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Goodbye to a Healer

Kathy Werner
Posted 2/18/22

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about Louie Anderson since his death on January 21, 2022. I always liked Louie but hadn’t really followed his career since his early days of stand-up.

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Lifelines

Goodbye to a Healer

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I’ve been doing a lot of reading about Louie Anderson since his death on January 21, 2022. I always liked Louie but hadn’t really followed his career since his early days of stand-up.

He was next-to-last in a family with 11 children. His long-suffering mother unintentionally provided lots of material for his comedy as did his alcoholic father, who had been a trumpeter for Hoagy Carmichael’s band.

The family lived in poverty in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In his book “Dear Dad: Letters from an Adult Child” Louie gives us some insight into his childhood and his start in show business. He quit school by walking out after being bullied by his gym teacher.

He went home and his father told him he’d have to get a job. At his brothers’ urging, Louie decided to make money by selling stolen goods. He started with women’s clothing, but his brothers suggested that he begin fencing snowmobiles, which were apparently easy to steal in Minnesota in the winter.  

When the police arrived and asked to see the garage, it was filled with stolen snowmobiles and Louie’s day of judgment arrived. Thanks to the paternal guidance of his parole officer, Louie returned to school and later became a gifted counselor at a home for troubled youth.

One night, he and his colleagues went out to a local bar that was having a stand-up comedian. After the show, his buddies told him that he was funnier than the performer.

That was it. Louie went home, wrote some material, and performed at the next show. He decided to quit his job and become a comedian. He began doing stand-up gigs on the road, though he often had to ask his mother to send money for gas.

Eventually he found his way to California and made a name for himself at the Comedy Store. By 1984, at the age of 31, he appeared on a TV comedy showcase hosted by Rodney Dangerfield. Later that year, he was on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, a gigantic achievement.

His career continued to grow. He did stand-up on TV and in larger venues. He created a cartoon series about his life and worked in film and on TV. He recently appeared in “Search Party and won an Emmy playing the mother of Zach Galifianakis on “Baskets,” a character he based on his mother.  

Louie survived his less-than-ideal childhood, and in his “Dear Dad” book, he made peace with his deceased father. He discovered that his father had suffered through childhood.

At age 10, Louie’s father and his sister were taken out of their home and put up in front of a church congregation to see who would adopt them. They were adopted by different families and wouldn’t see one another for 50 years.

His father grew up being treated like a second-class citizen by the family that took him in. Looking to escape his unhappy life, Louie’s dad enlisted in the Army by lying about his age and served as a bugler in World War II.

As he learned about his father’s childhood traumas, Louie came to a place of understanding and forgiveness.

In a March 2016 interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross, Louie said “…imagining (my) mother and family as (my) audience helped shape (my) family-friendly humor. ‘I've always been trying to heal families.’”  

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