Catherine O’Hara knew that motherhood can be a slapstick comedy
Motherhood’s long association with martyrdom is a real turn-off. Few understood that better than Catherine O’Hara, who played one of cinema’s most self-sacrificing moms – and several of its least. As harried Kate McCallister in “Home Alone,” she hurtles across the Atlantic and back for the sake of reuniting with her youngest son, Kevin (Macaulay Culkin), who was accidentally left behind in Chicago at Christmas. A quarter of a century later, on “Schitt’s Creek,” she regaled us with Moira Rose, a former soap opera actress and exiled socialite who ranks relating to her adult offspring a few notches below maintaining her wigs on her list of priorities. Kate declares she’ll sell her soul to the devil himself to be reunited with her baby boy. Moira responds to her adult son’s certain presumption that parents are supposed to put their children first with a firm dismissal. “If airplane safety videos have taught me anything, David,” she retorts, “it’s that a mother puts her own mask on first.” O’Hara, who died Jan. 30 at the age of …
