| He
may have gotten his start in standup comedy by a
fluke, but don't be fooled by his early good fortune
-- funnyman Howie Mandel is certainly the real deal.
From the stage to the screen, and virtually every
medium in between, Mandel has not only proven adept
at playing the clown, but with his enduring role
on the popular 1980s television drama St. Elsewhere,
straight and affecting drama as well. It was during
a business trip to Los Angeles in 1979 that the
Toronto native, goaded on by friends while watching
the comics at The Comedy Store's amateur night,
first took the stage to surprising effect. The wild
card that evening turned out to be a producer who
just happened to be in the crowd, and Mandel was
immediately hired for an appearance on the popular
comedy game show Make Me Laugh. He subsequently
performed on television talk shows and opened for
such luminaries as Diana Ross, and it wasn't long
before he was approached to appear on the fledgling
television drama St. Elsewhere. Cast as dedicated
Dr. Wayne Fiscus, Mandel remained with the show
that launched his career for the entire duration
of its six-season run, gaining legions of fans and
even a few Emmy nominations.
Though
Mandel remained loyal to St. Elsewhere for the
entirety of its television run, a series of side
jobs provided his career with the momentum to
succeed after the series was canceled in 1988.
Mandel permanently ingrained himself in the pop-culture
lexicon as the voice of Gizmo in the 1984 hit
Gremlins and as a multitude of characters on the
popular cartoon Muppet Babies. He cracked up audiences
with a rollicking appearance on Comic Relief in
1986, and he could frequently be spotted on-stage
sporting a blown up rubber glove over the top
half of his head and slaying audiences with his
hilarious baby voice. Although Mandel would try
his hand at features with both Walk Like a Man
(1987) and Little Monsters (1989), neither film
proved the powerhouse hit needed to launch a feature
career, and he returned to television to great
success in the early '90s.
Mandel's
love of children dictated most of his career choices
in the 1990s, and in the first year of the decade
he utilized his popular series of voices for the
enduring children's television series Bobby's
World (which ultimately went off of the air in
1998). In 1992, Mandel headlined the short-lived
small-screen series Howie, and after a series
of appearances in both features and made-for-television
movies, he hosted both Howie Mandel's Sunny Skies
and The Howie Mandel Show. Though none of his
personal shows proved quite as successful or endearing
as Bobby's World, Mandel remained in the public
eye as both a popular comic and as the creator
of a series of children's CD-ROMs that aimed to
both educate and entertain.
In
the year 2000, Mandel once again turned his attention
to features, and appearances in Tribulation (2000),
Hansel & Gretel (2002), and Pinocchio 3000
(2003) proved that the popular funnyman had lost
none of his onscreen talent. Outside of his work
in the entertainment industry, the color-blind
verminophobic spends much of his time with his
wife and three children. Jason Buchanan, All Movie
Guid
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