The comedy of Wayne & Shuster

Long before television there was Wayne & Shuster. Their names are synonymous with Canadian entertainment. Over the years the styles and the material may have changed but their comedy pioneering gave at least three generations of new comedians the confidence to do the same.

Comedy duo Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster first met in the tenth grade at Harbord Collegiate and were a team ever since. They both graduated from the University of Toronto with English degrees. During their university days, they wrote, produced, and starred in a number of variety shows. They also edited and wrote for the university newspaper, the Varsity.  

The two began work for CBC during the Second World War and gained popularity for their performances on The Army Show, a comedy and music stage review that entertained Canadian troops at home as well as in Belgium, France and Holland. Upon their release from the army they wrote for a CBC Radio show that dealt with veterans' rehabilitation. The government wanted a show that would explain veterans' benefits "without being dull." It also provided lessons on how to deal with the problems of readjusting to civilian life. Wayne and Shuster came up with The Johnny Home Show about a fictional veteran getting re-settled. The comedians note that they used veterans' benefits themselves, pointing out a typewriter they bought with a "tools of the trade" allowance.

Listen to a clip:


In 1946, they began the long-running Wayne & Shuster Show on radio and continued it on television from 1954-1990.

Watch an episode:


Their legendary international success came in 1958 when they were asked to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show in New York. Sullivan, the host of the iconic American variety show, hand picks Wayne and Shuster and signs them to an unprecedented one-year contract.

"They are literate, they are truly amusing and gay," Sullivan told CBC a few days before the duo's debut. "I told them, please stay in Canada and don't be contaminated by any of our gag writers down here."

Listen to the interview:


For their 1958 debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, Wayne and Shuster performed one of their most memorable sketches, Rinse the Blood Off My Toga. They turned the assassination of Julius Caesar into a hard-boiled detective story with the famous catch phrase "Julie don't go!"

Over the next seven years, they appeared an unprecedented 67 times. There were constant attempts to lure them to the U.S. but they chose to remain in Canada, continuing to work at the CBC.

In an interview with CBC's Peter Gzowski, Wayne and Shuster cited the Shakespearean baseball game sketch as the height of their career. Their famous 1958 skit featured characters from Hamlet and Macbeth playing baseball on opposing teams.

By the late 1970s, however, some critics described Wayne and Shuster as hopelessly out of date, sophomoric and often embarrassingly bad. But they managed to retain their fans. In 1980, 80 half-hour specials were syndicated worldwide including the U.S. and South Africa.

Wayne died on July 18, 1990. Shuster died on Jan. 13, 2002.

Posted on Nov 2, 2011 6:00:00 AM