Comedian Craig Shoemaker entered the entertainment industry during the 1980s and achieved his strongest recognition through standup routines, receiving the title of America’s Male Stand-Up Comic of the Year from the 1997 American Comedy Awards. Raised in the Philadelphia vicinity, he launched his television work on the local series Saturday Night Dead before moving to Los Angeles in 1987. Once there, he secured spots on cable showcases such as An Evening at the Improv and Comic Strip Live. He later served as a writer for the Growing Pains spinoff Just the Ten of Us and earned his first network acting credit with a guest appearance on Matlock in 1990. His feature-film introduction came three years afterward via a minor role in Acting on Impulse. Steady progress in standup owed much to his stage persona the Lovemaster, which appeared on his debut album Craig Shoemaker Meets...The Lovemaster in 1994. Continued bookings and growing attention led to the 1997 award. That same year he joined Neve Campbell in Scream 2 while also writing and directing the independent feature The Lovemaster, a project that intercut standup material with a narrative centered on his fictionalized experiences and captured the top prize at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival. He followed with the second album Son of Lovemaster, hosted the VH1 program My Generation, made regular visits to Whoopi Goldberg’s revival of Hollywood Squares, and created the one-man show Who’s Your Daddy?, which played at West Hollywood’s Coronet Theatre.
