Rick Moranis

Moranis was born on April 18, 1953, in Toronto, Ontario, to a Jewish family. He attended elementary school with Geddy Lee, frontman of the rock band Rush. His career as an entertainer began as a radio disc jockey in the mid-1970s, using the on-air name "Rick Allan" at Toronto radio stations CFTR, CKFH, 1050 CHUM and CHUM-FM.

In the mid-1970s, Moranis and comedy partner Rob Cowan, also a budding young radio announcer, performed on CBC-TV. Their spoof of Hockey Night in Canada was popular, and they periodically performed it on the road, including a charity sports dinner in Sarnia, Ontario.

In 1977, he teamed up with Winnipeg-born writer/director and performer Ken Finkleman on a series of live performances on CBC's 90 Minutes Live; comedy radio specials; and television comedy pilots, including one called Midweek and another called 1980 (produced at CBC Toronto in 1979). Both pilots starred Finkleman and Moranis in a series of irreverent sketches, including an early mockumentary sketch featuring Moranis as a Canadian movie producer, and another featuring the dubbed-in voiceovers of Nazi war criminals as they appear to be discussing their Hollywood agents and the money one can earn being interviewed on major documentary series like The World at War.

In 1980, Moranis was persuaded to join the third-season cast of Second City Television (SCTV) by friend and SCTV writer/performer Dave Thomas. At the time, Moranis was the only cast member not to have come from a Second City stage troupe. He became especially noted for his impressions of celebrities ranging from pop culture icons like Woody Allen, Merv Griffin, and David Brinkley to somewhat lower-level stars such as comedian George Carlin and musician Michael McDonald, and even to the marginally notable Teri Shields (mother of Brooke).

With SCTV moving to CBC in 1980 (and syndicated in the United States), Moranis and Thomas were challenged to fill two additional minutes with "identifiable Canadian content", and created a sketch called The Great White North featuring the characters Bob and Doug McKenzie, a couple of Canadian buffoons. By the time NBC ordered 90-minute programs for the U.S. in 1981 (the fourth season of SCTV overall), there had been such favourable feedback from affiliates on the McKenzies that the network requested the duo have a sketch in every show.

Bob and Doug became a pop-culture phenomenon, which led to a top-selling and Grammy-nominated album, Great White North, and the 1983 movie Strange Brew, Moranis's first major film role. He followed that up with the 1984 movie Streets of Fire.

Another notable Moranis character on SCTV was Gerry Todd, a disc jockey who presented music clips on television. The sketch aired before the debut of MTV in the United States, leading both Sound & Vision and Martin Short to dub Moranis as the creator of the video jockey. "There had been no such thing" up until that point, recalled Short, so "the joke was that there would be such a thing."