Catherine O’Hara didn’t just make people laugh.
She revolutionized what funny women could be on television.
Long before Moira Rose became a household name, O’Hara was creating complicated, struggling women who wore functioning faces atop uncontrollable problems—characters that Seventies television had no idea it desperately needed.
And according to comedian Merrill Markoe, who wrote this heartfelt tribute, O’Hara’s impact went far beyond entertainment—she became a role model for women in comedy when there were virtually none to be found.
Finding Funny Women in a Man’s World
Markoe recalls her early obsession with comedy during a time when the field was dominated almost exclusively by men. Then SCTV arrived from Canada, bringing with it something revolutionary: extremely hilarious women.
The show’s format worked as a weekly X-ray of superficial, hacky, cliché-ridden commercial television that saturated airwaves at that time. And at its center was O’Hara, crafting multilayered portrayals of deeply disturbed female characters.
Markoe remembers exactly where she was and what she wore when she first discovered O’Hara’s smart and scrupulously crafted comedy stylings. That’s how powerful the impact was.
Dusty Towne: Raw, Raunchy, and Unforgettable
The sketch that made Markoe laugh hardest was “The Dusty Towne Sexy Holiday Special”—O’Hara’s parody of bawdy 1960s comedienne Rusty Warren, famous for her “naughty adult entertainment” album Knockers Up!
O’Hara’s Dusty Towne emerged from inside a snowman sporting thin drawn-on eyebrows, blue eyeshadow, a gigantic Marie Antoinette pouf hairstyle, feather boa, long cigarette holder, and substantial cleavage. Holiday gift-wrap accents adorned her red taffeta dress, complemented by white gloves and star-shaped earrings the size of human fists.
During her crowd work, Dusty asked an audience member from Canada what street he lived on.
Do you know a Dinky Withers at 83?
When he said no, Dusty delivered her punchline—“Well, it does!”—before repeating her catchphrase:
Isn’t that cute? Isn’t that true?
Markoe confesses she can’t fully explain why that muttered phrase struck her as the most hilarious thing she’d ever seen on television. Maybe because what Dusty said was neither cute nor true.
The Psychology Behind O’Hara’s Characters
O’Hara became queen of self-abusing, hard-living, heading-over-the-hill entertainment veterans—women trapped behind façades of slick showbiz tics that barely covered active volcanoes of psychosis bubbling beneath their surfaces.
Her characters demonstrated how quickly cheerful mannerisms could morph into wailing typhoons of uncorked madness. In a 2019 Vulture interview, O’Hara explained her approach:
I think there’s a lot of… insecure delusional. I love playing people who have no real sense of the impression they’re making on anyone else. But the more I say it, the more I realize that’s all of us, and the internet, social networking, is a desperate attempt to try to control what others think of you.
Perhaps Dusty’s continual repeating of “Isn’t that cute, isn’t that true” was her attempt to convince herself that shocking remarks made her adorable.
Lola Heatherton: Damaged Glamour Personified
Another particularly damaged O’Hara creation was Lola Heatherton, woven from one part dangerously emotional late-stage Judy Garland and three parts Joey Heatherton—a glamorous variety-show star famous for unfortunate public incidents involving personal difficulties.
Lola arrived at her “Love Spirit” special in silver lamé, enormous platinum hairdo, white lipstick, huge false eyelashes, and big statement jewelry. Then she stepped onto her custom-built set, apparently drunk, and immediately fell flat onto her face.
Always a trouper, minutes later she threw her whole heart into a song about being terribly alone:
Oh, go ahead. No one cares. No one dares to. You’re all just parasites, draining me of love….
Yet by show’s end, she was so high from performing that she announced finding new love with someone else on set. The special concluded with Lola shouting to audiences:
I love you all and I want to bear your children!
From Lola to Moira Rose
A straight line can be drawn from Lola to Moira Rose, O’Hara’s maniacal former soap-opera star, wig enthusiast, and erratic wife/mom on Schitt’s Creek—roles that earned her an Emmy and Golden Globe.
O’Hara also contributed brilliantly funny, mostly improvised characters to Christopher Guest films, often playing one half of high-energy married couples with hopeless show-business dreams they’ll never realize.
In Waiting for Guffman, her rendition of “Midnight at the Oasis” showed her trying so hard to get everything rehearsed just right that viewers could see her mouthing her husband’s lines when he spoke. She sang too loudly and only sort of got dance moves right—which led to a later scene at a Chinese restaurant where she drank too much and berated her husband for being uncircumcised.
Physical Comedy Mastery
O’Hara was also a fantastic physical comedian. All her overwrought, exhausted ladies—worn out from frenzies of manic dancing—would inevitably trip and fall onto their faces or backward out of frame.
Even in her iconic “Kevin’s not here” scene from Home Alone, her mother character Kate McCallister started out armed with cheery self-confidence. Seconds later—not unlike Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff—her eyes widened as her face registered that she was saying her son was missing.
Expression turned to horror and BOOM—only then did she fall over backwards.
Meticulous in Art and Life
Markoe only met O’Hara in person a few times. But after chatting at a party, she hired O’Hara’s housekeeper based on her glowing recommendation.
That woman cleaned so meticulously that she scrubbed all numbers off Markoe’s oven dial, then took apart her entire bed frame and polished it piece by piece. She was so exacting that she only cleaned two rooms before they parted ways.
Thinking about it today, Markoe realizes that painstakingly thorough process made her a perfect match for O’Hara—comedy’s most consummately off-centered grande dame.