In honor of Saturday Night Live‘s 50th Anniversary, we will be going through its rich and varied history and breaking down its legendary run into easy to digest eras. Some eras might last for years, others only one season. But each era is one that either marked a change in the show, were driven by a remarkable personality of a star, or marked a special part of the history of the program. Today, we start at the beginning with SNL’s very first year.
The origin of Saturday Night Livehas become the stuff of legend. Johnny Carson, the reigning king of late-night comedy at the time, wanted to take an extra two nights off from The Tonight Show during the week. He wanted to use the reruns of the show that ran during the weekend to cover these weekdays he would miss. The repeats did well for NBC, and Carson’s ultimatum left them looking for a suitable replacement.
NBC tapped executive Dick Ebersol to work on a replacement for the Carson reruns. Ebersol in turn tapped a young, Emmy-winning Canadian writer/comedian Lorne Michaels to come up with a concept. What Michaels wanted to do a sketch variety show. That show became Saturday Night Live, and it became a beacon of originality that would change the face of comedy forever.
About that last part. While SNL did change the comedy landscape forever and in so many ways, it’s not like SNL sprung from the ground fully formed like some kind of Roman God. It was a summation of way comedy was changing in the 1970s. It was influenced by the stand-up comedy of George Carlin (who would go on to host the very first Saturday Night Live ever), Richard Pryor (who would host the seventh episode), Lily Tomlin (who hosted the eighth episode) and Steve Martin (who, believe it or not, wouldn’t first host the program until the fifth episode of season two).
It also reflected the popularity of the sketch comedy of the day, from Second Cities Chicago (which gave the show John Belushi and Bill Murray) and Toronto (which supplied Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner), the National Lampoon radio and stage shows (which Belushi and Murray spent time with, but which also sent Chevy Chase to SNL) and the Groundlings in Los Angeles (where Laraine Newman came from). It also worked within boundaries that were expanded through films like Blazing Saddles and Groove Tube and the work of Monty Python.
It also came at a time where there were sketch/variety shows on the various networks’ schedules hosted by Sonny and Cher, Donny and Marie Osmond, Carol Burnett and Johnny Cash. Howard Cosell even had one, on Saturday night, called Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell – a show that we will explore in next week’s installment of this feature – that started a few weeks before in 1975. But it was a time where the genre’s popularity was on the wane. Most of the shows were staid and saccharin, and there was an opening for new take on the format that would make it appeal to younger demographics.
This created the perfect storm for Saturday Night Live to be born in. The definition of what comedy could be had been expanded enough to let SNL in. They definitely expanded it further, but they definitely ran because so many before them walked. And it entered a field where it would be the freshest and newest kid on the block.
Michaels went young with his hirings. His writer’s room had an average age of 29 years old (and that is only that high because veteran writer Herb Sargent, who was 52 at the time he started writing for the show, bumps up the average a bit. Removing him from the equation, the average age goes down to 26 years old.) The cast had an average age of 28, and that was with 38-year old Garrett Morris bringing up the average. Michaels’ was sending a message–this wasn’t going to be your father’s variety program.
That was SNL‘s true innovation. When your typical variety shows looked like this or like this, Michaels and company were trying to create something less kitschy and more urbane. NBC’s Saturday Night would be the thinking man’s variety program.
One of the interesting things about looking back at this first season is how much different it was as it tried to find its footing. Nowadays, SNL follows a fairly rigid structure: Cold Open/Cast Montage/Host Monologue/Sketch/Filmed Segment/Sketches/Second Filmed Segment/Musical Guest/Weekend Update/Sketch/Musical Guest/Sketches/Goodbyes. Every episode pretty much follows this format.
The first episode had two musical guests, Janis Ian and Billy Preston, who each did two songs each. Host George Carlin did several stand up routines but didn’t appear in any sketches. In addition, there were two other stand-up sketches as well, the legendary Andy Kaufman doing is “Mighty Mouse” bit and Canadian comedienne Valri Bromfield.
The second episode was devoted almost exclusively to Paul Simon, and the cast barely made and appearance. Most of the time was taken up by Simon and his musical guests, Randy Newman and Phoebe Snow. The third show seemed to overcompensate for this by having no musical guest. Instead, John Belushi did his Joe Cocker impersonation and there was a dance performance by “The Lockers.”
Another difference in format was that the early episodes featured films by Albert Brooks and a performance by the Muppets. The two features were heavily advertised in the publicity leading up to the show, but neither stayed around for very longer.
Albert Brooks was one of the biggest names in stand-up comedy at the time. He was popular act on the stand-up circuit and had two successful comedy albums, Comedy Minus One (1973) and the Grammy Award–nominated A Star Is Bought (1975), under his belt. He started dabbling his toes into filmmaking, having made his first short film, The Famous Comedians School that was aired in 1972 on the PBS show The Great American Dream Machine.
In the press leading up to the premiere, it appears that these films were intended to be a weekly feature of the show. But Brooks only made a handful of films. By my count over at the Saturday Night Live wiki, only five films by Brooks aired, although I have seen that number go as high as 6 or 7. I believe that this might have to do with Brooks’ Hollywood career picking up steam during this period. He was probably filming Taxi Driver at the time and prepping Real Life soon after. He was becoming known to argue with Michaels over budgets or run times. Regardless, his departure opened up the door for Gary Weis and Tom Schiller to take over with their quirky films.
And then there’s the Muppets.
Let me just say that I am a huge fan of the Muppets. I learned to read by watching Sesame Street. The Muppet Show was a big favorite of my youth. I have seen just about everything they have put out. So, believe me when I say this: The Muppets and SNL were NOT a good mix. The Muppets, dare I say it, were the worst part of the first season of SNL. Who is to blame? I’ll tell you: The Writer’s Guild of America.
The Writer’s Guild of America had specific rule that any sketch that appeared on the show had to be written by a writer that was on staff. Since NBC was trying to keep costs low, they weren’t about to allow Jim Henson and his crew to join the writing staff for one sketch a week. So, all Henson could do was create and design characters, create world in which they lived in, calling it “The Land of Gorch” and then handed them off to SNL‘s writing staff with the hopes they can imbue the puppets with the wit and charm the Muppets were known for.
Unfortunately for Henson, the SNL writers despised the Muppets. The kindest thing head writer Michael O’Donoghue said about the Muppets was that “He didn’t write for felt.” However, he let his true feeling known by hanging Big Bird in effigy in the SNL offices. In interviews, he’d call them “fucking Muppets” and “hairy little face cloths.” He would pawn off the Muppet assignment to the least experienced writers on staff–Alan Zweibel, Tom Davis and Al Franken–who in turn drew straws to see who would get stuck writing the segment every week.
With this amount of anger and animosity aimed at the Muppets, it’s amazing that the segment lasted 16 installments. Not that any of them were great, mind you, but they did their jobs and made it work. It would have been interesting to see what would have been different if Henson’s crew took over the writing. Henson wanted “The Land of Gorch” to show that his Muppets weren’t just for kids. But in the hands of the SNL writers, their ideal of the puppets being adult was having them talk about drug use and sexual situations with very little in the way of nuance.
It all worked out for the best for Henson and company. The failure of “The Land of Gorch” allowed Henson to create The Muppet Show, one of the most iconic shows in the history of television. And Saturday Night Live became much stronger in the segment’s absence.
When Saturday Night Live was rolled out, it quickly became a sensation and NBC’s one big hit of the year. This is an especially grand accomplishment considering that when it hit the airwaves, because it had to share Saturday nights with a news program, Weekend, which aired once a month and not every NBC affiliate aired either program. Many of the stations decided to replace the Carson reruns with movies instead. These affiliates signed long term contracts with the suppliers of these films, and where still bound to them when SNL debuted. A lot of these stations had to wait until these contracts expired before they could start airing the show. For example, the first episode of Saturday Night Live that ran on my hometown NBC affiliate. WBRE-TV 28, was the December 10, 1977 episode!
Thia means that if I wanted to watch the legendary Richard Pryor hosted episode (12/13/1975), I would have got the Jack Lord film The Counterfeit Killer. Or if I wanted to watch the infamous episode where President Gerald Ford’s press secretary hosted (04/17/1976) I would have seen The Robe instead. And this happened in a number of outlets across the country. Only about 2/3rds of the NBC affiliates carried the show.
The reason why the show overcame not being shown in every market to become the hippest show on television certainly had a lot to do with its breakout star, Chevy Chase. With his cold open pratfalls, his scathing Gerald Ford impersonation, and his being the first host of “Weekend Update,” Chase became the face of Saturday Night Live. The problem was, he only had a contract for one year, and Hollywood was calling. His departure is what jump started our next SNL era, which we will talk about in two weeks.
