Comic legend Steve Martin turned 78 this week. This many years into his career Steve remains wildly popular and continues to produce entertaining work of high-quality like his Hulu series Only Murders in the Building. However, everybody has to start somewhere.
Years before blowing up as in frequent guest host on Saturday Night Live in the mid 70s, Steve worked as a writer on The Smothers Brothers Show, for which he won an Emmy. But in between that time, Steve got his first national exposure as a performer (and writer) on The Ray Stevens Show. For those of you luckily too young to remember, Ray Stevens was a singer who became known for doing allegedly funny comedy songs such as Ahab the Arab, Guitarzan, and The Streak.
In 1970, CBS gave Ray his own comedy variety show that lasted seven episodes. Even as a long time Steve Martin fan, I was today years old when I learned about the existence of the show. Turns out, in celebration of Steve’s birthday this week, Ray posted a link to a collection of some of Steve’s appearances on the program to Facebook. You can certainly see the seeds of the performer that Steve would grow into in the next few years. It’s also amazing to see him with hair this dark.
