Steve Martin was born in Waco, Texas, moved with his family first to Inglewood, California, and then Garden Grove. He attended Garden Grove High School, took drama and poetry classes at Santa Ana College and applied to Cal State Long Beach hoping to major in philosophy.
But what most shaped the Steve Martin audiences and readers know today was his time performing with a Knott's Berry Farm comedy troupe and working in the Main Street Magic shop at Disneyland.
In the current issue of Los Angeles magazine, Martin writes about the warm place Disneyland still holds in his heart.
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My first job was at Disneyland selling guidebooks. I was 10. Then I worked in the magic shop until I was 18. Disneyland was literally like living in heaven. You could go to Frontierland or Tomorrowland. But to me they weren't lands, they weren't fantasy. They were a kind of reality–paradise. I saw my first live comedy show at Disneyland: Wally Boag at the Golden Horseshoe Revue. He was fantastic. I was enchanted by the idea of a live comedian. I have a very soft spot for Disneyland in my heart. Anything they ask, I do.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.