Frank Shuster was the straight man of Canada's famous comedy duo, Wayne and Shuster. The pair met at Toronto's Harbord Collegiate and worked together at making people laugh until the death of Johnny Wayne in 1990.
During their long partnership, they entertained audiences on three national TV networks. That included a record-breaking 67 appearances on Ed Sullivan's Sunday night CBS variety show.
Over the years, their duo-based comedy sketches influenced many other Canadians who went on to create the Royal Canadian Air Farce, Saturday Night Live, SCTV, CODCO and The Kids in the Hall.
Shuster's seminal show business influences began after his family moved to Niagara Falls, where his father was the projectionist at the Colonial Theatre. Young Frank laughed while learning to read the intertitles of Charlie Chaplin's silent films. When sound came along, he took early lessons in comic timing and wordplay watching the Marx Brothers.
When his family moved to the Detroit/Windsor area, his entertainment education expanded with violin and tap-dancing lessons. At 12, Frank even tried his hand at songwriting with, "I'm Hot and Bothered Over You." It was not a hit, but funnier things were on the horizon.
After moving back to Toronto, Shuster attended Harbord Collegiate. He met up with fellow Grade 10 student Lou Weingarten and both joined Harbord's Oola Boola Club, where they were taught the basics of comedy sketches and drama. P.G. Wodehouse and Stephen Leacock were on the club's reading list.
Shuster and Weingarten's friendship evolved as both attended University College at the University of Toronto. They studied English and took their love of words onto the stage for the college follies and onto the pages of the campus paper,The Varsity.
During a summer drama course, a director observed that Shuster tended to slip in and out of characterizations a bit too easily. He suggested Frank play straight roles for a while. The advice stuck. During their U of T days, the fledgling comedy team was known as Weingarten and Shuster, Frankie and Johnny, Shu and Lew and, eventually, Wayne and Shuster.
In 1941, with their new billing and their English degrees in hand, they made their professional radio debut on Toronto's CFRB. They wrote and performed The Javex Wife Preservers, dispensing humour and household tips geared to Canadian housewives. They earned a whopping $12.50 per week! But someone at CBC Radio was listening. Soon Canada's national network hired Wayne and Shuster and their funny lines went national.
In 1942, during the Second World War, Frank and Johnny joined the infantry as sergeants in the Canadian Army Show. They played base camps, hospitals and the front with a mix of comedy & vaudeville acts. They didn't particularly like "the brass," but recognized the appreciation among the regular soldiers. Later, Wayne and Shuster wrote a special series for those veterans, then entertained Commonwealth Division troops in Korea.
1946 saw the team return to CBC Radio, live on Thursday nights, holding their own against the big stars on the U.S. airwaves. In the mid-'50s, as TV developed and hungrily grabbed onto entertainment to fill the new medium, Wayne and Shuster guested on many Canadian and U.S. shows.
Their biggest success kicked off in 1958. Back then, the Ed Sullivan show was a weekend highlight for most families. But Sullivan's audiences were losing strength as competition built up on the opposing networks. Sullivan, whose talent was recognizing talent, booked the northern duo. Audiences laughed and got bigger.
The ratings always jumped when the "Canuck egghead comics" were his guests.
Over 67 performances they became professional and personal friends of the TV
entrepreneur. Wayne and Shuster drew on those English literature lectures and
twisted Shakespeare into famous comedy routines. Among them was a baseball sketch, with players spouting iambic pentameter worthy of the bard. But their biggest literary farce was a version of Julius Caesar.
Johnny Wayne played Flavius Maximus, a Roman private eye, and Frank Shuster played Brutus, the ultimate straight man. Actress Sylvia Lennick was given the line warning the doomed emperor against going to the Senate, "If I told him once, I told him a thousand times, Julie, don't go!" It became a national catch phrase.
Thanks to those Sullivan appearances, both audiences and critics were won over. In 1962 and '63 the Canadians were ranked as the best comedy team in America. The New York Times hailed them as "the harbingers of literate slapstick."
They also found many European fans during frequent BBC appearances, exposure that won them the illustrious Silver Rose of Montreux. Despite enticing offers, Wayne and Shuster preferred Toronto as their home base, including regular specials on the CBC. That dedication to their homegrown audience lasted until Johnny Wayne's death in 1990.
Over their career, the humour of Wayne and Shuster was characterized by the "send-up" rather than the "put-down." Perhaps it was a reflection of how they were affected by what they saw during the war. Frank and Johnny were funny, but never cruel.
Shuster's legacy as one of the godfathers of Canadian TV comedy has inspired other family members. His daughter Rosie won two Emmy Awards for her writing on NBC's Saturday Night Live. Her ex-husband, Lorne Michaels, was the founding producer of SNL. Shuster's son, Steve is evolving as a stand-up comedian, TV writer and zydeco musician.
For all those jokes and goofy but high-brow sketches, recognition has come from many grateful Canadians. Shuster received an honourary Doctor of Laws from his alma mater, the University of Toronto.
In 1978 came the John Drainie Award and, in 1990, the Gemini Award, both for distinguished contributions to broadcasting. In 1997, Frank Shuster was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He paid tribute to his late partner saying, "Johnny should be part of this. We all miss him. The team is always the team." Then, he quipped that the large medal was something that perhaps Count Dracula would wear. In 1999, Shuster was given a spot on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto.
In 1995, Frank Shuster gave back to Canada again. He donated his personal records to the National Archives of Canada. The items include material ranging from university revues to video of their television shows. They provide a lasting tribute to a funny Canadian guy who believed in "the comedy team."
Frank and Johnny had a lot of fights, but the battle was always over improving their material. Across some 50 years, the winners were people who needed a good laugh.
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TV and RADIO REPORTS 
CBC Newsworld Morning's Mark Kelley talks to comedian Dave Broadfoot, a friend and colleague of Frank Shuster 
CBC Radio's Andy Barrie interviews Norman Campbell, Wayne and Shuster's former producer