I’ve been a serious Martin Short fan since I was a teenager busting up at reruns of “SCTV,” his brief stint on “Saturday Night Live” and his brilliant HBO specials. I taped a picture of him on my college dorm wall, next to David Letterman and Woody Allen. In 1994, I went to see Short’s movie “Clifford,” in which a 40-year-old Short plays the title’s sociopathic 10-year-old boy, who’s a sustained cyclone of terror. It sounds genius on paper — Short’s elfishness is manically elastic — but the execution is fatal. I should probably see it again. (Recently, I did. “Clifford” is still uproariously unfunny.) 

Short, a comic Einstein who’s allowed a flop or three, is getting late-career appreciation, working his tail off (now on “Only Murders in the Building”) and basking in the attention in the admiring Netflix doc “Marty, Life is Short.” It’s shameless hagiography, and it’s bliss. It’s hard to believe little Marty Short is now 76, but he wears it with class, his exhibitionist spark undimmed, his contagious joy unbridled.

To tell Short’s story, director and longtime friend Lawrence Kasdan unspools a select reel of home movies, outtakes, clips from “The Three Amigos” to “Father of the Bride” and a bevy of adoring tributes from pals and colleagues like Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, Eugene Levy and the late Catherine O’Hara. It gets personal, including romances (one with a young Gilda Radner), marriage, children and a series of crushing family tragedies that would eviscerate a less upbeat mortal. Despite it, Short remains a resilient life force, a one-man fireworks display,  and perhaps the nicest guy in showbiz.

Probably belting show tunes right out of the womb, this human whirligig is a quadruple threat — singer, dancer, actor, clown. His superpower is his thirst for applause, so he’s never not performing, prancing around his living room or hamming it up on late night. The show must go on, and on. His ammo isn’t written jokes but a volcanic gift of improv reminiscent of Robin Williams. Wind him up, let him rip. 

He’s the Lon Chaney of sketch comedy, inhabiting a freak’s gallery of invented characters, be it uber-nerd Ed Grimley, cross-eyed albino showman Jackie Rogers Jr. or blubbery celebrity antagonizer Jiminy Glick. One minute he’s earthbound, then, bang, he jolts into character. Being close to Short, says comic John Mulaney, is “like being your best friend in the world who happens to be the weirdest person ever.” That’s about the zestiest thing said about Short in the doc, which is of course a celebration, even if it sometimes feels like a career-capping coronation. His pals are gushers, understandably. It almost brings a tear to your eye. What, after all, is a little fawning among friends?