Shearer at Wordstock on November 10, 2007
December 23, 1943
Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Judith Owen (m. 1993)
| Harry Shearer | |
|---|---|
Shearer at Wordstock on November 10, 2007 |
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| Born | Harry Julius Shearer December 23, 1943 Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Spouse(s) | Penelope Nichols (m. 1974–1977)
Judith Owen (m. 1993) |
| Official website | |
Harry Julius Shearer (born December 23, 1943) is an American actor, comedian, writer, musician and radio host. 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, Scratchy and Rainier Wolfcastle among others. He is also very popular for playing Derek Smalls in the 1984 hit This Is Spinal Tap.
On June 19, 2008, it was announced that Shearer would receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the radio category.
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Shearer was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Dora Warren (née Kohn), a book-keeper, and Mack Shearer.[1] His parents were Jewish immigrants from Austria and Poland.[2][3] 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.
Shearer has homes in both Santa Monica, California and the Faubourg Marigny of New Orleans, Louisiana. He first came to New Orleans in 1988, and has been to every edition of Jazz Fest since then, except one.[4] According to a telephone call on Ask Mr. KABC, his house survived Hurricane Katrina. He recently wrote a response to A.C. Thompson's piece in The Nation that belittles and avoids the real white supremacist violence that occurred in Algiers, LA after Hurricane Katrina in The Huffington Post.[5]
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,[6] at stations KRLA 1110 (where he also interviewed Creedence Clearwater Revival for the Pop Chronicles[7]) and KPPC-FM.
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. Shearer also had a major role in the Guest-directed parody of Oscar politicking For Your Consideration (2006). Shearer's television work 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.[8]
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 is also the only member of the principal cast of 6 to never have won an Emmy for his work on the show, leading to him being called the 'Peter O'Toole of the Simpsons'. 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.)[9]
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 left-leaning, The Huffington Post.
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.[10]
In 2008 Harry made the music CD "Songs of the Bush Men".
Since encountering satellite news feeds when he worked on Saturday Night Live, Shearer has been fascinated with the contents of this video that does not air. Shearer refers to these clips as found objects. “I thought, wow, there is just an unending supply of this material, and it’s wonderful and fascinating and funny and sometimes haunting — but it’s always good,” said Shearer.[11] He collects this material and uses it on his radio program Le Show[12][13] and on his website.[14] In 2008 he assembled video clips of newsmakers from this collection into an art installation titled "The Silent Echo Chamber" which was exhibited at the The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut.[11]
On June 19, 2008, it was announced that Shearer would receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the radio category.[15]
It is also notable that Shearer is the only regular voice actor from The Simpsons not to have won or been nominated for an Emmy award.
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shearer, Harry |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Shearer, Harry Julius |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Actor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1943-12-23 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Los Angeles, California |
| DATE OF DEATH | |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |