Every Monday at 10CET, NPR Worldwide plays Le Show with Harry Shearer (yeah, you know the guy). At first, I started grinding my teeth since one can tell he’s simply reading the paper to us, his audience, rife with “snarky” comments and cheap shots. I guess he’s supposed to be funny and Le Show is supposed to be a comedy show. But, how could it be? It doesn’t seem well prepared. Shearer halts, pauses, and tries to keep his wit ahead of the stories, which he can’t. Yes, I love Harry Shearer, but he is an actor and needs to be fed lines. During the uncomfortable, pregnant, pauses, you can hear his mind scream, “line!”
That said, I have become a devoted addict! How often do you hear this bizarre, amateurish, and foolish, ad hoc, train wreck for an entire hour once-a-week? He isn’t funny but I am now a devoted fan. I will try desperately to never miss it. It is on my calendar. Maybe his wit is too cultivated and the entire show is ironic commentary. Maybe Le Show is sort of a public radio “mockumentary” like This Is Spinal Tap. Could be I have been seduced into Shearer’s radio simulacrum. Wouldn’t put it past him!
Line!?
While I would dare say that Harry Shearer’s Le Show is downright banal, I will never miss another episode to the best of my ability. He’s shameless and I love it! What a freak!
Harry Julius Shearer (born December 23, 1943) is an American comedic actor and writer. Shearer, a voice actor on The Simpsons (1989 to present), provides the voices of Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders, Reverend Timothy Lovejoy, Kent Brockman, Dr. Julius Hibbert, Dr. Marvin Monroe, Lenny Leonard, Principal Seymour Skinner, Otto Mann and Rainier Wolfcastle among others.
Shearer was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Dora Warren (née Kohn), a bookkeeper, and Mack Shearer. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Austria and Poland. He was married to Penelope Nichols in 1974, divorcing in 1977. Shearer has been married to singer-songwriter Judith Owen since 1993. Shearer attended UCLA and Harvard. In May 2006, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Goucher College.
He began his career as a child actor in 1950s movies (The Robe) and radio (The Jack Benny Program). Shearer also played the precursor to the Eddie Haskell character in the pilot episode of the TV series Leave It to Beaver. Shearer was later a member of Los Angeles radio comedy group The Credibility Gap, 1969–1976, at stations KRLA (where he also interviewed Creedence Clearwater Revival for the Pop Chronicles) and KPPC.
He also wrote for such television shows as Fernwood 2-Night and Laverne and Shirley. In August 1979, Shearer was hired as a writer and cast member on Saturday Night Live, an unofficial replacement for John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, who were both leaving the show. According to the book Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, Shearer did not get along well with the other writers and cast members, who regarded him as “prickly.” His first tenure on the show ended when Lorne Michaels left SNL, taking the entire cast with him.
Shearer returned to Saturday Night Live in the 1984–1985 season, leaving for good in January 1985 over “creative differences.” When reached for comment over the nature of his departure, Shearer replied “I was creative; they were different”.
Shearer co-created, co-wrote and co-starred in Rob Reiner‘s 1984 film This Is Spinal Tap with Michael McKean and Christopher Guest. The three of them also collaborated on the acclaimed 2003 spoof A Mighty Wind, which was written by Guest and Eugene Levy (but largely improvised by the cast members) and directed by Guest, and Shearer had a major role in the Guest-directed parody of Oscar politicking For Your Consideration (2006). Shearer’s television work also includes two specials for Cinemax, “It’s Just TV”, and “This Week Indoors” (co-created with Merrill Markoe) and “The Magic of Live”. He directed the entire six-episode cable series, “The History of White People in America”, co-created by Martin Mull and Allen Rucker, as well as the two-hour feature finale of the series, “Portrait of a White Marriage”. He also co-wrote and directed Paul Shaffer‘s fantasy special for HBO, “Viva Shaf Vegas” (with Shaffer and Tom Leopold). His first theatrical feature, which he wrote and directed, was “Teddy Bears’ Picnic“, a dark comedy loosely based on the workings of Bohemian Grove, the secret retreat of the elite.
Shearer has three books published, “Man Bites Town” (a collection of his Los Angeles Times Magazine columns), “It’s the Stupidity, Stupid”, and “Not Enough Indians”, a comic novel about Native Americans and gambling.
Shearer may be best known for his prolific work as a voice actor on The Simpsons (1989 to present), where he provides voices for Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders, Reverend Timothy Lovejoy, Kent Brockman, Dr. Julius Hibbert, Dr. Marvin Monroe, Lenny Leonard, Principal Seymour Skinner, Otto Mann and Rainier Wolfcastle among others. He was one of three Simpsons voice actors to guest star on the show Friends (“The One With the Fake Monica“); the other two were Dan Castellaneta and Hank Azaria. He also appeared in Godzilla with Hank Azaria, which had a cameo appearance from Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson. (In a SFGate Podcast, Shearer said one person who took him under his wing during his early days in show business was voice actor Mel Blanc, who voiced many animated characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Yosemite Sam, and Tweety Bird, just to name a few.)
Since 1983, Shearer has been the host of the public radio comedy/music program Le Show on Santa Monica’s NPR-affiliated radio station, KCRW. On the weekly program Shearer alternates between DJing, reading and commenting on the news of the day after the manner of Mort Sahl, and performing original (mostly political) comedy sketches and songs. The show airs on public radio stations throughout the country, and is offered as a podcast. Shearer is the regular announcer for TV Land and, since May 2005, has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post. Shearer has homes in both Santa Monica, California and the Faubourg Marigny of New Orleans, Louisiana. According to a telephone call on Ask Mr. KABC, his house survived Hurricane Katrina.
In 1995 Shearer appeared in the Australian comedy series Frontline, in the episode “Changing the Face of Current Affairs”. In it he played the character of Larry Hadges, employed by the Frontline team to improve the look and style of the show, with hilarious results.
In 2006 Shearer appeared with Brian Hayes in a six-part BBC Radio 4 sitcom called Not Today, Thank You, in which he plays Nostrils, a man so ugly he can’t stand to be in his own presence.
- Tom Clay, a spokesman for several fake commercials on SNL
- Vic Raker, a Weekend Update commentator
Celebrity impersonations on SNL
- Alan Thicke
- Carl Sagan
- Curt Gowdy
- Frank Reynolds
- Franklin Roosevelt
- Jack Perkins
- Joe Garagiola
- Mike Wallace
- Mr. Blackwell
- Robin Leach
- Rod Serling
- Ronald Reagan
- Tom Brokaw
- Tom Snyder
- Vin Scully (Shearer also impersonated Vin Scully on several episodes of The Simpsons.)
Filmography
- The Simpsons Movie (2007)
- Not Today, Thank You (2006) (Radio)
- For Your Consideration (2006)
- Chicken Little (2005)
- A Mighty Wind (2003)
- Teddy Bears’ Picnic (2002)
- Haunted Castle (2001)
- Out There (2001)
- Haiku Tunnel (2001)
- Catching Up with Marty DiBergi (2000) (V)
- Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big (2000)
- Dick (1999)
- Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
- Encounter in the Third Dimension (1999)
- Edtv (1999)
- Small Soldiers (1998) (voice)
- The Truman Show (1998)
- Almost Heroes (1998)
- Godzilla (1998)
- My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)
- State of the Union: Undressed (1996) (TV)
- Blazing Dragons (1996) (VG)
- The Show Formerly Known as the Martin Short Show (1995) (TV)
- Sliders (1995) (TV) (uncredited)
- The News Hole (1995) TV Series
- Speechless (1994)
- Little Giants (1994)
- I’ll Do Anything (1994)
- Wayne’s World 2 (1993)
- Comic Relief: Baseball Relief ’93 (1993) (TV)
- A League of Their Own (1992)
- Spinal Tap: Break Like the Wind – The Videos (1992) (V) (as Derek Smalls)
- The Fisher King (1991)
- Blood and Concrete (1991)
- Pure Luck (1991)
- Oscar (1991/I)
- Sunday Best (1991) TV Series
- Hometown Boy Makes Good (1990) (TV)
- The Simpsons (1989 – present)
- My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988)
- Plain Clothes (1988)
- Portrait of a White Marriage (1988)
- Spitting Image: The Ronnie and Nancy Show (1987) (TV)
- Flicks (1987) (voice)
- The History of White People in America: Volume II (1986) (TV)
- Spitting Image: Down and Out in the White House (1986) (TV)
- Viva Shaf Vegas (1986) (TV)
- The History of White People in America (1985) (TV)
- This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
- The Right Stuff (1983)
- Million Dollar Infield (1982) (TV)
- Likely Stories, Vol. 1 (1981) TV Series
- One Trick Pony (1980)
- Loose Shoes (1980)
- Animalympics (1980)
- Saturday Night Live (1979-80, 1984-85)
- The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh (1979)
- The T.V. Show (1979) (TV)
- Real Life (1979)
- Cracking Up (1977)
- American Raspberry (1977)
- Serpico: The Deadly Game (1976) (TV)
- Leave it to Beaver (1956) (pilot only)
- The Jack Benny Program (1955) (guest voice) TV Series – Member of Jack Benny’s “Beverly Hills Beavers”
- The Jack Benny Program (1953) (guest voice) TV Series – Jack as a Child
- The Robe (1953) (uncredited)
- Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953) (uncredited)
Video games
- Science Vessel/Magellan in Starcraft
Bibliography
- Shearer, Harry (1993). Man Bites Town. St Martins Press. ISBN 0-312-08842-6.
- Shearer, Harry (1999). It’s the Stupidity, Stupid : Why (Some) People Hate Clinton and Why the Rest of Us Have to Watch (Library of Contemporary Thought). Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-43401-3.
- Shearer, Harry (2006). Not Enough Indians. Justin, Charles and Company. ISBN 1-932112-46-4.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I second your general feeling for Le Show. If someone asked me if it was any good, I would give a resounding “No!”. His snarky halting style can get annoying after awhile. However, I admit, when I stumble across it on the ratio, I don’t change the channel.