One of her colleagues, Kevin Nealon, told People magazine-
“She was totally amazing as a sketch player.”
“She so immersed herself in her characters, and her timing was amazing. She got it from some crazy stratosphere, and I was so attracted to that talent in her, and I don’t think she ever knew how well respected and admired she was for her talent.”
Hooks’ talents really shine through in her depiction of Tammy Faye Bakker, one-half of the evangelical couple who formed the PTL Club and got caught up in the scandal. Bakker was a ripe target since she was an emotional wreck who sported dramatic eye makeup and was the full embodiment of the stereotypical evangelist’s wife stereotype.
Hooks, however, dug further, as seen by a comedy she performed for “Church Chat” back when PTL was in hot water owing to rumors of an affair with Jim Bakker and claims of the couple’s lavish lifestyle.
Hooks also shone in her role as Candy Sweeney, the blonde half of a bubbly team of lounge singers who doled out awful jokes and schmaltzy covers of pop classics without realizing how ridiculous they sounded. They would always play a jangly rendition of “The Trolley Song” from the 1940 film “Meet Me in St. Louis.”
However, Hooks avoided the spotlight, preferring to let others steal the stage. While Phil Hartman played a tough-talking Frank Sinatra in a parody of “The McLaughlin Group” called “The Sinatra Group,” Sinead O’Connor played it straight and let Hartman steal the show.
Hooks appeared on “SNL” from 1986 through 1991. She later explained that she didn’t want to quit the show, but that she was offered a role on “Designing Women” and couldn’t refuse. For two seasons, she portrayed Carlene Dobber on a sitcom set in Atlanta, not far from where she grew up.
Hooks was born on December 2, 1957, in Decatur, Georgia. She spent her teenage years in Florida and Texas before returning to Atlanta and meeting Bonnie and Terry Turner at a comedy club called the New Wit’s End Players.
All three of them were quickly hired for a show on TBS that centered on the eccentric Bill Tush back when the network was known as Ted Turner’s Atlanta Braves-focused “SuperStation.”
(Tush now works for CNN as a celebrity correspondent.) Both “SNL” and “3rd Rock from the Sun,” both developed by the Turners (no relation to Ted), featured appearances by Hooks.
Hooks also voiced Apu’s wife, Manjula Nahasapeemapetilon, in “The Simpsons,” and she made an appearance on “30 Rock.”
Hooks only appeared in a small number of films, but her portrayal of an Alamo tour guide in “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” (1985) became viral online.
Tweeted Patton Oswalt-
“Not now, but sometime this weekend I’ll think of Jan Hooks saying ‘adobe’ and I’ll get tear-eyed. I know it. #RIPJanHooks.”
Not now, but sometime this weekend I’ll think of Jan Hooks saying “adobe” and I’ll get tear-eyed. I know it. #RIPJanHooks
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) October 9, 2014
