Harry Shearer
Harry Shearer
Harry Julius Sheareris an American actor, voice actor, comedian, writer, musician, author, radio host, director and producer. He is known for his long-running roles on The Simpsons, his work on Saturday Night Live, the comedy band Spinal Tap and his radio program Le Show. Born in Los Angeles, California, Shearer began his career as a child actor. From 1969 to 1976, Shearer was a member of The Credibility Gap, a radio comedy group. Following the breakup of the group, Shearer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionVoice Actor
Date of Birth23 December 1943
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I'm not sure that there's anybody else that's as psychologically complex and who's given us this window into his soul that Nixon gave us. That's what I find absolutely addictive and seductive.
Nixon's genius was that he was able to portray himself as the toughest of the anti-communists, and yet run on a platform that he had a plan to end the Vietnam War. And, of course, his plan was to prolong it until his second election - but he didn't tell us that then.
I happened upon a memoir by a midlevel White House staffer, and he had been in the room that [Nixon's last] night [in office]. This guy's memoir told me what Nixon's last words were. And they were, on August 8, 1974, to the crew: "Have a Merry Christmas, fellas!" That was just so bizarre.
When I was growing up, we learned our history almost as lives of the saints. And it came as a shock, "Oh, Jefferson had slaves?" It always comes as a shock to us that elevation to the White House didn't somehow cleanse them of all their deep character flaws.
When Nixon died, on my radio show I started doing sketches with three basic conceits: One, there's a place called Heaven. Two, Nixon got in. And three, he's still taping.
I have a very strong visual memory of the first time I made him laugh. That was remarkable. I was like, "Oh, God, I just made Jack Benny laugh."
I always used to sit next to Mel Blanc when we'd do the shows. When you have Jack Benny on one side and Mel Blanc on the other, you're not going to go far wrong.
I'd always loved radio.
You can get an awful lot of effects into the customer's mind for a great deal less time and money in radio than you can in television.
The first thing you've got to do is know your craft, and then you can do something else with it.
A movie script more than anything else is a plan of action for the crew. Everybody in the crew looks at the script to see what they're going to do. It has to contain where you are, and how many people are there, and what they do, and what time of day it is, and what time of year it is.
The Simpsons will end as soon as Fox is able to find an 8 p.m. comedy hit to replace it - so I give us another 50 years.
As a kid, I really did want to hang out with the grownups, so it was hanging out with the hippest grownups in the world. This was the nicest bunch of people I've worked with in show business, with the exception of the people around A Mighty Wind. It really was a wonderful eight years.
I've been doing Nixon pretty much my whole professional life. I was in this comedy group called the Credibility Gap in Los Angeles when he was president. I was doing Nixon on the radio, and when we did live shows I physicalized him - if that's a word - for the first time. And then I did a Nixon sketch on a very short-lived NBC show called Sunday Best.