So sorry to hear of the death of Jan Hooks — a tragedy at any age but especially as young as 57. I worked with Jan on her first network series, a short-run Laugh-In knock-off called The Half-Hour Comedy Hour that ran a few weeks on ABC in 1983. (There have since been at least two other unrelated shows with that name.)
Jan was discovered, as I recall, in the stock company of a cable series called Tush on the channel that is now WTBS. When we were casting, someone brought in tapes of that program and she stood out as a genuine talent, one we had to have. Later, when she was snagged for the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1986 (along with another cast member from our show, Victoria Jackson), not one person who knew her work was surprised. Jan was funny, hard-working, cooperative, devoted to her craft and able to play just about any role you wrote for her. If every performer was that talented and that easy to work with, television would be a much happier business.
One time, I wrote a sketch for her and one of the other performers. The characters were a bit complicated and neither Jan nor the other performer were quite sure on first reading how to handle the material. The other performer came to me and started suggesting (verging on demanding) a rewrite. Jan went off into a quiet corner of the rehearsal hall, thought about it for a while and came back with it all figured out. And based on what she figured out, the other performer was able to figure it out. She was that good.
The last time I saw her was up at the David Letterman Show. This was at NBC and Jan was a guest one evening when the other guest was Donald Trump. She had made a point of going to his dressing room to say hello, hoping there were no hard feelings from The Donald about some Saturday Night Live sketches in which Phil Hartman had played Trump and Jan had played whoever was Mrs. Trump at the moment.
As it turned out, there were hard feelings. Soon, Jan was back in her dressing room when I, unaware of what had just transpired, poked my head in to say howdy. She was crying…a little. Later, I saw Mr. Trump being very rude to others around him — people who, to use a phrase I used earlier today in a post, could not fight back. My low opinion of Trump dates back to that day.
Jan turned off the tears, not just to greet me but because she had to go out in fifteen minutes and be a happy, cheery presence in Dave's guest chair. She was a big star at that moment but she couldn't have been sweeter or nicer…unlike a certain other guest on that episode. Our paths never crossed again after that but I refuse to believe she ever changed. And I know everything she did on TV and in movies was real, real good.