Dave Thomas

SCTV produced a generation of American comedy, and Thomas's most durable creation there was half of a two-hander: Doug McKenzie, played opposite Rick Moranis as Bob. He won a Primetime Emmy for variety-series writing out of two nominations, and the McKenzies made two albums, The Great White North and Strange Brew, the first of which took a Grammy nomination and a Juno.

The act became a film in 1983, Strange Brew, which he co-directed and starred in, and which is the only place the characters get a feature-length argument. What Thomas does well is the voice of institutional smugness: the manager, the minister, the middleman, the man who has read the rules and enjoys them. It runs through the live-action work, in Stripes (1981), Moving (1988), Coneheads (1993), Harold Grisham in Rat Race (2001), and in Boris and Natasha (1992), where he played Boris Badunov perfectly straight. He directed The Experts in 1989.

The second half of the career is largely voice work, which suits a comedian whose instrument was always the delivery rather than the face: Tuke across both Brother Bear films, parts on King of the Hill, Justice League, CatDog, The Legend of Tarzan and Mission Hill, and Cleve Kelso in Fast and Furious Spy Racers. He also played Bob Hope on Primetime Glick, a joke only somebody from his generation of sketch could sell.