Catherine O’Hara Talks ‘Beetlejuice,’ ‘Schitt’s Creek,’ ‘Home Alone’ and Her Early Exposure to Gilda Radner at USC Comedy Festival
variety.comCarla Renata Ingmar Bergman had Liv Ullmann. Woody Allen had Diane Keaton and Christopher Guest had Catherine O’Hara — that’s how actor John Michael Higgins summed up the stature of O’Hara’s work on screen with Guest and other top directors during a wide-ranging Q&A held Saturday as part of the sixth annual USC Comedy Festival.
The Emmy-winning O’Hara was honored with the Jack Oakie and Victoria Horne Oakie Masters of Comedy Award at the festival, in recognition of her long, and often underrated, career in film, TV, stage and sketch comedy.
The Okie Foundation honors the lives and work of two comedy legends, Jack Oakie and Victoria Horne Oakie. Jack Okie won a supporting actor Oscar for Charlie Chaplins’ 1940 satire “The Great Dictator.” Victoria Okie was a comedy trouper who had supporting roles (as Victoria Horne) in numerous films, most memorably opposite Jimmy Stewart in 1950’s “Harvey.” In reviewing O’Hara’s career with Higgins, a veteran of Guest’s hit ensemble comedies “A Mighty Wind” (2003) and “Best in Show” (2000), the pair discussed memorable moments from the O’Hara canon.
Who can forget that iconic scene in 1988’s “Beetlejuice” when the cast breaks out into a chorus of “Day-O.” Or her many laugh-out-loud moments as Kate, the mother of Macauley Culkin’s Kevin, in 1990’s “Home Alone.” Or the infamous wig stylings and crazy accent of O’Hara’s Emmy-commanding turn as Moira Rose on the PopTV/Netflix comedy “Schitt’s Creek.” During the course of the conversation, O’Hara shared that her path to the world of improvisational comedy was helped along by the fact that her brother once dated a then-unknown Gilda Radner.
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