Garrett Morris
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Garrett Morris (born January 25, 1937) is an American comedian and actor from New Orleans, Louisiana.
Morris was a church-choir singer from his youth, trained at the Juilliard School of Music, and soloed early in his career with the Harry Belafonte singers. He performed in numerous musicals.
Morris has appeared in numerous television shows and movies since the early 1970s, but is best known as one of the original cast members of NBC's Saturday Night Live. (At least twice on SNL he sang classical music: once a Mozart aria when guest-host Walter Matthau designated him as "musical guest", according to the effect of the words Matthau used "in place of the usual crap", and once a Schubert lied while the titles on the screen purported to express his colleagues' displeasure at having to accommodate a misguided request by him.)
Morris' best known character on SNL was the Dominican baseball player Chico Escuela. Chico spoke only limited and halting English, so the joke centered on him responding to almost any question with his catch phrase: "Baseball... been berra berra good... to me."
During his later seasons on SNL, Morris freebased cocaine and suffered from severe delusions as a result. He sometimes claimed that he was being manipulated by an invisible robot.
Among later television performances, he had regular roles on Hunter and The Jamie Foxx Show.
As of 2004, he continues to perform regularly in films.
External links
- IMDb entry (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0606541/)
- SNL Player:The Official Garrett Morris Fanlist (http://fakeoutfl.tripod.com/garrett)
- SNL People Entry (http://www.snlpeople.com/5.asp)
- Morris as Chico on Weekend Update (http://snltranscripts.jt.org/79/79fupdate.phtml)