Joe Flaherty was one of those comics and actors who didn’t look like he should be a comic or actor. He had originally served in the United States Air Force before focuses on dramatic theatre. Maybe that was why he was so easy to be cast in numerous movies of versatility. He could flash that smile of his and depending on the character could make you like him or see him for the creepy sleaze he was. He wasn’t a leading man but more of a scene stealer.
One of his most notable roles was as Donald the heckler in Happy Gilmore who is hired by Christopher McDonald’s Shooter McGavin. Donald heckles Adam Sandler’s character in the title role during the Pepsi Pro-Am tournament with Bob Barker while repeatedly calling Happy a “jackass.” This leads to Happy and Bob getting frustrated with each other to the point they eventually fight.
“No one could have played the role of Donald like Joe Flaherty did,” McDonald wrote online. “His comedic delivery was perfect and his role alone made Happy Gilmore the classic it is today. He will be missed. Rest easy Joe.”
Later in the movie, Donald hits Happy with his Volkswagen that crashes into a tower. Flaherty would later be cast as Harold Weir on the cult TV show Freaks and Geeks, created by Judd Apatow, a friend and collaborator of Sandler’s.
John Francis Daly, who played Sam Weir, Harold’s son, has gone on to be a writer, director and producer. He said Flaherty would crack everyone up on the set that it would ruin takes. “My favorite days on set were the ones where we had scenes together. What a lovely guy,” Daly commented.
On this show he played a sporting goods store owner in the early 1980s. During the Halloween episode, he would dress up as a vampire, a nod to his iconic role as Count Floyd on SCTV.
And that’s probably where you remember him mostly. Flaherty would appear in many sketches and segments alongside comic greats like John Candy, Rick Moranis, Harold Ramis, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Dave Thomas and Andrea Martin. But his role as Count Floyd stood out as the late-night host of Monster Chiller Horror Theatre, which show poorly made horror movies. His signature was to howl like a werewolf when he came on screen and as he was leaving. This was the alter ego of Floyd Robertson, the co-anchor of SCTV News. The gag was Flaherty was playing the same person having to pull double-duty at a low-budget TV station. While this gag may not be familiar with younger audiences but there once was a time in which TV stations would have these late night shows where they mostly aired campy horrors and thrillers that had fallen into public domain.
After SCTV went off the air, Flaherty would reprise the role as Count Floyd on the show The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, which starred Short. You can tell Flaherty had so much fun with the role as he had a widow’s peak hair style that intentionally looked like bad make-up and talked in the Bela Lugosi-style of Count Dracula. Maybe it was because he wasn’t the biggest name of both shows he was able to get away with more.
Mostly he appeared in a few scenes in bigger movies as a great scene stealer. He appeared on screen alongside Ramis and Bill Murray as one of the Czech guards in the movie Stripes, which also co-starred Candy and Thomas in a small role. He was one of the many actors who appeared in Steven Spielberg’s 1941 as Sal Stewart, aka Raoul Lipschitz, an actor and radio host. Watching Flaherty in these scenes as he recounts on the radio a brawl riot as military service members fight at an USO dance shows you how he was greatly talented. It feels like Spielberg gave Flaherty carte blanche to ad-lib his lines.
He would go on to get a bigger role as Sam Slaton, a corrupt county prosecutor in the comedy Used Cars, alongside Kurt Russell and Jack Ward. The movie was directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Spielberg. He would also be cast as Chick Leff alongside Candy in the absurd comedy Going Berserk which also featured Levy in a minor role as a sleazy movie producer. This is possibly Flaherty’s biggest role in a movie, even though it wasn’t well received.
Flaherty would be cast in smaller roles in later movies such as Innerspace where he was in a doctor’s waiting room along with Martin and Short, who was the main character. Ramis would cast him as an inept paranoid pilot in Club Paradise reuniting him with Levy, Moranis, Martin as well as Robin Duke, another SCTV cast member.
But one of his most memorable roles especially as a scene stealer was in Back to the Future Part II where he appeared in the 1955 sequence as a Western Union worker who delivers Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) the letter from Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) that lets him know he went back in time to 1885 when the lightning struck the DeLorean. He would also play Sid Sleaze in Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird playing one of the crooked carnival workers, alongside Thomas, who kidnaps Big Bird.
During his speech while accepting the Mark Twain Prize in 2016, Murray mentioned Flaherty has one of the comics who helped take him under his wing as he started out at Second City. Flaherty had worked at Second City with Bill’s older brother, Brian Doyle-Murray. Joel Murray, both Brian and Bill’s younger brother, co-starred with Flaherty in the 1986 comedy One Crazy Summer playing the militant General Raymond who runs a surplus store and was leader of a more militant Boy Scout-type group for young boys.
“We’ve lost another one of my idols,” Joel Murray wrote on his social media.
Short and other members of the Second City community had been helping raising money for Flaherty who had been in failing health for months. Short had said that Flaherty was very ill in a plea back in February. Short said that Flaherty “is aware of the gravity of his failing health and would like to spend whatever time he has left at home rather than in a facility.”
Born in Pittsburgh, Flaherty worked through Second City in Chicago before going to New York in the early 1970s to work on The National Lampoon Radio Hour with Bill Murray and John Belushi among others. He then was asked by Second City co-founder Bernie Sahlins to volunteer to go to Toronto to form a troupe there with Brian Doyle-Murray. Along with Count Floyd, he played characters like Big Jim McBob and Guy Cabellero as well as doing impersonations of Richard Nixon, Gregory Peck, Elvis Presley and Kirk Douglas.
It’s almost fitting his death was on April 1, April Fools Day, for a man who made so many people laugh and encouraged others to go into comedy. A cast reunion of SCTV met in 2018 in a documentary that was directed by Martin Scorsese but it’s yet to be released on Netflix. So, if you’re a fan of Flaherty, let everyone hear you howl.
What was your favorite movie or character he played? Please comment.
Zane Says 