Crying isn’t the first reaction you would expect to have after reading Martin Short’s autobiography, “I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend.”
But the Emmy- (“SCTV”) and Tony Award-winning (“Little Me”) Short, who created such comic characters as the man-child Ed Grimley and the obnoxious talk show host Jiminy Click, wears his heart on his sleeve when he talks about losing his older brother, his beloved mother and father by the time he was 20 and then losing his wife, Nancy Dolman, to cancer in 2010. “Before she lost consciousness, as, struggling for breath, she saw nine paramedics hurry into our bedroom after I placed a frantic 911 call, she calmly turned to me, took my hand, and said, ‘Marty, let me go,’ ” he writes. “And so we did.”
“I’ve been asked to write books over the years,” said Short, 64, during a recent interview at his house in the Pacific Palisades that is filled with family photos of Dolman and their three grown children, Katherine, Oliver and Henry. “After my wife died, I realized we all go through this and we wake up the next day whether we think the world should stop or not — it doesn’t.”
Short’s natural inclination is to be happy. “I am not a depressed person at all,” said the actor, who has starred in such films as 1986’s “Three Amigos,” 1987’s “Innerspace” and 1991’s “Father of the Bride.”
“So I thought, well now I see what a book could be. This kind of naturally happy person who has met with obstacles and wants to regain buoyancy.”
