In a case of epic miscasting, an elfin, 24-year-old Martin Short played a brooding, macho convict in the gay prison drama “Fortune and Men’s Eyes” in 1974.
Afterward, as he writes in his wonderfully self-deprecating memoir, “I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend,” Short’s then-girlfriend Gilda Radner met him at the stage door.
“Aw, honey,” she said, hugging him, “don’t ever do a play like this again. Ever. Promise.”
He hasn’t, going on instead to hilarious turns onstage, in film and on TV. Now he’s back on Broadway, through the end of March, in “It’s Only a Play” as the conflicted actor formerly played by Nathan Lane.
Granted, Short says, Lane’s are “ridiculously big shoes” to fill, and Short wasn’t sure he wanted to fill them, busy as he was with other projects, his book and TV’s “Mulaney” among them.
But Mike Nichols insisted. “He phoned and said, ‘You should do this play —it fits you like a glove,’ ” Short says of his friend and idol, the late director and writer he calls “the smartest person in the room.”
“It was like the pope telling me to buy a rosary: ‘Yes, sir!’ ”
Sitting backstage the other day with a mug of tea, Short radiates a sweetness and youthful charm rare in a 64-year-old. And no, he says, it’s not plastic surgery — just Pilates, healthful habits and good DNA.
“I’ve always had this weird amount of energy,” he says. “If you do what you love doing, that helps.”
That energy served him well on “Saturday Night Live.” The show’s 10th season, in 1984 and ’85, sparkled with such Short creations as man-child Ed Grimley and the manic member of a synchronized swimming team.
All told, he says he’s proudest of his scenes as Grimley, a character he made famous on Toronto’s “SCTV.” Back then, the ready-for-riffing players included Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara and Short’s future sister-in-law, Andrea Martin (she was married for a while to the brother of Short’s late wife, actress Nancy Dolman, who passed away in 2010 after a battle with ovarian cancer). Andrea’s tendency to flash her breasts at new acquaintances merits a warm mention in Short’s memoir.
Short became so used to improvising that he was stymied when the “SNL” team ordered him to use cue cards.
“I took my contact lens out — I just have one — because I didn’t want to see them,” he says. “So there were times when I was doing Ed and I’d just keep talking. I think those were pretty good!”
Then there was Jiminy Glick, the oily talk-show host the actor created during 1999’s “The Martin Short Show.” Glick surfaced again in Short’s 2006 Broadway outing, “Fame Becomes Me,” where he’d pluck a celebrity from the crowd to interview onstage. On opening night, he chose Jerry Seinfeld.
“Tom Hanks was in the audience and his son Chester turned to him and said, ‘Dad, how come he didn’t pick you?’ ” Short says. “It became a thing to go up there. We even had our own celebrity booker.”
There’s no shortage of stars in “It’s Only a Play,” Matthew Broderick and Stockard Channing among them. And that, Short says, is part of the show’s allure.
“My sister Nora is coming to see it and I asked what else she wanted to see while she’s here. [She said,] ‘I don’t know, honey. Things with stars!’
“That’s why this is a hit,” he adds. “People just want to see people they love to see.”