Catherine O’Hara Talks ‘Beetlejuice,’ ‘Schitt’s Creek,’ ‘Home Alone’ and Her Early Exposure to Gilda Radner at USC Comedy Festival
Carla Renata Ingmar Bergman had Liv Ullmann. Woody Allen had Diane Keaton and Christopher Guest had Catherine O’Hara — that’s how actor John Michael Higgins summed up the stature of O’Hara’s work on screen with Guest and other top directors during a wide-ranging Q&A held Saturday as part of the sixth annual USC Comedy Festival. The Emmy-winning O’Hara was honored with the Jack Oakie and Victoria Horne Oakie Masters of Comedy Award at the festival, in recognition of her long, and often underrated, career in film, TV, stage and sketch comedy. The Okie Foundation honors the lives and work of two comedy legends, Jack Oakie and Victoria Horne Oakie. Jack Okie won a supporting actor Oscar for Charlie Chaplins’ 1940 satire “The Great Dictator.” Victoria Okie was a comedy trouper who had supporting roles (as Victoria Horne) in numerous films, most memorably opposite Jimmy Stewart in 1950’s “Harvey.”