Born On This Day- December 9th... Funny Gay Mario Cantone

Larger-than-life comedian Mario Cantone built an accomplished stage career during the 1990s and 2000s, starring in Broadway & Off- Broadway works The Violet Hour, Assassins, Love! Valor! Compassion!, & June Moon. He performed in Taming Of The Shrew & The Tempest for the Public Theatre. His day job, however, remained stand-up comedy. A favorite guest on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Comedy Central’s Premium Blend, & the HBO Comedy Showcase, Cantone earned critical acclaim in 2002 for his one-man show- An Evening with Mario Cantone. He has been featured on the last 2 seasons of Men In The Trees. To mainstream audiences, however, Cantone would be best known for his role as Anthony Marentino, the flamboyant event planner, on Sex and the City. As the persnickety Anthony, Cantone was well matched with Kristen Davis’s uptight character- Charlotte, often offering her unsolicited bedroom advice & gossip.

Famed for his dead-on celebrity impressions & raunchy blue humor, Cantone would, ironically enough, get his start in television as the host of the popular children’s show- Steampipe Alley. Despite having to tone down his act, Cantone found ways to inject his own outragous personality into the proceedings. Notorious for his spontaneous rapid fire riffs & pop culture references, Cantone often appeared to be performing as much for adults as he did for kids. Like the great Pee-wee Herman, Cantone’s gags would often cross a strange, but tenuous line between taste & maturity. One of the more outrageous “games” Cantone would lead his young charges in on Steampipe Alley was “Find My Eye” – a scavenger hunt style adventure where kids would try to find Sammy Davis, Jr.’s glass eye (played of course by Cantone). Other times, he would conduct a cocktail party as Truman Capote for an audience far too young to even know who Capote was. Even so, the kids still found him hysterical. The husband & I laughed until we cried as he did spot on & hysterical imitations of Liza Minnelli & Jim Morrison, among others, on his Showtime special- Laugh Whore.