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Jiminy Glick is a fictional character portrayed by Martin Short in the Emmy-nominated TV series Primetime Glick (2001-2003), the subsequent film Jiminy Glick in Lalawood, and Short's Broadway show Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me. He began as a recurring character on The Martin Short Show; when that show was cancelled, he was spun off into his own series, Primetime Glick.

[edit] Character origin

When Short hosted Saturday Night Live in the 1996 season, he played a character named Pinky Nye who seems to have been a proto-Glick: similar physique, voice, and attention span, and forever forgetting to take "ginko bilobo" (as both Nye and Glick pronounce it).

[edit] Fictional Biography

Born in 1948, in Akron, Ohio (although he has claimed to have been born in Omaha, Nebraska, or Baton Rouge, Louisiana), Jiminy Glick was often a loner and would be made fun of regularly because of his weight at a young age. However, when he became a teenager, his life changed forever, when the play, Forty Carats, staring Lana Turner came to town. He was asked to join the show and traveled to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he played Onlooker Number Two in the cast, which he said was "Like a Dream!". After his short acting career, Jiminy became the personal assistant to Charles Bronson, for about five years. He had planned on working for Robert Vaughn, but as Jiminy said, "But he didn't pay!". However, Bronson was very cruel to Jiminy and threw him off his boat one time, mistaking him for Sebastian Cabot. Luckily, Jiminy was picked up by George Maharis from the TV show, Route 66 and his cousin, Leon Maharis. Since being cast away by Charles Bronson, Jiminy was out of work, so Leon asked Jiminy if he wanted to work at Chasen's in Beverly Hills, California with him as a bus boy. Jiminy jumped at the chance. While there, he ran into numerous Hollywood celebrities, such as Justin Timberlake, Madonna, Britney Spears, James Dean, and Charleton Heston. Then, one day, while catering a party at Roddy McDowall's house, George Schlatter from Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, offered Jiminy a pilot episode deal for a daytime talk show that Jiminy accepted and started at the Beverly Garland Motel. And, as Jiminy has said, "that's how it all started!"

Jiminy is currently married to a heavily-medicated, alcoholic Southern woman named Dixie portrayed by Saturday Night Live and Designing Women veteran Jan Hooks. Together they have four wonderfully strapping young boys: Morgan, Mason, Matthew and Modine. Morgan and Mason are teenaged twins and Matthew and Modine are ten-year-old twins; in one episode Jiminy casually commented that they were actually triplets, but he sent the third one away because "two was so much already."

[edit] Appearances

[edit] On The Martin Short Show

In the show, Glick is a famous television interviewer who has been around Hollywood for a long time. Despite this, he remains laughably ignorant about pop culture and most entertainment news, though he considers himself just the opposite. His interviews with stars are characterized by his patronizing attitude, often bizarre questions about obscure matters, and awkward body language. He is extremely forgetful, and takes ginkgo biloba as a memory aid (although, as he often points out, the catch twenty-two thing is that he doesn't remember to take it). Glick is also very overweight, and during interviews he will sometimes aggressively stuff his face with junk food (which is always present on the table) at a moment's notice. Glick would occasionally offer food to his guests, but if they reached for it without being offered, he would snatch it away, growling, "No! All for me!" On top of his many other eccentricities, Glick has an unforgettably peculiar voice, shifting within a single sentence from a high, effeminate whine to a deep growl.

[edit] In Primetime Glick

On the series, Glick is joined by long-suffering, heavily made-up announcer and band leader, Adrian Van Voorhees (Michael McKean), who also resembles Lawrence Welk from the Lawrence Welk Show. Adrian plays a full classical harp, leading a band of scraggly-looking immigrants (they do a very poor job of synching up their "performance" with the music that is playing), and while he generally attempts to conduct himself in a professional manner, he occasionally loses his patience with Jiminy's idiocy and constant, usually unintentional put-downs. He can sometimes be heard muttering disgustedly about Jiminy ("You are fat...sloppy fat") but Jiminy remains blissfully unaware of Adrian's hostility. Glick is also often assailed by Short's long-running, Bette Davis-esque drag character, Miss Gathercole, a bitter, ancient woman who is a regular in Glick's studio audience (alongside her increasingly short-tempered nurse) and freely offers commentary on Glick's various failings and her own latest adventures.

In addition to the interviews, the show also featured many Second City TV-like parody commercials and Glick reading storybook tales to a group of young children, appropriately called, Lalawood Fables. These stories were usually Hollywood Babylon-like tales of tinseltown degradation, acted out by puppets. However, most of his stories tend to go right over his young audience's heads. The show sometimes had a more fanciful side, as when the puppets would apparently come to life, such as, on two occasions when Jiminy and Jason Alexander spent too long in a steamroom and emerged dwarf-sized, and when Jiminy accidentally crushed Robert Downey Jr., also in Jiminy's steamroom.

[edit] Other appearances

In Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, Glick interviews (through complete improvisation) an audience volunteer tasked to become the show's "new star" after Martin Short is struck by lightning (a ploy to allow Short enough time to don the Jiminy Glick make-up).

Martin Short played the character in an episode of MADtv. An interactive, constantly updated website is kept by "Jiminy Glick" [1] filled with photos, video clips, commentary, blogs and postings from over 9,215 friends of Glick and Martin Short.

[edit] References

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