Godspell, the musical version of several biblical parables with music by Stephen Schwartz and book by John-Michael Tebelak, was a spectacle perfectly suited for its times. It was a hippie version of the Bible, complete with a clown concept, and it was jam-packed with great, hummable songs. Having originated at Carnegie Mellon University, it debuted in 1971 off-Broadway in New York City at the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club on the Lower East Side before moving to the Cherry Lane Theatre and the Promenade Theatre—it closed in 1976 after a whopping 2,124 performances.

The Toronto production of Godspell opened at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in 1972, with an expectation of running for just a few dozen performances. It was a massive hit as well, closing more than a year later after 488 performances. That production is legendary for the budding young talent in the show—including Victor Garber (Alias, Titanic) as Jesus as well as future comedy stars Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Gilda Radner, Dave Thomas, and Martin Short. The show’s musical director was a sassy young fellow named Paul Shaffer.
 

Dave Thomas and Eugene Levy in Godspell
 
Radner, of course, would achieve national fame a few years later when she joined the inaugural cast of Saturday Night Live, while Levy, Martin, Short, and Thomas ended up as the core of an experimental sketch comedy show called SCTV.

There’s an exhaustive website dedicated to the production, and it’s chock full of details. Short and Radner dated during the run, but Short ended up marrying Gilda’s understudy, Nancy Dolman. The show was Gilda Radner’s professional stage debut. Dave Thomas was not in the original cast, but he joined the show near the end of its run.
 

Godspell original cast program
 
Levy later reminisced about Gilda Radner:

The first image of Gilda was at the final audition for “Godspell.” We were all there. They’d narrowed it down to about 80 people. I just remember this girl getting up on stage and singing “Zippity Do Dah” as her song. I remember thinking, “Oh, this poor girl. She’s so cute, but what a terrible song!” [laughs] And the entire room by the end of the song just fell in love with her, she was so adorable. We always referred to her as the “Zippity Do Dah” girl in the beginning. She was charming and sweet and loved to laugh. She went out with Marty Short for most of the run, and Marty was my roommate, so we were all hanging out. I just remember her always being up and loving to laugh.

In 2011 Martin Short and Paul Shaffer were on Seth Rudetsky’s SiriusXM show “Seth Speaks.” After essaying “It’s Raining Men,” Short and Shaffer decide to close the show with a rousing rendition of “Save the People” from Godspell.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Gilda Radner’s Patti Smith parody, ‘Candy Slice’
The improbable corporeal synthesis of Ed Grimley and John Cougar (Mellencamp), 1982

 
About once a year it crosses my mind how truly weird it was that they made a children’s cartoon show centered around Ed Grimley. For those who don’t know, Grimley was a demented and resonant creation of Martin Short in his SCTV days, and after Short brought the character intact to his SNL stint during the 1984-1985 (an excellent season by the way) Grimley became a minor hit, one of Lorne’s beloved recurring characters, alongside Billy Crystal’s Fernando character. In principle, Grimley was pretty darn annoying—it’s a testament to Short’s sheer talent and likability that the little dude could achieve any kind of purchase among the American TV-watching public. Watching him on YouTube, what he really seems like is the dark side of Pee Wee Herman.

In attempting to describe Ed Grimley, one must admit that Wikipedia’s account possesses a certain panache, describing him as “an excessively cowlicked, hyperactive manchild who is obsessed with banal popular culture, particularly Wheel of Fortune and its host, Pat Sajak. He also loves to play the triangle, which for him consists of playing a recorded musical piece, striking the triangle once, and then wildly dancing to the recording.” He punctuated every other sentence with the phrase “doncha know” and his obsessive little monologues would shift suddenly in pitch. Grimley was a surfeit of tics: his hair was shaped into a spike and his pants were worn way too high and he always worried about getting too “mental”—he was a decent sort if you know what I mean…. Only Martin Short could make it all work, and truly, when he’s on his game, Martin Short is hard to touch.
 

 
The whole point of Grimley was that he was a lonely outsider, like Harvey Pekar’s pal Toby Radloff. The 1980s are thought of as this time of relentless moneyed conformity, and there’s something to it, but it was also the decade of Revenge of the Nerds, Eddie Deezen, and (at least in origin) Wayne’s buddy Garth Algar. Grimley, in short, was a “spaz,” a common figure of the time, but it’s difficult to think of too many others of his tribe (Anthony Michael Hall’s “Farmer Ted” from Sixteen Candles, perhaps?)—although certainly Ace Ventura’s energy and hairdo owe a great debt to Grimley.

It’s still hard to believe it all happened. Especially when you look at the clips.

First, Grimley on SNL—one has to start with pure undiluted Grimley in his natural state, as embodied by Short as he negotiates one of his legendary triangle performances:
 

 
Here’s a chunk of his animated series The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley:
 

 
Here’s “The Nutty Lab Assistant” from SCTV, unfortunately heavily edited. The mind still boggles. The sketch is punctuated with a big slab of commercial 1980s rock (in the form of “Jack and Diane”) for those who’ve repressed what that was all about. Whose idea was it to haul John Cougar in there? (He hadn’t changed back to his real name Mellencamp yet.) Why John Cougar of all people? One must admit he did a creditable job. A Jekyll-and-Hyde concept with Ed Grimley and John Cougar…. the 1980s did on occasion certainly deliver wonders.
 

 
After the jump, Martin Short comments on creating Ed Grimley…

 
Martin Short gives a taste of what it might have been like had Montgomery Clift starred in his own sitcom, I Married Monty.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Post Mortem: Montgomery Clift

 
With thanks to Scott Marks