NARRATOR:

From 1974 to 2013,

Saturday Night at the Movies, created by the beloved Elwy Yost, pulled back the curtain on the magic of cinema. In this series, we delve into TVO's treasured archives to uncover often never-before-seen footage, revealing the secrets of the silver screen from the legends who built it.

So, I suggest you go ahead and make your move. I've spoken to many of Canada's most famous comedy stars over the years, including Dave Thomas, Mike Myers, and this year even Leslie Nielsen, and it always strikes me that, like Martin Short, they're all extremely serious about the business of comedy.

It's a real pleasure being interviewed by you, eh? I mean, it's not all intense in a dark way, it's very fun. We didn't come here to have a bad time, did we? People love to laugh.

Kids hated trick-or-treating at my house. My dad's pouring rice into their bag. (Audience laughing) "Take it home and boil it. There's more than you think."

Laughter has been called an instant vacation and there's one standout destination. ♪ O Canada ♪

Though small in population, it's a heavyweight in humour, producing some of the biggest and most beloved stars on the planet. Dan Ackroyd is a God in our country. I'm from Canada. (Elwy laughing) Can you imagine that? There's so many of them, like Phil Hartman, and people go, "I didn't know he's Canadian." Is Jim Carrey a Canadian?

ELWY: Jim Carrey and John Candy and Ackroyd.

MAN: Yeah, yeah, and Martin Short. This is stuff I got yelled at at school and kicked out of school to do-- for doing, and now they're paying me. Sorry, not sorry. I also tell jokes.

Canadians have a wacko sense of humour. They were the cutest little couple you ever did want to see. Kind of just want to put them on top of a cake, don't you?

Perhaps there's something in the water. I think that being Canadian is an odd thing.

EUGENE LEVY: I don't know whether it comes from the eyes. I don't know whether it comes from the eyebrows. I really often would think it was because of the isolation of the people from each other, because you didn't-- and you spent those long, lonely, cold winters. You had to find ways to say "Boy, it's cold" to make it funny. I always had the feeling that I was a US citizen once removed.

MARTIN SHORT: People think of Canadians as people who would like to be Americans, but don't have the papers, and this is not sure. We could stand back and have the objectivity that can lend itself to a comedic interpretation. That's why the rebels try to make someone laugh and get them in trouble.

SAMANTHA BEE: Early days, Daily Show,

I remember in a meeting once saying, you know, "American imperialism," and then I moved on in the sentence and everyone was like, "Excuse me?"

JOHN LANDIS: Donald had the weirdest defecation in his speech. He used to say, "Eh." He'd go, "Nice day, eh? And I thought, "What the hell is with that eh?"

Precisely. When I started to work on Animal House, I was working with Ivan Reitman, and Ivan used to say "eh" too. Didn't understand it. And it wasn't until I was working with Danny Ackroyd on The Blues Brothers

when I went-- (Snapping fingers) "--Eureka! I understood!" It was like, "Oh, it's a Canadian thing."

What now? NARRATOR:

Blending parody, history, and classic literature with a touch of Canuck charm, Wayne and Shuster delivered smart jokes everyone could enjoy.

My license number is IXIVLLCCDIXMV. Also comes in handy as an eye chart. (Audience laughing) If you can read it, you don't need glasses.

Appearing on

The Ed Sullivan Show a record 67 times, they became household names and placed Canadian humour firmly on the world stage, a legacy that endures.

Rosie Shuster, Shuster's daughter, married another Canadian comedy legend, Lorne Michaels, and was one of the original writers and helped launch Saturday Night Live.

Canada keeps exporting world-class comedy, but what is the secret maple syrup that makes it so unique and distinctly Canadian?

We're sort of like these comedic United Nation troops with blue berets and yellow pads, you know? Sort of trying to look at the world to figure out, you know, what we are not.

ELWY: So, are we really that funny?

Well, I think it is the character. There's a fierce independence that we have. First of all, our culture is not geared towards melting pot. It's more geared towards salad bowl.

1949, Newfoundland became a province and until then it was a British protectorate. We only got our own flag in '64. We only got our own constitution in '82. America had a gunfight at the O.K. Corral. We had a Socratic dialogue at the O.K. Corral. They had a revolution. We had a cleverly written piece of legislation. I mean, we're the absence-- we're neither American nor British, and then we say to the rest of the world, "And figure that one out."

I have one of those-- My dad's old encyclopaedias.

ELWY: Did you ever have any idea growing up in Hamilton that your life would take this direction and you'd become so successful?

No, I was going to be a doctor. It wasn't that I cared about science. I was just a fan of Richard Chamberlain's work. I mean, I used to have a fantasy showbiz life, you know? If I were on the West Hamilton bus heading back into Westdale, where I grew up, and I'd sit at the back where the windows were curved like that, and I'd wave up pretending I was on a private plane. You know, to fans and press.

The Academy Awards, you never thought-- Well, that's just-- It seemed like another planet.

These comedians make us laugh, but who inspired them?

I always felt I was, like, the recipient of trickle-down comedy. My father was funny. My mother was funny. My brother, Michael, is a two-time Emmy-winning comedy writer. So, everyone was kind of- that was the norm in the family. The main cultural influence would be my dad with Peter Sellers. My dad, I remember, bought a Peter Sellers record and on this he did, like, a whole bunch of different types of characters and voices. and I thought, "Who is this guy?" I think he was my-- my favourite of all.

(Growling, barking) I thought you said your dog did not bite. That is not my dog.

Jackie Gleason and Jonathan Winters and Lucille Ball. Beyond the Fringe and The Goons and Alec Guinness, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. The Carry On movies and Benny Hill. I mentioned Python, didn't I? Guinness understood a lot of black comedies, didn't he? She stole the money, she'll talk. Murdering people and getting away with it. ♪

I remember watching Bob Hope on TV and thinking how distant and how remote this guy, who had done all these big movies and everything,, then through SCTV

I actually got to meet him through my impersonation of Bob Hope. Now, I've seen something the Saudis weren't quite ready for. There were a few blowouts on oil wells when she hit the green today, I want to tell you. But then, as time went on, over the last couple of years I've done a couple of specials and I found myself in Bob Hope's house, and then he's going down this row of photographs, and it's like there's presidents and kings and queens, and he gets to one point and he says, "There's Neil Armstrong. He did my special right after he got back from the moon." That was where the little boy from Dundas, being in Hollywood with Bob Hope. And the other thing, too, of course, is SCTV. ♪

NARRATOR: Second City Television Network, or SCTV, premiered in 1976 as a smart sketch comedy show set in a fictional TV station. It was the best place to be. SCTV was just so smart. In '73, I auditioned and didn't get in.

Born from Toronto's renowned Second City improv troupe, it launched the careers of some of Canada's most legendary comedians. My brother was a waiter at Second City Theatre in Toronto, and he got my sister, Mary Margaret, and I jobs as waitresses. In August of '74, Gilda Radner left. The main company went to do National Lampoon in New York and, of course, on to Saturday Night Live,

and I got to go in in her place.

DAVID: Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner and John Candy and Joe Flaherty and Catherine O'Hara and Andrea Martin and Gene Levy. All these people were, like, in Toronto being funny at the same time, and as it turned out, these people were all part of a wave that would end up becoming SCTV and SNL. Its blend of sharp satire and unique characters quickly made it a cornerstone of comedy. From Martin Short's Jerry Lewis to John Candy and Eugene Levy's polka playing Shmenge Brothers.

Right back after this. CATHERINE O'HARA:

They would wipe out my eyebrows and we'd paint eyebrows up here and I had this red hair up in a beehive hairdo, and I was like a raunchy nightclub act.

ELWY: Right. Every time I'd do a dirty joke I'd say, "Isn't that cute? Isn't it true?" after the filthiest jokes. Just, "Isn't that cute?"

You know, I just love this time of year, because everyone's in the mood for giving, and I'm just a girl to give it to. Isn't that cute? Isn't that true? I'd use my dad's jokes that he brought home from the office.

At SCTV, you were operating at peak performance at all times. Could never let your RPMs go down or you'd fail.

CATHERINE: When I was with SCTV,

I had to get it done or I wouldn't be in the show. We sort of would start out almost, like, backstage brainstorming, but we'd brainstorm around a table, a conference table, and then we'd sort of all decide on what ideas were basically good and then we'd go off and write them and then come back with scripts and then we'd help each other rewrite them.

Those scripts were always tough scripts to read for a network, because they couldn't figure out why it would be funny, because there were no jokes in them, and what was ultimately funny was the nuance and the character.

How SCTV started was at that Fire Hall Theatre. Second City stage first opened on Adelaide Street, then closed 'cause they couldn't get a liquor license, and went to the Fire Hall Theatre, and Andrew Alexander was the one who was instrumental in making that jump and making that happen, and when Lorne Michaels pirated half of the Second City cast for his SNL show, Bernie Songs got very-- and he ran Second City out of Chicago, he got very jealous and angry, and said, "Well, we'll do our own show." And so,

SCTV started out of that Second City stage experience as sort of running parallel and in response to SNL.

Toronto was character-driven and Chicago was politically driven. It's doing a movie a week, you know? Yeah. A 90-minute show is like doing a movie a week and trying to be as funny as we can, you know, without repeating ourselves and repeating characters.

Such as John Candy's Divine in Peter Pan. ♪

CATHERINE: Toronto Film Festival. They were doing a tribute to Martin Scorsese, and Robert De Niro was there on stage and Harvey Keitel was there, and he's in the lobby at the back of the theatre waiting to be introduced, and they're about to introduce him, and he goes, "Hey, I know you!" He said tapes of SCTV got him through the editing of King of Comedy.

And I think because it was being done in Edmonton or Toronto, the network really left it alone.

DAVID: And we didn't have network executives coming in telling us to do what they thought was funny. We got to do what we thought was funny.

MARTIN: Ed Grimley was a character created in Toronto on Second City stage at the Fire Hall. I travelled up north and I found that the farther north you get, it seems to get colder. It was based on a few people I knew from high school. There was one guy, he wanted to be a photographer. He talked like that. He would always take different slides of people and sometimes he wouldn't even develop them because he had taken them. So, he already knew what they looked like anyway. I knew another guy kinda talked like that. "A kind of (Unclear) voice, and there'd be bars a lot of time," so you kind of go find the voice, I must say. I can't believe it's a white Christmas. I mean, it couldn't be much more perfect, I must say. Thank you, Bing.

So, this idea that this character was just filled with zest of life, you know, and love living and loved kind of almost like a guy who's had a heart attack and has gotten a second chance.

An office outing inspired one now familiar face. What happened is my mom went with her company to see Second City and said, "There's this guy who you're just like, only he's really funny," because my mom-- that's how my mum always talks. "He's just like him, only he's funny." And I'd be like, "Yeah, that's great."

Anyway, I was telling one of those old actor stories and do you know, ladies and gentleman, who that man turned out to be? Martin Short. So, it was Martin Short. And so, I went down and I saw Martin Short. I also went and saw John Candy, the late John Candy, at a thing for Big City Comedy at Convocation Hall in Toronto, and I was so completely taken with that, that I waited at the artists entrance for them to come out, and John Candy was the nicest man, and Tim Kazurinsky, and they said, "Come with me, walk, and I'll tell you how to get involved," and the pair of them took me and talked to me from the-- the venue to where they're having an after venue party. They told me to take the Second City workshops, told me, you know, "If you really want to do it you can do it," and, you know, it'll be great, and they couldn't have been more positive. And then I went took the workshops, and my last day of high school, I get hired at Second City in Toronto.

Dave Thomas said that every comedian who he's enjoyed hanging out with as much as I've enjoyed hanging out with Dave Thomas is-- all you have to do is put the Frisbee under their nose and throw, and they'll like-- (Barking) You know?

Dave Thomas said of John Candy, that one of the great things about John Candy is that even after all the success, he still liked to leave messages on your phone machine in a funny voice.

ELWY: Yeah, uh-huh. You know?

ELWY: Yeah.

Just because for the sheer joy of it. I guess thoughts create bias, don't they? And they-- You can't keep an objective mind. Always-- Always trouble. Trouble with thoughts? You have a thought, you have to worry about it. I think of nothing. I don't do anything.

I started when I was in high school and it was-- it was a question of theatre arts or typing, and I thought the theatre arts would be an easier mark, and then through college I found I was studying with my-- I was taking a journalism course. I didn't like that as much as I liked the drama department, and then I thought I'd be a great actor, and my first experience was doing an Art Linkletter commercial for Colgate toothpaste. So, that shot that one right down. And I found that this is, hey, this isn't that easy. Then Second City came up and I really didn't think I had a great flair for comedy. Then I went into Second City and I proved myself right. I don't have a flair for comedy.

ELWY: (Laughing) Listen to him. Don't let them know.

DAVID: If you walked out on stage with John Candy, half of your work was done. They already liked you, because they liked him. He had a big, lovable, warm, open face. John Candy brought warmth, wit, and everyman charm to his comedy.

We don't really have a lot of the big 3D machinery as it were. We kind of cut a little corner here and there, do an effect here and there with a, you know? ♪ All mine. Traits shared by other SCTV alumni. But perhaps the most unlikely stars to come out of SCTV had a very unusual start. They were legislated into being by Canadian content.

Other countries may have the Marks, the Hemsworths, the Gallaghers, and the Marios. MARIO: Let's a-go!

But Canada's most famous brothers are arguably the McKenzies, Bob and Doug.

BOTH: Whoa. There they are. Okay. (Singing)

DAVID: By the time we were syndicated in the States and the Canadian show had less commercial content and was two minutes longer. So, we needed two minutes of Canadian programming, and because we're running on the CBC at the time, they said this must be distinctively Canadian. Sarcastically we said, "Yeah, what do you want to do? Put up a map of Canada and, like, sit around with toques and parkas and drink beer?" And they said, "Yeah, that'd be okay, provided you also have, like, a Mountie with you or at least a Mountie mug.

In an effort to protect Canadian culture from being overwhelmed by American programming, the Canadian content rules required networks to include 60% home-produced shows. Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas' Bob and Doug McKenzie fit the bill perfectly.

This is Canadian beer, right? And, like, here's a regular top and you open it, right?

Entertainment is entertainment, and, you know--

ELWY: That's right.

--and to constantly be waving a flag over it, I mean, I think there are ways of helping people without, you know, legislating things like that.

ELWY: Agreed.

And this really made us angry, and so, we did this, and, wouldn't you know it, it backfired and became one of the biggest hits on the show, so.

CATHERINE Oh, the Americans loved that. I know, they look at the McKenzie Brothers and say, "That's what Canadians are like, exactly."

(All ululating) Bob and Doug McKenzie's success came from reflecting a uniquely Canadian identity, cleverly satirizing stereotypes while affectionately embracing them, ultimately becoming a beloved part of the very culture they playfully mocked.

Programs like

The Red Green Show, Corner Gas, Trailer Park Boys, FUBAR, Baroness Von Sketch Show, Letterkenny, and Schitt's Creek redefined success with Canadian charm and a polite serving of satire.

I guess anything about humanity is satire, because we are ridiculous and we take ourselves seriously.

30 years on, some can seem prophetic. They're just Canadians. They're practically the 51st state.

From the beer-soaked banter of Bob and Doug, the rebellious wit of the Kids in the Hall, to the razor-sharp edge of

This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Rick Mercer... You're the Jon Stewart of Canada.

One difference between Canada and the United States is that Jon Stewart is still on cable, you know? As he's on the cover of Esquire, he's on the cover of

Rolling Stone, he's a huge cultural influence in the United States. You would think because of that an American network would say, "Well, let's put him on network TV." No one has even tried it. Whereas in-- Whereas in Canada, what I do is on a mainstream network and we get much bigger numbers actually than he gets in the United States, I mean, per capita. So, I think Canadians are more open to political satire than the Americans actually are.

Canadians' comfort level with political satire may be high and no target is off limits.

In 1966, at the height of Cold War paranoia, Canadian director Norman Jewison created a film that brilliantly combined the fear and the funny in this unlikely subject. As an outsider, his Canadian perspective brought fresh insight, turning political tension into a sharp, warm, human satire.

MAN: Are you planning in the near future to visit our great country?

Indubitably not. You don't plan to visit? Not on your tintype.

Are you interested in seeing America?

Not for a minute.

Jerry Lighter, who used to work at CBS, and he gave me a book. That book, it was called The Off-Islanders.

ELWY: Oh, yeah.

It is about a Soviet submarine accidentally running aground off Cape Cod. Well, I just thought this was, you know, we're at the height of the Cold War and everybody in America was terrified of Communists and they were under every rock and behind every film can.

Lasting nearly 50 years, the Cold War began in the aftermath of World War II. As tensions intensified between the USA and the USSR, both nations built up their atomic arsenals. I was afraid there was going to be an atomic war.

Out of that fear came his film, The Russians are Coming the Russians are Coming, which tells the story of an unintentional Soviet invasion and the resulting chaos, confusion, and comedy.

I don't want you going outside at all. I don't want you near the windows, you understand? Better yet, all of you stay in the cellar, you understand?

I sent it to Bill Rose, and he had written Mad, Mad, Mad World.

He was a brilliant writer and a great satirist.

CARL REINER: I think The Mad, Mad World

inspired Norman to do The Russians are Coming.

It had the same kind of, you know, big collection of good actor-- He-- Every actor in there had a comedic background. To my amazement, because he was very expensive at that time, and I think Stanley Kramer paid him the highest price that'd ever been paid to a screenwriter for Mad, Mad World,

he wrote back and said, "It's a hell of an idea. Maybe we should meet and talk about this," and we had a rendezvous in Paris, in a restaurant. I sat down with him and he told me about coming to Canada in 1939 and enlisting in the Black Watch and-- and how he had become this kind of expatriate American who had fought with the Canadians during WWII, and ended up in England and had written all these wonderful comedies and satirical films for Ealing Studios. He said, "The most important thing, Norman, you must remember is this is a very volatile subject. Therefore, the word Communism and the word Capitalism must never be used in this film."

This is a clash of cultures. People should leave the theatre saying, "Well, you know, they're not that bad. I mean, they're just like us. They're people just like we are."

The marriage was made at that time, then I went back to Universal, and I said, "Boy, have I got a film for you, and I told them about it, and they said, "Are you crazy?" (Elwy laughing) "You want to do a film about a Russian submarine with-- And I said, "Well, I can get Russian actors, I think. I've communicated with-- with a Soviet film export," and, "You're talking to the Russians about an actor?! What are you talking--" And they thought I was some sort of Canadian pinko.

NARRATOR: The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming was produced in the shadow of the 1950s, when Hollywood was consumed by the Red Scare. Led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, many people faced baseless accusations of Communism.

Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.

Hundreds of creatives were blacklisted, losing jobs, ruining careers, and influencing movie content for years. Can you imagine making a film today called The Arabs are Coming, The Arabs are Coming? Can you imagine? That's what you were making!

Norman always wanted to make a statement about something, which, considered in the time, in the context of the time it was made, was very important, and faced up through comedy terms to an important problem of that time. And all of us, you know, we're thinking, "Are we going to get in trouble for this with the government?"

Norman had no feeling, no compunction about just going out and doing it, because he felt it was right. That was the beginning of saying the Cold War is stupid. He had the Russians and the Americans together helping a kid off the steeple, and that's what the world should be, helping each other. He's got a social conscience and it's always about people, most of his pictures are about people and he's got a great sense of justice and it comes across in his pictures. He's a good guy.

I was turned down by almost every studio, and I went to see Walter Mir-- Harold Mirisch, of the Mirisch Company and United Artists. And so, they said, "Well, if you can get Bill Rose to write the screenplay we'll finance the screenplay," which they did. ♪

We finished the screenplay and I couldn't get a Russian submarine. And then the United States Navy wouldn't give me a submarine because they said it would make them look foolish if a Soviet submarine could run aground on the coast of America. And so, I went to the Canadian Navy and they would rent me a German submarine that was given to them after World War II, and I thought that was kind of nice. I said, "Well, gee, you'll rent me the submarine and a crew? And, "Oh, yeah, but how long do you want it for?" And we started to work out the deal. The US Navy says the submarine cannot-- the Canadian submarine cannot come in within a 12-mile limit. And so, finally, we decided to build a submarine and poor Bob Boyle, Robert Boyle was my production designer, he came up with an idea of how to build a submarine.

Norman likes to shoot locations. He prefers the location feeling. He feels that he gets something special out of it. 'Course it couldn't submerge, but it had to go to sea, and it was very dangerous. We're shooting off the coast of Northern California and we built this submarine.

Making his leading role debut, Alan Arkin was another Second City alumni from the Chicago team.

I wanted to be as authentic as possible and I found Alan Arkin who was in a play in New York, and Alan I felt was just perfect to play the part of Rozanov and he was a wonderful dialectician. I had him live with a young Russian guy who worked at the United Nations as an interpreter. And so, he listened to him day after day. And then-- So, then I started to cast all these young Russian actors and I even had an Italian and a French actor playing part of the crew. Both who could speak fluent Russian. That film, aside from being about the Russian-American relationships of time, uh, was a lot of fun. It was-- We had so many of the great comics of the time. NORMAN: Jonathan Winters and Carl Reiner and Eva Marie Saint and Alan Arkin and so on. It was a great cast.

You also can't approach Norman's films without realizing his own background, which is he is essentially a farmer. Farms are about something, they're about raising things, they're about growing things, and I think it has had a great influence on him.

One of these Norman had a great facility for is making people feel comfortable to be funny, but he always let the camera roll a little more, knowing that comedians, at the end of the scene, may give you what they call a button to the scene, and Alan Arkin in a couple scenes actually did that. He just kept it rolling. There's one scene where I shot at him. Don't do it no more. I promise I won't. And he says, "Don't do that anymore." He just threw that in himself at a tiny little moment, but it was really perfect, and I think good directors know when there's something cooking in an actor's head and he does.

Norman has a lot of fun making a picture. It isn't just making the picture that interests Norman. He has a lot of fun. They wanted to keep us from spreading the word that they're in town. So, they tied the telephone operator, two-tonne Tessie O'Shea and myself, together. (Grunting) Good, good, good! Over here. No, go that way! No!

CARL: It took four days to shoot that scene, because there was a lot of scenes where we-- One we're tied in a chair, then we're tied and we're lying on the ground, then we try to stand up and go down a flight of steps. There was a lot of work to do. Tessie and I were tied face to face for about four days and she said, "Well, love, we're getting to know each other quite well, aren't we?" (Elwy laughing) Yes, and it came out as one of the funniest scenes in the picture. Don't lean that way. Just-- Just one more-- Don't--! (Both shouting indistinctly)

The film was nominated at the Oscars for best picture and won at the Golden Globes, but it also drew some unexpected fans.

NORMAN: It was screened six times in the Kremlin. You know, if they don't like something, the Russian audiences go-- (Making "ch" sound) They make a sound. So, when the Russian captain was threatening the town to get his men back and so on and challenging, you know, they all started-- (Making "ch" sound) --making this sound, because they thought this was another film that was going to make the Russians the heavies. Of course, when they save the child and then the Russians kind of become heroic and Roza-- You know, Rozanov, Alan Arkin becomes the only intelligent person in the entire film, who doesn't a panic, because, you know, everybody's panicked, and all of a sudden they started to clap, and I realized that it was having a tremendous effect upon them, and they all stood up and gave it a standing ovation, and I turned, and here was Vladimir Pozner crying and people were crying. I said, "Why are they crying?" He says, "They're crying because they realize that we should have made this film first." So, that was the beginning of Glasnost, in my opinion. It was a film that was about the absurdity of international conflict. It was a film that was making a very strong statement, politically, to the world at a time when those two countries were at loggerheads, and where a third world war was being-- was threatening all of us, and it's the only film I've made that is in the Library of Congress in the Congressional Record.

From Norman Jewison's satires to SCTV's characters' warmth and wit Canadian humour shines with intelligence, empathy, and self-awareness. You have to make films from deep down within you and not worry about no one understanding you or not be self-conscious about being Canadian. It's rooted in satire, distance, and improv. And, man, can we use that. SCTV! Traits born from seeing the world with both kindness and irony. It reminds us that laughter, especially the kind that makes us see ourselves a little clearer, might just be Canada's greatest natural resource.

So, when it comes to putting people down or when it comes to making fun of something, even ourselves, Canadians just have a way of doing it, and it's-- it's funny!