Sketches are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
WOLVERINES
(JOB) mimics wolverine phrases & heart attack of English teacher (MOD)
— For some reason, I like the kinda-gritty feel of the beginning of this inaugural sketch.
— Ha, all that’s happened so far is John Belushi simply walking down the stairs with a bag of groceries, yet the audience is ALREADY chuckling.
— The disturbing phrases Michael is having John repeat is a hilarious out-of-nowhere reveal.
— It seems fitting that the first sketch Michael O’Donoghue appears in has him acting out an almost-too-realistic heart attack, which is so true to his style.
— A great little touch right before John imitates Michael’s heart attack is this funny puzzled eyebrow raise he does, which is a bit similar to the eyebrow raise that would later become his trademark.
— What better way for SNL to debut than with a bizarre, twisted sketch that let audiences know this wasn’t going to be another Carol Burnett or Laugh-In kind of show?
STARS: ****½
OPENING MONTAGE
— Ah, here we go…
— I, and I’m sure a lot of people, often forget that the show was called “NBC’s Saturday Night” in its early days.
— It’s funny how primitive the theme music sounds in this first episode; it almost sounds like it’s being played inside a cardboard box. Even in other early Season 1 episodes I remember seeing before, the sound quality is definitely better.
— Ah, Pardo’s famous “Not For Ready Prime-Time Players” flub. It sounds like he himself realized his mistake as soon as he said it.
— Another thing I often forget about these early episodes is that the cast members weren’t announced one-by-one accompanied with a picture/clip of them, but were announced collectively as just “The Not Ready For Prime-Time Players” accompanied by a quickly-shown list of their names. And in this first episode, the list of their names isn’t even in alphabetical order, either:
— And let’s not forget that George Coe and Michael O’Donoghue were actually part of the cast early on. Those two only last for a very small handful of episodes (not sure how many exactly) before being taken out of the cast and making non-credited appearances. The fact that they’re the bottom two credited in this episode’s cast list makes me wonder if it was ALREADY planned for their stay in the cast to be short-lived.
MONOLOGUE
host does stand-up about football & baseball terminology differences
— So unusual to see the host making their entrance through the audience instead of through the ‘basement’ set that would soon become the familiar homebase stage of the early seasons.
— I like his little comments at the beginning about the novelty of this being a live TV show.
— This football/baseball routine is different from the type of stand-up I’m used to seeing from him, but I still like it (especially considering I’ve always liked football and hated baseball). His delivery is helping sell this routine.
— Oddly, at the very end, as the audience is applauding, the band replays the opening theme music for a bit before we go to the next segment.
STARS: ***½
NEW DAD INSURANCE
New Dad insurance covers all your family’s needs, not just financial ones
— Hard for me to believe that Dan Aykroyd was only 23 at this time. I think what makes him seem older is the combo of the mustache and his mature demeanor.
— Oh, that’s right, SNL didn’t mix in the audience reactions during the pre-taped segments in these early episodes. It feels so unusual hearing silence during the parts of this commercial that you’d expect to get a laugh.
— A pretty funny premise, and the execution was okay.
STARS: ***
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE (BILLY PRESTON)
THE COURTROOM
sleeping juror (GIR) interprets a piece of evidence as a pick-up line
— Garrett’s accent is pretty funny.
— Gilda’s reaction to the note was great.
— And hey, they ended the sketch right there. I love the simple “set-up/punchline” quick structure of this.
STARS: ****
ANDY KAUFMAN
Andy Kaufman [real] lip-syncs the Mighty Mouse theme song
— Oh, yes. As a huge Andy Kaufman fan, this classic Mighty Mouse routine has always been one of my all-time favorite things on SNL ever, and also my #1 favorite thing Kaufman ever did anywhere.
— In addition to the main joke of him only lipsyncing to that one key lyric, there’s a lot of little things he does that helps makes this so great, such as 1) the awkward beginning where there’s just dead air as he nervously stands there for a while before turning the record player on, 2) the brief close-up of him about to lipsync to the wrong part before realizing his mistake and then looking down in shame, and 3) the way you can see him visibly getting prepared to raise his arm & lipsync every time the key lyric is about to come up.
— The water-drinking bit during the song’s long instrumental break is another classic part.
STARS: *****
(SIDE NOTE: The post-commercial bumper pictures in this episode just show still shots of NYC nightlife, instead of a picture of the host like we’re used to seeing)
GEORGE CARLIN STAND-UP #2
host does observational stand-up about many different topics
— Love the line about looking at the crowds in old movies and wondering if they’re dead yet.
— I’m really enjoying the loose structure of this, jumping from one quick random topic to another, which is my favorite type of stand-up comedy.
— The ‘there’s a moment coming, it’s on the way, here it i— aw, it’s gone’ bit was fantastic.
STARS: ****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE (JANIS IAN)
VICTIMS OF SHARK BITE
(JOB) falsely claims to have had limbs bitten off
— Hmm, an opening graphic of a shark. Are we getting our very first Landshark ske– oh, wait, I see from the title that just showed up that this is something different.
— Jane plays her first of what I remember being MANY talk show hosts over the next few seasons.
— Wow, another quick sketch. This was a nice, simple bit that got out before anything could get too one-note.
STARS: ***
JAMITOL
CHC describes how Jamitol allows his wife MOD to be productive
— Ohh, boy. This hasn’t aged very well, as the idea of a commercial testimonial featuring a same-sex couple isn’t as unusual or funny nowadays as it was in the 70s.
— It still is fairly amusing to see Michael O’Donoghue of all people saying sensitive woman lines that the wives in these commercial testimonials usually gets.
STARS: **
NEXT WEEK PROMO
Paul Simon [real] announces he’ll be hosting SNL next week
— Not gonna rate this, obviously, but it is interesting to see the “next week promo” being done with an appearance by that episode’s host instead of it just being a bumper stating the upcoming host and musical guest’s names.
WEEKEND UPDATE, PART 1
LAN reports from the Blaine Hotel on its latest murder victim
— Wow, right from the very first episode, we get Chevy’s trademark “phone conversation” opening gag, which I wasn’t expecting so soon.
— Hmm, no “I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not” intro, which I WAS expecting.
— Did Chevy look into the wrong camera during that one news story just now?
— I was right, he did it again in the next news story… or are the camera people the ones that messed up?
— Ah, and now he acknowledged the camera screw-ups by jokingly looking back-and-forth between both cameras quickly.
— Oh, the famous prostitution stamp joke was in THIS episode? For some reason, I always thought it was a little later this season. Anyway, we can pinpoint this as the very first time an Update joke ever got a HUGE audience reaction.
— Hey, it’s Laraine. I believe this is the first time all night we’ve seen her, which is strange since the show’s halfway over and all the other cast members already made their first appearance much earlier.
— A “still to come” news bit? I guess this is one of those early Updates that has a break in the middle for a fake ad.
TRIOPENIN
a child-proof safety cap makes Triopenin arthritis medicine unobtainable
— I was right.
— The ‘hand acting’ from the unseen actor was good. The frustrated attempts to open the bottle was nice and subtle.
STARS: ***
WEEKEND UPDATE, PART 2
— The ‘guests stay at the Blaine Hotel’ ad was a hilarious callback to earlier.
— The baby sandpiper story had a great dark ending after such a long set-up.
— Strong way to end the first Weekend Update.
STARS: ***
JIM HENSON’S MUPPETS
Ploobis (Jim Henson) & Scred (Jerry Nelson) visit Mighty Favog (Frank Oz)
— Oh, boy, here we are, the infamous Muppets from Season 1.
— I surprisingly kinda like the voices of these puppets, especially the one for Ploobis’ wife.
— What hideous puppets, though. All of them.
— Some of these lines are actually kinda making me laugh, especially the “massage your moogies” line from Scred.
— Was it intentional for the food deliverer puppet to have trouble letting go of Ploobis’ meal, or was that a real blooper?
— Some of these jokes are pretty corny.
— Wow, that “cheer up, things could be worse” punchline was awful.
— And that’s the joke they end this sketch with? Oh, man. I was actually kinda enjoying some of the humor of this sketch early on, but the last two minutes was pretty bad and made me start to kinda understand why these Muppets segments would go on to be so hated.
STARS: **
GEORGE CARLIN STAND-UP #3
host does stand-up about blue food, vitamins, oxymorons
— This is when you start to realize that he hasn’t appeared in any actual sketches at all tonight; just these solo stand-up pieces on the homebase stage. This is just one of the many unusual aspects of this first episode.
— Love his “Have I done these jokes before tonight?” ad-lib after the jokes started getting a tepid reaction.
— The “why is there no blue food” bit is both very funny and a great point.
— This is another ‘one quick random topic after another’ stand-up bit, which once again is something I always enjoy.
STARS: ****½
A FILM BY ALBERT BROOKS
“The Impossible Truth”- newsreel reports unlikely items
— The blind cab driver looks familiar for some reason. Maybe he just reminds me of someone.
— I haven’t been laughing much yet, but I do always like ‘alternate universe’-type premises like this.
— The “I can’t read yet” line from the little girl in the ‘age of consent lowered to age 7’ scene was pretty funny, though aren’t most kids able to read by that age?
— Overall, not bad.
STARS: ***
BEE HOSPITAL
new fathers find out where their offspring rank in the hive
— Well, we may not have gotten a Landshark debut in this episode like I falsely thought earlier, but we DO get the debut of another staple of 70s SNL: the bees.
— Feels odd seeing Coe and O’Donoghue paired with the rest of the male cast.
— Eh, not really liking the humor here much. Cheesy jokes like this can sometimes work, but I think I had my fill of that type of humor after sitting through the Muppets earlier.
— This didn’t overstay its welcome, though. This was yet another short sketch tonight. I don’t think there’s been a sketch with the cast that was over two minutes long so far.
STARS: **
ACADEMY OF BETTER CAREERS
call Academy of Better Careers now to become a stand-by operator
— Wow, yet another pre-taped fake ad tonight.
— There’s the wife from the New Dad commercial again. I think I remember hearing she was Chevy’s girlfriend at the time.
— I like the “not affiliated with the American Broadcast Company” disclaimer that comes up every time ABC is mentioned.
— Overall, this was just okay.
STARS: ***
VALRI BROMFIELD
Valri Bromfield [real] portrays teacher, high school volleyball player
— Well, this feels strange to see on SNL.
— Not caring much for this teacher routine, though some people in the audience are absolutely loving it.
— She sure has energy, though.
— And now she’s suddenly doing ANOTHER character? Ehhh…….
STARS: **
SHOW US YOUR GUNS
SNL goes to the streets to view citizens’ firearms
— Unlike some of the other pre-taped segments in this episode, this is a bit that still holds up surprisingly well. SNL even did a fake ad recently in 2015 that can be considered the spiritual successor to this.
— This has some really good little gags thrown in, like the angry store clerk who’s about to shoot at two robbers but then stops to happily wave at the camera, and the traffic cop finding out his gun’s missing and then just shrugging it off.
STARS: ****
GEORGE CARLIN STAND-UP #4
host does stand-up about the relationship between God, man, religion
— While I was really digging the ‘random quick topics’ format of his last two stand-up pieces tonight, THIS is more the George Carlin stand-up that I’m used to seeing.
— Just now, you could see the musical guest stage for Billy Preston light up in the background behind Carlin, before dimming back down again. I’m guessing we weren’t supposed to notice that. Heh, for some reason, I’m getting a kick out of seeing little errors like that in this first episode; it adds to the charm of these early, primitive SNLs.
— I’m loving this whole religion routine.
STARS: ****½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE (BILLY PRESTON)
TROJAN HORSE HOME SECURITY
(DAA) breaks into house of (JOB) & (GIR) to show need for home security
— Wow, I love the concept of this sketch.
— Dan is absolutely PERFECT here. Our first glimpse of his knack for playing pitchmen/salesmen.
— While it was just a throwaway joke, I love the concept of a “toilet bowl piranha” to scare away burglars. That sounds like something that could be a fake SNL ad in itself.
— It feels strange seeing an actual normal-length, fleshed-out sketch tonight, after having so many quick “blackout gag”-type sketches earlier.
— Great bit with John suddenly getting shot at from the back and he reacts in absolute horror, only for it to be revealed the gun was shooting blanks.
— Excellent ending.
STARS: ****
TRIPLE-TRAC
gullible people will appreciate the Triple-Trac shaver’s tricky bladework
— I mentioned that the Jamitol commercial earlier hasn’t aged very well, but THIS takes the cake. The then-ridiculous idea of a three-blade razor would later become a case of “life imitates art”, and it’s now considered so normal to use that type of razor that it can be hard to understand what the intended humor of this ad was. If you showed this fake ad to someone without telling them it’s from SNL, they’d most likely think it was a real commercial (which would also be supported by the fact that, again, there were no audience sounds mixed in these early pre-taped segments).
— I did get a laugh from the “Because you’ll believe anything” tagline at the end, which is funny nowadays in an ironic way.
STARS: N/A, because I don’t feel I can fairly rate this nowadays
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE (JANIS IAN)
GOODNIGHTS
— Adding to the already-long list of unusual things about this episode is that Carlin is by himself on stage during these goodnights, with no cast members, musical guests, special guests, or anyone else.
— Ah, the familiar goodnights music – one of the things about SNL that hasn’t changed after all these decades (aside from Season 6). In a way, hearing that music in this episode really makes me appreciate the history of the show.
— Every name in the ending credits scroll has the nickname “Bud”. Inside joke? Or was that intended to be the start of a weekly tradition where the ending credits scroll would always have a different gag each time? If so, it’s too bad it never took off.
_______________________________
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— Wow! Well, there it was, the very first SNL ever.
— This was such a fascination to watch, not just because we now know the still-active institution it would become, but also in how primitive everything about the show felt, in how unusual a lot of things about the show were compared to what we’re used to today, and how probably nobody we saw performing in the show knew what an important part of TV history this episode would later be looked back as. Who would’ve guessed back then that this was a program that would still be running 43 years later?
— To me, the most unusual, uncharacteristic aspect of this episode was the “variety show” feel it had. Instead of focusing mainly on sketches like we’re used to seeing from SNL, this episode was jam-packed with everything from sketches, many musical performances, many stand-up performances, many pre-taped segments, and even a puppetry segment. I’m not used to having to review so many segments in a single episode. It’s been said some places that this episode has the highest number of pieces an SNL episode has ever had. From what I saw, that very well may be true, though I know it was common for the early seasons in general to have a lot of pieces per episode.
— The short length of most of the live sketches was refreshingly surprising, which is something I wish became a long-standing SNL tradition that continued to this day. I wonder at what point in the show’s history did they start to gain their bad reputation for doing overlong one-joke sketches. I guess we’ll see as we go along.
— Excluding George Coe (who ALREADY seems like an outsider among the cast), most of the cast seemed to get a fairly equal amount of airtime for the most part, though I can’t help but feel Laraine kinda got the short end of the stick. Unsurprisingly, Chevy had the most prominent presence.
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW:
— (sigh) If you know your SNL history, you’ll know that the next episode is going to be a very weird one to review, as it consists almost entirely of nothing but musical performances, with very few comedy pieces. Since I don’t review musical performances, that will possibly end up being my shortest episode review ever in this ‘One SNL a Day’ project.
Great review! Really looking forward to the rest of them.
Mario Lanza?! Any relation?
Why don’t you review the musical performances?
Part of the reason the sound is so awful is that the sound system hadn’t really been updated for 30 years… ever since Toscaninni used 8H. So, late in the week, they had to truck in some rented gear from a local production company that was used to putting on rock concerts (as opposed to the NBC staff, whose loudest assignment each week was mic’ing a game show audience).
According to this 1978 piece on Valri, Lorne asked her to be a cast member; she declined.
http://archive.macleans.ca/article/1978/6/12/the-reluctant-star
A brief shot of Show Us Your Guns pops up in SNL40’s In Memoriam for Audrey Peart Dickman.
She did go on to a semi-successful career as a writer for many sitcoms in the ’80s and ’90s.
Great start for “NBC’s Saturday Night” with The Wolverines sketch! By the way, that first title was because two weeks before ABC’s primetime “Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell” premiered. It would only last till Jan. 1976 which I believe was the same time the “NBC” part of the title was no longer printed though Don Pardo continued to say that part. Also loved New Dad which co-starred Chevy’s then-girlfriend Jaqueline Carlin who he eventually married and divorced. And Trojan Horse Home Security was a great first Dan Aykroyd showcase. By the way, among the credits was one for Dick “Bud” Ebersol as “Executive producer for NBC”. Lorne put that in as a favor to him since he thought he deserved some recognition for helping develop the show but it got both in trouble since Dick was a network executive and he violated a rule in giving himself a credit like that…
(It’s just a jump to the Left.)
Man, that Gun film is certainly something that aged like the finest wine from France or California. Especially since I grew up in the south and have seen a lot of people here who pretty much have Marriage Licences with their Guns.
I have a friend who has a friend who sent me a copy of the ORIGINAL airing from the night of October 11th, 1975 complete with promotional consideration from Delta Air Lines and intact commercials! It’s trippy to watch!
I’m glad that the way they structure Carlin’s stand-up sets in this episode were a one-off, as they slowly become exhausting (even though he’s in good form).
I had not seen this one in a long time, until recently, and there’s so much that had faded, like Valri’s appearance (which I do enjoy, although it feels very out of step for this era – yes, she does the same Valley Girl pastiche Laraine excelled with, but overall she is much closer to the Ebersol ladies). Of everything in this I enjoy Show Us Your Guns most.
I am very fond of Gilda’s work on the show, but I’m not quite as fond of how broad it becomes with the passing seasons. Her use here was a great reminder of some of her other gifts which would not be used as frequently. The home invasion sketch has a throwaway, incredibly dark line that Gilda absolutely flies away with – she steals the whole thing in a second.
Speaking of Gilda, I don’t know the name of the man who is on the phone with her, but hearing him was a lovely throwback moment, because he would go on to voice ads for Nick at Nite…including SNL.
@John I think that’s Wendell Craig, who also did some voice work for HBO, Stoogemania, and Radio Days.
Not sure where to post this, but saw that OG writer Anne Beatts has passed.
That fucking hurts. Such a huge influence and is why the show is still going. I really hope they do something for her this week, and not just a little bumper like they usually do. She deserves an honorable mention.
It’s eerie timing (as always with SNL) considering Tina Fey played a cross between Anne and Rosie Shuster only two episodes ago.
I’d think Lorne will at least have a bumper.
If Che and Jost mention it on Update then you will probably get a lot of backlash as two men, very controversial men at that, are remembering her, but unless Tina comes back on that may be the likeliest place (or the bumper).
When I first read about SNL’s backstage history a lot of what I saw about Anne Beatts was limited to The Nerds or talking about what it was like being a female writer on the show. I didn’t know just how many brilliant and varied sketches she was involved in. From such dark, sick pieces like Uncle Roy to the sweet and sad and sexy and funny Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute. SNL writers in more recent decades have been very pigeonholed in a way that Beatts never was.
I’d be surprised if it were any more or less than a bumper to be honest. She absolutely deserves to be honored, so she’ll get that, but Lorne is so rigid in the structure of the modern show I really doubt they’ll be a full on tribute. Maybe (hopefully!) a short clip or mention at the end of Update (or mention by Mulligan in the goodnights), since she was there at the beginning.
She was also involved with the Lampoon during their prime years. RIP
She also created Square Pegs. A show way before it’s time (1982) that I enjoyed watching reruns of when I was a kid
I remember a little of “Square Pegs” at the time it originally aired. I also remember Bill Murray and Father Guido Sarducci being among the guest stars…
I checked to see if Tom Davis got a tribute, but he died in June, so by the time the show came back they didn’t seem to do anything. I hope they will consider either having Tina on Update or repeating an episode she wrote a great sketch in, but considering it’s been 46 years and she moved on from SNL a long time ago, even a card may be a stretch. We’ll see.
Here’s an interview she did last year (starts about 30 minutes in).
A wonderful interview with Anne from not long before her death.
vulture.com/2021/04/anne-beatts-snl-final-interview.html
Some of the things that stuck with me from this first episode:
– Though I didn’t laugh too much at Carlin’s routines here, I really liked what he said about football being an American sport about the acquisition of land. A very sharp observation.
– The Blaine Hotel callback is very funny.
– I watched this episode about a year ago and still think about Show Us Your Guns all the time. I love that sketch.
– Of course the Andy Kaufman routine is hilarious and amazing.
– On the other hand, I have no idea what Valri Bromfield is doing or why it’s funny, but I do love a glimpse at different aspects of comedy in the era, and the contemporary article another commenter here shared about her was fascinating.
Does anybody know why Johnny Carson never had any active SNL cast members on his show until Eddie Murphy in 1982? Looking through the episode guides, I can’t find any appearances by any active SNL cast members before 1982. After that it became quite common. But I noticed when Aykroyd and Murray appeared on Carson in 1984 to promote Ghostbusters, they said it was their first time on the show. Chevy Chase began appearing on Carson in 1977, only after he left SNL.
I know Carson went through a big contract negotiation around 1980, after which the show was shortened to 60 minutes. It’s possible his position with the network was less secure before that happened. I just wonder if he saw SNL as threatening his territory at NBC late night in some way. The only concrete effect it seemed to have on him was that it replaced Best of Carson reruns on weekends, which had run for 10 years on either Saturday or Sunday night depending on the affiliate. Maybe he thought if SNL really took off, it might expand to weeknights and replace him? Or maybe he simply wanted to be involved in producing the Saturday night comedy show for NBC and was shut out. Or was there a behind-the-scenes feud with Lorne Michaels, that wouldn’t have affected bringing on cast from the Ebersol era (after which the feud may have dissipated).
Well, I remember that book “Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live” mentioning Carson’s remark of the early years of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players cast “that couldn’t ad-lib a fart at a bean eating contest” striking a nerve with the show causing Jane Curtin doing this item on “Weekend Update” (and I’m paraphrasing)-“The Tonight Show will be going live, not surprising since it’s been dead for 10 years”…
This is what I’m seeing about that. The remark was specific to Chevy Chase. And things must have settled down between him and Chase by 1977, when Chase started appearing on The Tonight Show as a guest. However, one of these articles mentions that Carson “was not a fan” of SNL. I’ve seen a similar vague comment show up in another article, but so far not finding any specific quotes from Carson to back it up. Certainly, if they started taking shots at him on Weekend Update early on, that could have caused the freeze out. But it’s a little odd that it would have thawed out with Chase only, even while some of the articles say Chase was being considered as a potential replacement host in the 1970s if Carson left The Tonight Show. But, yeah, we do know Dana Carvey says Carson froze him specifically out after the sketch he did about Carson being so out-of-touch he could only remember TV shows from the 1970s. So Carson was sensitive to perceived criticism coming from SNL.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1986-04-15-8601270546-story.html
Certification of Chevy`s celebrity came on Dec. 22, 1975, when New York magazine, then at the height of its trend-setting powers, put him on its cover. The article dubbed him ”the heir apparent to Johnny Carson,” a label Chevy didn`t so much deny as dismiss. ”I`d never be tied down for five years interviewing TV personalities,” he said.
http://www.harrisonline.com/carsons-pace-and-chevy-chase/
The reply from Carson (who was not a big fan of “SNL”) was “Chevy Chase couldn’t ad lib a fart at a baked bean dinner.”
This is a March, 1979 Rolling Stone interview with Carson where Saturday Night Live comes up a few times. His comments are mixed, leaning towards negative, but it doesn’t sound so bad that the whole cast would be banned from The Tonight Show. Not that he would publicly admit if he had that much of a grudge against them.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/johnny-carson-the-rolling-stone-interview-45826/
What do you think of the kind of black humor you see on Saturday Night Live?
I’ve often thought being bizarre just to be bizarre is no good. I’ve seen Animal House, and the kids will probably hate me for saying that I don’t think Animal House is very funny. Again, it’s my own personal point of view. I don’t think it’s very clever. To me, a food fight is sophomoric.
What’s the story on the controversy with Chevy Chase and whether someday he’ll take over the show?
You know something? I don’t know how that started. I really don’t. I didn’t know Chevy Chase outside of seeing him on Saturday Night. I started seeing these things in magazines, about Chevy Chase making remarks about The Tonight Show. Some of them were little zingers. From the way I saw it, I got the impression that somebody was doing some publicity for somebody and was planting it. I don’t have a publicity agent. Haven’t had anybody for years. I have a lawyer, that’s all. I don’t have any press people or anything.
So I’d read these things and some of them are little zingers. Chevy saying, “Well I can’t see myself sitting there talking with some dumb starlet for ten minutes.” Well, I might reply, “Who’s ever asked you? Who thought you could do it in the first place?” As if that’s all there is to it. I did throw a line against Chevy Chase once. Somebody talked about ad-libbing, and I said that I didn’t think Chevy Chase could ad-lib a fart after a baked-bean dinner. I think he took umbrage at that a little bit. But people love to read this shit. That makes a story.
[then he goes on to say he made similar jokes about Streisand just for run and the media reported it as a feud]
…
We did a couple of jokes on Carter’s son getting divorced, and you have to be kind of careful that you don’t get too personal. Saturday Night Live, on the other hand, will go after anybody. They’ve done some outrageous things, and I don’t always agree with them.
I think the thing they did on Claudine Longet, while it was funny, was unfair, and I think some of the stuff they did on Patty Hearst at the time was really unfair. No matter what position you take, the girl was really in serious trouble. And Claudine Longet was up for manslaughter, and they were doing a thing, a skiing thing, where shots were ringing out and everybody was falling down dead. For some people it was very funny, but other people thought it was very unfair. But that’s a judgment. And what one person sees is not what I’ll see.
…
Saturday Night Live‘s cast takes a lot of chances, a lot of real risks in the kinds of things they do, and I’ve liked a good many of them. The fact that they’re live and the element of risk involved has a lot to do with their humor and its impact.
[Coyly] And if they don’t always turn out funny, well, they don’t seem to get terribly upset about that.
Pretty sure the hands in the Triopenen commercial belong to Chevy. In his early film appearance, “The Groove Tube,” he’s credited as the hands in a Yellow Pages spoof as well as a instructional cooking skit. There is definitely a rhythm to his hand work!
Speaking of commercials, the razor blade spot here is a pretty dead on send up of how commercials were at the time, which was demonstrative and centered around product claims, often featuring animation just like this (today, most of the time, I can’t even tell what’s being advertised in commercials, they’ve gotten so strange).
Is that Yoshimura in the Academy commercial?
Rewatching the DVD release version for the first time in a while; here are a few stray observations:
-I really wish they left the bumper photography in the DVD releases; being more familiar with the original airing, the additional applause added in during transitions feels off to me, particularly during the second half of the show where the transitions between live and pretaped were originally more abrupt.
-Interesting that the DVD leaves in the Paul Simon promo (which seems to have the same audio glitches left in from the master tape) but cuts Chevy’s dirty phone call (which I recall does appear in the 2008 and 2015 repeats)
-It’s interesting how primitive and raw so much of this show is compared to even later in the season.
-Who’s singing with Billy Preston on “Fancy Lady”? Some places list it as Syreeta Wright (who sang on the studio version) but it doesn’t sound a thing like her.
“The Courtroom” sketch originally was performed on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” perhaps either before or when Lorne Michaels was a writer on that show. I also think the ending was different on that version…
@avmon Crazy thing, I first saw a variation of that courtroom sketch in an episode of Too Close for Comfort, the vanilla (imo) ABC sitcom with Ted Knight (“Deadline for Henry” S01E13 OAD Feb 17 1981):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khNz02cJmtY
(*took me six years later to finally see the SNL sketch…)
…and now I just saw another variation of the “Courtroom” sketch on LA Law (S2.E3 “Cannon of Ethics” OAD Oct 29, 1987).
I thought I’d post this here: Has anyone kept up with the casting of SNL1975 about the behind-the-scenes events leading up the the show’s premiere? I remember being interested when casting was announced for Lorne Michaels, Dick Ebersol, and Lorne’s then-wife Rosie Shuster especially since I knew about Ebersol’s attempts at hustling Shuster before knowing about her connections to Michaels when reading that Hill/Weingard book from 1986…
Valri Bromfield was funny as the sister on Grace Under Fire (had good chemistry with Dave Thomas from SCTV on the show) would barely recognize her from this SNL appearance she looks so young.
the cold opening is different from most of those that would follow this season, as these would mostly be Chevy solo pieces. I like that O’Donoghue and Belushi are in fact the first to appear, and I believe O’Donoghue is first to speak. I like this because they were respectively the creative directors of season 1 and season 2 of the National Lampoon Radio Hour, arguably the direct precursor to SNL considering the number of writers and performers common to both shows.
If anyones not heard the National Lampoon Radio Hour, all surviving episodes can be downloaded here: https://www.radioechoes.com/?page=series&genre=OTR-Comedy&series=The%20National%20Lampoon%20Radio%20Hour
Valri Bromfield was Aykroyd’s comedy partner before the two of them joined the original Toronto cast of Second City. perhaps that was how she got invited to do her standup routine here?
I dont think this was mentioned above: Billy Crystal was also supposed to contribute yet another standup bit to this episode but got cut due to time. Somewhat ironic, as ten years later he was invited to become the permanent host of the show, but lost that gig when Lorne Michaels returned and replaced the entire cast. Anyway, he was so good in Soap that getting left out of early SNL turned out alright
This is gonna show how anal retentive and nit-picky I am, but George Carlin is not the host. There is no host in the first episode. Even though tons and tons of people have later said he was the first host.
George doesn’t host anything. He does standup as a way to kill time so the actors can change costume and the crew can put the sets together. Right away Lorne realized they needed a host to introduce various elements and also take part in some of the sketches alongside the main cast.
And as somebody points out later on, some other episodes don’t even have a proper host. Various cast members just introduce the musical guests or perform an opening monologue but that’s it. In fact it was either Billy Crystal or Martin Short or one of those guys who suggested getting rid of the guest host altogether. But the executives figured out having famous people come on the show each week was good for ratings, so they stuck with it.
George Carlin is the host. He might not be as involved as later hosts, but he sets up the proceedings and performs in between… just like people are credited as the host of the Oscar or Emmy or Tony or Grammy telecasts. Just like Ed Sullivan, who “hosted” his own show for 23 years but rarely did more than appear between acts. Also, Carlin is verbatim announced as the host (“starring George Carlin”) in the same way dozens of other people were credited as host in the show’s first seasons.
Who is here after seeing the movie Saturday Night?
In the Saturday Night movie, it’s amazing finding out the same person played both Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman!