Janet Vivian Hooks was an American actress and comedian, best known for her work on Saturday Night Live, where she was a repertory player from 1986 to 1991, and continued making cameo appearances until 1994. Her subsequent work included a regular role on the final two seasons of Designing Women, a recurring role on 3rd Rock from the Sun and a number of other roles in film and television including on Tina Fey’s NBC show 30 Rock and The Simpsons.
She began her career as a member of the Los Angeles-based comedy troupe The Groundlings and in an Atlanta nightclub act called The Wits End Players. From 1980 to 1981, she appeared in Tush on Ted Turner's television station WTBS, which eventually became TBS. She gained attention in the early 1980s on the HBO comedy series Not Necessarily the News and made guest appearances on Comedy Break with Mack and Jamie in the mid-1980s. Hooks was considered for SNL in 1985, but was passed over by the show's producers in favor of Joan Cusack. After the show's 1985–1986 season was deemed a ratings disaster and put on the chopping block for cancellation, returning producer Lorne Michaels offered Hooks a contract in 1986, along with new recruits Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman, among others. They helped put the show back in the national spotlight. Her characters included Candy Sweeney of "The Sweeney Sisters". She performed notable impressions of Bette Davis, Ann-Margret, Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan, Sinéad O'Connor, Drew Barrymore, Tammy Faye Bakker, Kathie Lee Gifford, Kitty Dukakis, Diane Sawyer and Hillary Clinton. Tiring of the stress of performing on a live show, Hooks left SNL in 1991 after being asked by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason to replace Jean Smart on the CBS sitcom Designing Women. Hooks played the role of Carlene Dobber for the final two seasons of the show. She continued to make occasional appearances on SNL through 1994, usually playing Hillary Clinton. According to a 2014 Grantland article about her career and death, Hooks' combination of anxiety about acting and generally laidback approach to seeking out work led to her often turning down both prestigious auditions and lucrative acting roles. Tina Fey commented after her death that she was angry that Hooks didn't have a more successful career but another friend stated that Hooks didn't have doors slammed in her face and often made no efforts to seek out work. She appeared in several movies, starred as Dixie Glick in the series Primetime Glick, and the movie Jiminy Glick in Lalawood. She had a recurring role as the trashy Vicki Dubcek on 3rd Rock from the Sun, which earned Hooks an Emmy Award nomination. Hooks guest-starred on two Matt Groening-produced cartoons for the FOX Network: six episodes of The Simpsons between 1997 and 2002, as Apu's wife Manjula, and in Futurama. She appeared in Pee-wee's Big Adventure as a know-it-all tour guide at the Alamo and made a cameo appearance in the 1992 movieBatman Returns as Jen, the Penguin's image consultant during his campaign to become Mayor of Gotham City. She made two appearances on 30 Rock in 2010 playing Jenna Maroney's mother, Verna, which ultimately were the last live-action spots she ever did. She guest starred in a 2013 episode of The Cleveland Show called "Mr. and Mrs. Brown", which was her final acting job.
Death
Hooks died on October 9, 2014, at her home in Woodstock, New York, at the age of 57 from throat cancer. Her remains were interred in Northview Cemetery in Cedartown, Georgia. The Simpsons episode "Super Franchise Me" memorialized her on October 12, 2014, with her longtime character Manjula Nahasapeemapetilon honored during the credits.
"Love Is a Dream"
Saturday Night Live paid tribute to Hooks in the third episode of its 40th season on October 11, 2014 where guest host Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig introduced a tribute in which SNL re-aired a short she had filmed for SNLs 14th season in 1988 with Phil Hartman, titled Love Is a Dream. This short film had also been repeated as a tribute, following Hartman's death in 1998. The short is described as "a sweet and melodramatic tribute to the 1948 film The Emperor Waltz", which was directed by Billy Wilder starring Bing Crosby and Joan Fontaine. The scene casts Hooks as an aging woman who vanishes into her own imagination to sing and share a dance with a long-lost lover. The singing voices appear to be dubbed by the actors in the original 1948 film, Crosby and Fontaine. Critics noted after the SNL tribute, that the "Jan Hooks tribute showed that Jan did not need to be funny in order to captivate the attention of her audience".
