JTA — Marc Shaiman likes to joke that for half a century he’s been “the funny Jewish guy at the piano,” a role as old as vaudeville and as enduring as a well-timed joke.

But behind the punchline is a career that traces a distinctly Jewish path through American show business: a bar mitzvah where he improvised the music to his haftarah; collaborations with Bette Midler, Rob Reiner and a who’s-who of Jewish Hollywood; composing the music for Broadway’s “Hairspray”; and scoring the 1999 film “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut” and co-writing its Oscar-nominated song, “Blame Canada.”

Now, in his new memoir “Never Mind the Happy: Showbiz Stories from a Sore Winner,” Shaiman reflects on a life shaped by chutzpah, fate, disappointment and the particular blend of humor, loss and resilience he credits to being Jewish — a sensibility that, he says, made show business feel less like a career choice than a birthright.

“It’s not hard to spend your whole life with Jews when you’re in show business,” he said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I know that sounds like maybe a trope or a bad thing to say, but there’s no question that the Jews have been a big part of show business from the beginning of time. I’m sure the first caveman who put on a show was circumcised.”

Shaiman joined that business when he left his hometown of Scotch Plains, New Jersey, at age 16 after getting his GED and headed for New York City. He performed with cabaret acts and comedy shows.

For the last 50 years, the 66-year-old Shaiman has indeed been that funny Jewish guy at the piano, as everything from an arranger and writer in the early years of “Saturday Night Live” to a creator of musical moments for Oscar broadcasts (along with seven Academy Award nominations for his work on films like “Mary Poppins Returns” and “Sleepless in Seattle”). Shaiman worked on music for nearly every film Reiner made, starting with “When Harry Met Sally” in 1989; he was nominated for an Oscar for scoring Reiner’s film “The American President.”

He even appeared as an animated version of himself, piano and all, in the “I’m Super” number in the “South Park” movie.

Many of those projects were written in collaboration........

© The Times of Israel