It may be difficult to fathom if you were a cognizant human being in the late 1970s, but there’s now two entire generations of people who have no idea that Steve Martin was once a tremendously successful standup comic, as a opposed to a vigorously pandering commercial movie star. Nowadays, he's the world's most famous likable guy who's in lousy movies.

That’s really sad, because Martin was at his far-reaching best as a standup. His capacity to meld Catskills shtick with inanely obscure hyper-nonsense made him the single most popular humorist of the period, at least until David Letterman started selling irony by the pound over at Rockefeller Center.

A lot of Martin’s jokes were simply idiotic, the blathering of a know-it-all character who clearly knew absolutely nothing. But, at heart, he was a surrealist. He didn’t trade in observational humor the way George Carlin did, unless you include jokes on how your cat has been opening your mail and buying cat toys with your paychecks to be “observational.” And he certainly wasn’t venting about his tormented past a la Richard Pryor, regardless of Martin's claim that he (as in Martin) was “born a poor black child.”

Martin’s humor relied on off-the-wall wordplay and that hilarious moment when his character suddenly turned false profundity into an advertisement for his own staggering stupidity. And that moment was stumbled upon in endlessly inventive ways.

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Personally, I think Martin’s defining routine was a little number he pulled on “The Tonight Show;” this was probably around 1979. He began by editorializing about some newspaper columnists who had supposedly been announcing in print that Martin was “a rubberhead.” Pissed off and insisting this wasn’t true, Martin then went on to shoot down the ugly myth that “rubberheads throw fish.”

The audience giggled a bit, but basically sat there dumbfounded as he apologized for getting sidetracked at the beginning. Then he started his usual routine. About two minutes in, he suddenly looked around nervously, pulled a fish out of his suit pocket, and threw it.

There’s no precedent for something like that in American standup comedy. Certainly, there’s a Monty Python tinge to it, but performing such a gag solo, in the glare of the spotlight, gives it an entirely different aura. Martin, with his white suit and “smooth” showbiz delivery was Shecky Greene by way of Marcel Duchamp. It’s amazing the American public was sharp enough to flip over him. But flip they did. At his peak, Martin was doing goofball routines in filled-to-capacity basketball arenas, which was unheard of at the time.

However, as Martin himself noted in his engaging memoir, “Born Standing Up,” his sudden rise to rock star proportions - with audience members dressing like “Steve” and shouting requests for favorite gags - was the beginning of the end of his standup years. You can’t exactly grow as a performer if you’re expected to never, ever surprise your audience. And comedy seldom goes over as well in airplane hangers as it does in small clubs.

So Martin hung it up and focused on movies, which worked great for a while there, and today is a very, very sad situation. Watching someone this obviously brilliant bounce around like a ninny in “Father of the Bride Part II” or “Cheaper by the Dozen 2” or “The Pink Panther 2” is beyond demoralizing. You find yourself mourning what could have been.

Martin’s often hilarious appearances on awards shows and talk show couches strongly suggest he’s still got it. But if he doesn’t go for the gold again, and soon, his transformation into Peter Sellers will include more than simply tossing around a bad French accent. Martin, a genius of sorts, may well dawdle in big screen mediocrity, betraying his own gifts for fat paychecks, until he finally just keels over.

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