Martin Short says his life has been marked by loss, and now he is putting that story on screen. His upcoming Netflix documentary, Marty, Life is Short, premieres May 12 and shows him reflecting on a long run of family tragedies.
In the trailer, Short tells his brother Michael that he had a speed dial to the funeral parlor. He also says, “There were laughs during those years.… that’s the point,” and adds, “In life, sometimes you hit a green light. And sometimes, for no reason, it’s red.”
The film lands this month because it comes with a fresh wound attached to an old one. In February, Short lost his daughter, Katherine Hartley Short, who was 42 years old and died by suicide. A representative confirmed her death on Feb. 24, and the Short family asked for privacy after she was found dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound at her Hollywood Hills home.
That grief sits inside a wider story the documentary is built to tell. Short was the youngest of five siblings, and the losses began early: his eldest brother died in a car accident when he was 12, his mother, Olive Hayter, died of cancer when he was 17, and his father, Charles Patrick Short, died of a stroke two years later. He later married Nancy Dolman, and the pair were together for 36 years before she died in 2010 after a years-long battle with ovarian cancer at 58. Short and Dolman adopted three children: Katherine, Oliver and Henry.
The trailer also includes old footage of Short dancing with Katherine and her two siblings when they were young, and Andrea Martin says, “Being a dad, it’s as genuine as his breath.” Short told in 2012 that he would have been divorced five times if he had not found the right person. The documentary appears to turn that private history into the point of the story: behind the jokes, the green lights and red lights, and the public persona, Short has spent much of his life carrying loss and trying to keep moving anyway.
