Memorize these names: Lauren Ash, Shelly Gossman, Anthony LeBlanc, Brad Morris, Andy St. Clair and Emily Wilson.
In the year 2013 you’ll fork over $14.50 for a ticket to see one of them in a goofy 18-34 demographic comedy. Or you’ll watch two of them launch a catch-phrase on Saturday Night Live.
Or possibly (in our accelerated future) you’ll see three of them starring in their own NBC comedy series about a wealthy blogger who blows all his money and takes a job as a bus driver in a post-post-ironic homage to Ralph Kramden, with a girlfriend named Alice and a Kramer-like best friend who runs the green initiative at the local sewer.
Because those six kids star in the current comedy show at Second City, which is celebrating 50 Years of Funny this year. So what? So here’s a partial roll call of Second City alumni:
Tina Fey
Steve Carell
Amy Sedaris
Bill Murray
Gilda Radner
Chris Farley
Joan Rivers
John Belushi
Dan Aykroyd
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Mike Myers
Stephen Colbert
Ackroyd, Belushi and Radner were three of the seven original cast members of Saturday Night Live. (Jane Curtain, Garrett Morris, Larraine Newman and Chevy Chase were the other four.) Bill Murray replaced Chase the next year, so you could call it 50% of the original eight if you like.
Add Farley, Fey, and Myers, and you could make a pretty firm case for Second City as the breeding ground for success on SNL and in the movies. Colbert and Carell seem to be doing OK, too.
Which is why it’s almost certain that in 2013 you’ll be laying down your $14.50 for Ash, Gossman, LeBlanc, Morris, St. Clair or Wilson Based on his devil leer, we’re putting our main money on Morris.
(Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton in a 2008 sketch from Saturday Night Live.)
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