Ed Grimley

Ed Grimley
First appearance	"Indecent Exposure - SCTV Movie of the Week: The Nutty Lab Assistant" SCTV November 12, 1982
Created by	Martin Short
Portrayed by	Martin Short

Edward Mayhoff 'Ed' Grimley is a fictional character created and portrayed by Martin Short. Developed amongst The Second City improv comedy troupe, Grimley made his television debut on the sketch comedy show SCTV in 1982, leading to popular success for both Short and the persona. Short continued to portray Grimley on Saturday Night Live and in various other appearances. The character also starred in the 1988 animated series The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, as well as appearing in Short's 2012 comedy special I, Martin Short, Goes Home.

Concept and Creation

Martin Short originated the character on Toronto's Second City stage as an unnamed school parent in a sketch. Originally, his hair was simply very greasy and unkempt, but another cast member joked offstage that the height of the hair seemed to increase with each performance. In an interview, Short said that he was inspired by a scene from the John Wayne movie McLintock and started greasing it straight up. Short noticed an incidental baring of his teeth raised laughs; that too became a character trait. Over numerous appearances, the character of Ed Grimley began to take shape.

Ed Grimley is an excessively cowlicked, hyperactive manchild who is obsessed with banal popular culture, particularly Wheel of Fortune and its host, Pat Sajak. He also loves to play the triangle, which for him consists of playing a recorded musical piece, striking the triangle once, and then wildly dancing to the recording.

Appearances

Short was added to the cast of Second City's television offshoot SCTV in 1982, debuting the Ed Grimley character in the skit "SCTV Movie of the Week: The Nutty Lab Assistant". Grimley became a SCTV fixture, appearing in the various shows, commercials, promos, and "behind-the-scenes" dramas that made up the fictional channel's programming. After the show's end in 1984, Short moved to the more prominent Saturday Night Live, bringing his breakout character with him.

With Grimley, his best-known original character, Martin Short's popularity on SNL proved to be the springboard to a long career in film and TV. He appeared as Ed Grimley in his 1985 Showtime special Martin Short: Concert For the North Americas, at Comic Relief 1986, and in 1989's I, Martin Short, Goes Hollywood. Grimley became a cartoon character in Hanna-Barbera's 1988 animated series The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, featuring Second City colleagues Joe Flaherty (also reprising his SCTV character, Count Floyd), Catherine O'Hara and Andrea Martin as series regulars.

Short briefly revived the Ed Grimley role in his 1995 series The Show Formerly Known As the Martin Short Show, for a spoof of the comedy film Dave, and appeared again in a 1996 episode of Muppets Tonight, in which Grimley marries Miss Piggy to obtain an $85 inheritance from his deceased great-uncle. The character seemingly died later that year on Saturday Night Live, in the skit "Ed Grimley in Heaven" (though Grimley is brought back to life by his guardian angel [played by guest star Chevy Chase] after showing a video of Ed Grimley's life and commenting that he needs to do more with it before he can come back to Heaven). Grimley would however make a number of appearances in 1999's The Martin Short (Talk) Show.

Ed Grimley made a brief onstage appearance, triangle in hand, in the 2006 Broadway show Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me. He appeared again in 2009's Let Freedom Hum: An Evening of Comedy Hosted By Martin Short. Short reprised his role as Ed Grimley in a Saturday Night Live parody music video of Drake's Hotline Bling in November 2015.

The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley

The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley
Genre	Animation Live action Comedy Satire
Based on	Ed Grimley created by Martin Short
Directed by	Jim Drake Bob Goe Don Lusk Paul Sommer
Starring	Joe Flaherty
Voices of	Martin Short Andrea Martin Catherine O'Hara Frank Welker Jonathan Winters
Composer(s)	Michael Tavera
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of episodes	13
Production
Executive producer(s)	William Hanna Joseph Barbera Freddy Monnickendam Martin Short
Producer(s)	John Hays Scott Shaw Mark Young
Running time	30 min.
Production company(s)	Hanna-Barbera Productions SEPP International S.A.
Distributor	Warner Bros. Television Distribution
Release
Original network	NBC
Audio format	Stereo
Original release	September 10, 1988 (1988-09-10) – December 3, 1988 (1988-12-03)
Chronology
Related shows	SCTV Saturday Night Live

The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley is a 1988 animated series produced by Hanna-Barbera starring Martin Short's Ed Grimley as well as other characters and actors from Second City's SCTV. Only one season of 13 episodes was produced. Despite the short run, the show is the only Saturday morning animated adaptation of both an SCTV character and a Saturday Night Live character. Episodes featured Ed Grimley in adventures, which start out as mundane, but turn very surreal and cartoonish, interspersed with science lessons from The Amazing Gustav Brothers, Roger and Emil, and a live-action segment with a "scary story" presented as a show-within-a-show by Grimley's favorite television host, SCTV's Count Floyd (played by SCTV cast member Joe Flaherty). Grimley's fellow cartoon characters included Grimley's landlord Leo Freebus (voiced by Jonathan Winters), Leo's wife Deidre (voiced by Andrea Martin), his ditzy, amateur actress neighbor Ms. Malone (voiced by Catherine O'Hara; a female character by the name of Ms. Malone did appear on an SNL version of an Ed Grimley sketch on the season ten episode hosted by Alex Karras, but Ms. Malone was played by that episode's musical guest Tina Turner), and her little brother, Wendell (voiced by Danny Cooksey).

Guest stars on the show included Christopher Guest and SCTV alumni Eugene Levy and Dave Thomas. The show also featured the voices of René Auberjonois, Kenneth Mars, and Arte Johnson from Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. While not renewed for a second season, the show was seen in reruns in 1996 on Cartoon Network's unnamed pre-Adult Swim-era late-night programming block, which consisted of such shows as Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, reruns of Looney Tunes cartoon shorts, and repeats of old Hanna-Barbera shows from the 1960s and '70s. Hanna-Barbera sponsored an Ed Grimley look-alike contest midway through the first season, which was won by 10-year-old Matt Mitchell from Des Moines, Iowa.

Additional voices

Episode list

№	Title	Original airdate
1	"Tall, Dark and Hansom"	1988 September 10
Ed fills in for his cousin driving a hansom cab, and ends up in a horse race.
2	"Ed's Debut"	1988 September 17
Ed mistakenly thinks he is asked to play triangle for the city's philharmonic. On the way to the concert hall, Grimley is arrested and imprisoned for a bank robbery he did not commit.
3	"E.G., Go Home"	1988 September 24
Ed and Wendall, the annoying brother of his crush, a ditzy amateur actress named Miss Malone, go on an amusement park rocket ride, taking them to another planet which is ruled by an alien queen who sounds like Bette Davis.
4	"Ed's in Hot Water"	1988 October 1
Looking after the apartment building for his landlady Deidre Freebus while she and her husband are on vacation, Ed tries to fix the water heater and ends up going down the drain, into the ocean, and on an island, where he finds a stranded, Amelia Earhart-esque aviator.
5	"Crate Expectations"	1988 October 8
Ed gets trapped in a crate while trying to get a birthday present for Miss Malone. Meanwhile, Miss Malone, depressed over being passed up for a TV movie and growing older, meets a guardian angel who shows her what life would be like if she was never born.
6	"Grimley, P.F.C."	1988 October 15
In the wrong line to return a library book, Ed joins the Army and ends up second banana to a Bob Hope-like USO performer (voiced by Dave Thomas).
7	"Moby Is Lost"	1988 October 22
Moby, Ed's pet goldfish, is missing and Ed hires a television-obsessed sea captain to lead the search.
8	"Good Neighbor Ed"	1988 October 29
Ed wins a contest but to fulfill the contest rules he needs to take a picture of all of his neighbors.
9	"Driver Ed"	1988 November 5
Miss Malone needs to learn how to drive and calls upon Ed to teach her, but an accident turns the two into wandering spirits who haunt Mr. Freebus.
10	"Blowin' in the Wind"	1988 November 12
While on his way to his aunt's house for a game of Monopoly, Ed is caught up in the same tornado that sent Dorothy to Oz, only he ends up on the farm with Aunt Em and Uncle Henry where a traveling summer stock show, with a Jerry Lewis-like director, are hoping for a shot at Broadway.
11	"Eyewitness Ed"	1988 November 19
Needing hot dog franks for a party, Ed makes a run to the store, which resembles the Bates Motel, and witnesses Der Bingle rob the proprietor (voiced by Eugene Levy) for which he testifies and must go into the Witness Protection Program.
12	"Eddy, We Hardly Knew Ye"	1988 November 26
Ed goes into the hospital for a tonsillectomy where his roommate is a werewolf (voiced by Christopher Guest).
13	"The Irving Who Came to Dinner"	1988 December 3
Irving Cohen pays a visit and helps Ed reveal a couple of hucksters.

Home Media releases

On January 29, 2013, Warner Archive released The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley: The Complete Series on DVD in region 1 as part of their Hanna–Barbera Classics Collection. This is a Manufacture-on-Demand (MOD) release, available exclusively through Warner's online store, MoviesUnlimited.com, and Amazon.com.^[1]

References

↑ "The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley - The Warner Archive Schedules a 'Complete Series' Set".

External links

Children's programming on NBC in the 1980s

First-run animated series	Casper and the Angels (1979–80) Fred and Barney Meet The Thing (1979–80) The Super Globetrotters (1979–80) The New Shmoo (1979–80) The New Adventures of Flash Gordon (1979–80) Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo (1979–80) Godzilla (1978–81) The Flintstone Comedy Show (1980–82) The Smurfs (1981–90) The Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam!/Hero High (1981–82) Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981–83) Space Stars (1981–82) The Flintstone Funnies (1982–84) Shirt Tales (1982–84) The Gary Coleman Show (1982–83) The Incredible Hulk (1982–83) Alvin and the Chipmunks (1983–91) Mister T (1983–85) Snorks (1984–90) Pink Panther and Sons (1984–85) Kidd Video (1984–87) Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears (1985–89) It's Punky Brewster (1985–87) Kissyfur (1986–87) Foofur (1986–88) Lazer Tag Academy (1986–87) Fraggle Rock: The Animated Series (1987–88) ALF: The Animated Series (1987–89) ALF Tales (1988–89) The New Archies (1987) The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley (1988–89) Camp Candy (1989–90) Captain N: The Game Master (1989–92) The Karate Kid (1989–90)

First-run live-action series	One to Grow On (1983–89) Going Bananas (1984) I'm Telling! (1987–88) 2 Hip 4 TV (1988) Saved by the Bell (1989–93)

Rebroadcasts	The Daffy Duck Show (The Daffy/Speedy Show) Jonny Quest The Jetsons Dynomutt, Dog Wonder Hong Kong Phooey Batman and the Super 7 Bullwinkle (1981–82) Thundarr the Barbarian Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids

Schedules	1979–80 1980–81 1981–82 1982–83 1983–84 1984–85 1985–86 1986–87 1987–88 1988–89 1989–90

Related topics	Animation in the United States in the television era Modern animation in the United States

Saturday Night Live

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Characters and sketches	The Barry Gibb Talk Show Bill Brasky Bill Swerski's Superfans Blizzard Man The Blues Brothers The Boston Teens Canteen Boy Celebrity Jeopardy! The Church Lady Coffee Talk The Coneheads The Continental Debbie Downer Ed Grimley Emily Litella Father Guido Sarducci The Folksmen Gerald "T-Bones" Tibbons Hanukkah Harry Hans and Franz Happy Fun Ball Hillary Clinton The Kitchen Boys The Land of Gorch Land Shark Larry the Lobster The Last Voyage of the Starship Enterprise MacGruber Mango Mary Katherine Gallagher Matt Foley More cowbell Mr. Bill The Nerds Olympia Cafe Pat Roseanne Roseannadanna Samurai Futaba Sarah Palin The Spartan Cheerleaders Sprockets Stefon Stuart Smalley Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber TV Funhouse The Ambiguously Gay Duo The X-Presidents Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer Wayne's World Weekend Update What Up with That

Digital Shorts	Boombox Dick in a Box Hugs I Just Had Sex I'm on a Boat Jizz in My Pants Lazy Sunday Like a Boss Jack Sparrow The Creep YOLO 3-Way (The Golden Rule)

Films based on sketches	Mr. Mike's Mondo Video (1979) The Blues Brothers (1980) Mr. Bill's Real Life Adventures (1986) Bob Roberts (1992) Mr. Saturday Night (1992) Wayne's World (1992) Wayne's World 2 (1993) Coneheads (1993) It's Pat (1994) Stuart Saves His Family (1995) A Night at the Roxbury (1998) Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) Superstar (1999) The Ladies Man (2000) A Mighty Wind (2003) Harold (2008) MacGruber (2010)

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SCTV

Directors	Milad Bessada (1976-1977) George Bloomfield (1977-1979) John Blanchard (1980-1984)

Producers	Sheldon Patinkin (1976-1977) Andrew Alexander (1976-1984) Bernard Sahlins (1976-1979) Charles Allard (1980-1981) Alan Rucker (1980-1981)

Cast	John Candy (1976–1979, 1981–1983) Robin Duke (1980–81) Joe Flaherty (1976-1984) Eugene Levy (1976-1984) Andrea Martin (1976-1984) Rick Moranis (1980–1982) Catherine O'Hara (1976–1979, 1981–1982) Harold Ramis (1976–1979) Tony Rosato (1980–1981) Martin Short (1982-1984) Dave Thomas (1976–1982)

Characters	Guy Caballero Earl Camembert Irving Cohen Edith Prickley Count Floyd Ed Grimley Bob and Doug McKenzie (appearances) Floyd Robertson The Shmenge Brothers

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