Brian Wayne credits a conversation he recently had with some university students for the idea to bring his late father’s classic sketch comedy to a new generation of young, diverse audiences.
Wayne is the son of the late Johnny Wayne–who together with partner Frank Shuster–were the first big Canadian comedy television stars from the 1950s through to the 1990s. With weekly variety shows and appearances in the United States and Europe, Wayne and Shuster won legions of fans for their literate comedy routines such as “A Shakespearean Baseball Game” and “Rinse the Blood off my Toga.”
But Brian Wayne was dismayed to learn that the young people he was talking with, had never heard of them.
“I said, ‘My father was Johnny Wayne of the comedy team of Wayne and Shuster.’ And they said ‘Who?’,”he recalled in an interview with The CJN Daily.
He told them Wayne and Shuster were famous Canadian comedians who were on television for a …