Tim O’Malley, a comic actor who unflinchingly told his story of overcoming addiction in “Godshow,” died May 11 from natural causes at his Beverly home. He was 68.
In a 2003 Sun-Times story following its debut, Mr. O’Malley spoke at length about the show and people’s reaction to it.
“People are like, ‘I can’t believe you’re admitting that s— in front of a whole group of people,'” Mr. O’Malley said. “And I’m like, ‘Guess what? It can’t hurt me anymore!'”
The show ran from 2003 to 2006 at Second City and ImprovOlympic and was also performed at the Beverly Arts Center.
A lifelong Chicagoan, Mr. O’Malley seemed destined for greatness in the late 1980s, bounding from small sketch groups to Second City’s touring company and its famed mainstage on Wells Street — the springboard for some of the country’s top comic actors. He waited for his turn at fame.
“I just thought it was inevitable,” Mr. O’Malley said in 2003. “And all I got was a Coors Light commercial.”
The big breaks went to his Second City peers. Joel Murray and Bonnie Hunt landed a sitcom. Chris Farley and Tim Meadows, his co-stars on the mainstage, went to “Saturday Night Live.”
Mr. O’Malley seethed, drank and snorted cocaine, the glamour drug of the era.
“At the time, I thought I was fine because everybody I liked was on coke,” he recalled. “Everybody I looked up to was high. It was like, ‘Oh, I’m cool. It sharpens me.'”
He opened one show after another at Second City, making enemies as readily as he made people laugh. “I was a major pain in the ass,” he said. “I would come to rehearsals and throw chairs and say, ‘F— you! I ain’t doing one of your stupid scenes again!'”
Back then, a Second City actor with enough experience or enough nerve could dominate his cast members — not to mention his director — and O’Malley figured his turn had come. “I thought I was the alpha male,” he said, “and [instead] I was the big jerk drunk cokehead.”
As his fifth mainstage show began to wind down in 1992, the Second City producers sat Mr. O’Malley down for a chat. “They were real kind about it. Instead of saying, ‘You’re drinking and you’re a complete a–hole and nobody likes you anymore,’ they just said, ‘Don’t you think it’s time to move on?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah.'”
A few more stage gigs came along. Then, nothing.
“It started to get really depressing,” O’Malley told the Sun-Times in 2003. “I ended up, like, bartending in Beverly. I’m sitting there on Sunday night watching two guys beat the s— out of each other over whether we should watch the hockey game or ‘The Three Stooges,’ going, ‘What in the f— happened to my life?'”
Before long, he was using crack. Friends begged him to clean up, but nothing sank in until his younger sister called one day. “She was just cryin’ on the phone because I’d stolen money from her,” he said in 2003. “And she was like, ‘Tim, just don’t f—in’ die. Everyone thinks you’re gonna die. I think you’re gonna die. Please don’t die.'”
Mr. O’Malley entered rehab, rediscovered religion, taught at the Second City Training Center, and attended and led recovery meetings.
“‘Godshow’ is his legacy, the best art he ever made, and a vehicle for helping people,” said his life partner, Pamela Staker. “When ‘Godshow’ was running, the whole recovery community showed up in force.”
For decades, Mr. O’Malley served as a listener and guide for people struggling with addiction, including many in the improv and comedy scene.
“I think ‘Godshow’ allowed people to see that you could be in recovery and at the same time go on and be in comedy and still have your identity and your edge,” said Laura Hugg, a friend and comic who is part of the recovery community.
“There is a concern that ‘Oh, if I get healthy, get my act together, the talent won’t be there, the ability won’t be there,’ and I think Tim knew and carried the message of ‘You won’t stop being funny if you stop doing things that are killing you,'” Hugg said.
Mr. O’Malley was born June 26, 1957, and grew up in Beverly, one of 11 children.
His death came two days after that of Kevin Doyle, another well-known South Side Irish Catholic Second City alum.
“Tim was amazing on stage,” said former Second City producer Cheryl Sloane. “If there was ever a problem and you needed somebody to hold the audience for a minute, you could send Tim out on stage.”
“Audiences could relate to him, they saw themselves in him, and he was funny as can be and quick-witted. He could take anybody on one-on-one in wit,” she said.
At Second City, Mr. O’Malley invented a character named Coffee Man who crashed any scene if an actor said the word “coffee,” recalled John Rubano, a former Second City castmate.
“He was a jittery coffee-drinking maniac and whether you wanted him to or not, he would appear as Coffee Man and he’d say, ‘Just don’t say coffee and you won’t get Coffee Man,'” Rubano said with a laugh.
Most recently Mr. O’Malley performed in a series of online ads for Mr. Submarine.
Services are pending.