this is interesting, probably more so to someone starting out in the business, but the real jewel of the book is how Short treats the tragic death of his wife. She died in 2008. They had been together over thirty years. To him she is not really gone. She has merely stepped into another room. He still talks to her regularly and feels her presence in his life. His only regret is that she did not have a preventative hysterectiomy when she had a double mastectomy to stop incipient breast cancer. She died of ovarian cancer.It might be difficult for some people to understand Short's continuing connection to his wife. I'm older and critical figures in my life have died. One learns to accept the loss, but the void where they used to be continues. I was very impressed by this comnedian's sensitivity. The book is worth the price for this section.

Much better than your typical celebrity auto-bio, and at times very funny, but there arepersonal tragedies in Short's personal life that the author handles well and brings asentimental touch to his rise to fame. Unlike many celebrities, Short's career is the model offame without self-destruction and a stable one wife, well rounded children family.One surprise was that Short was only on SNL for one tumultuous and memorable season,yet he was able to write and pull off the legendary synchronized swimming routine with Harry Shearerwhich has been voted as perhaps the greatest and most memorable routine in SNL history. I wish Short haddevoted more time to a description of that classic. Oddly, Shearer left the SNL cast even sooner than Short did.There are touching tidbits without unnecessary gossip about Gilda Radner (his ex girl friend), Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, andother celebrities who have become close friends with Short. If you are looking for shameless salacious material, try the Enquirer,as Short if anything is discreet in discussing his true Amigos.