The Cast of Saturday Night: The Playboy Interview

On the second Saturday in October 1975, a live, 90-minute comedy show, titled, appropriately, NBC's "Saturday Night," premiered on that network in what used to be the time slot for "Tonight Show" reruns. It featured a group of young, rubbery-faced unknowns, billed as the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, and a guest host of the week, George Carlin, cavorting in a series of sketches, commercial parodies and takeoffs on the news. The quality of the material ranged from funny to insane, with occassional references that only a bona fide graduate of the late freak subculture could appreciate. But its most salient characteristic proved to be a total disregard for any of television's traditional taboos: Viewers soon found themselves witnessing things they never expected to see on the tube. Among the targets satirized were cripples, homosexuals, bizarre sexual practices, politicians, the Pope, all minority groups, the aged and the recently deceased--in other words, just about anything.

News of the show spread rapidly by word of mouth, especially among those 20-to-40-year-olds who rarely, if ever, watch prime time. Advertisers began to take note. So did the press and, though several critics lambasted the show as "tasteless," "sophomoric" or "subversive," most hailed it as a "breakthrough," and compared it with enthusiasm to the pioneering days of days of television, especially to Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows." It soon became necessary for anyone giving a party on Saturday night to have a television set tuned to NBC at the crucial hour. In less than a year, the show's estimated viewing audience was 22,000,000 and the show went on to win four 1975-1976 Emmy Awards.

At least some of "Saturday Night's" success can be credited to its guest hosts, who have included Candice Bergen, Elliot Gould, Lily Tomlin, Richard Pryor and a reunited Simon and Garfunkel. Former press secretary Ron Nessen hosted a show that featured, among other things, a sketch in which Gerald Ford stapled his ear to his head. When a snickering press spread a report that Ford was not amused, the show's already unprecedented notoriety skyrocketed.

But "Saturday Night's" greatest strenght lies in its high-powered cast and writing staff, most of whom are under 30, have had little or no television experience and harbor a healthy lack of inhibitions. Because the people who produce and write TV shows don't often get the public recognition that the more visible performers get, we decided to interview the entire crew of loonies, so we sent Associate Editor John Blumenthal and New York-based free-lancer Lindsay Maracotta to talk with them at NBC headquarters in Rockefeller Center. Their report:

"If we had suspected it wouldn't be easy interviewing the entire cast and writing staff of a television show, the full measure of the task didn't strike us until we stepped off the elevator at the 17th floor of Rockefeller Center. In the slightly shabby offices of the 'Saturday Night' show, we were met by a group of casually dressed people who seemed to be in a constant state of motion--they flowed ceaselessly in, out of and around offices like fish at feeding time in the aquarium. We quietly requisitioned the nearest empty desk and sat back to try and take it all in. After a while, individuals began to distinguish themselves from the maze: Michael O'Donoghue shuffled down a hall, singing 'Giaccobazzi spoken here' under his breath; John Belushi appeared as if out of the ozone, flickered briefly, then disappeared; Gilda Radner hopped from place to place like a migrant rabbit, her cuckoo-clock laugh cutting through the general hum.
"We soon discovered the method behind this mad activity. For three consecutive weeks a month, 90 minutes of comedy must be written, rehearsed and performed on the air in exactly six days. The schedule runs more or less like this: All sketches must be in by Wednesday, at which point the cast is assembled for a read-through; Thursday and Friday are spent in the intensive rehearsal and taping spots that require special effects, with constant rewriting occurring right up to, and sometimes even after, the Saturday-night dress rehearsal several hours before air time.

Any wishful thinking notions we had of getting the entire gang to sit down together were shattered when we found that producer Lorne Michaels regularly fails to get them into the same room for their Monday-night creative meetings. Chasing them down in smaller groups proved almost as difficult and conversation took place in studio halls, with carpenters striking sets, technicians stringing cables and assorted writers and players streaking by in a wake of cue cards and coffee cups. Nonetheless, after two weeks of pursuit, we managed to get them all on tape. (For reasons of space, we are including only 14 of the 19 members of the performing and writing cast. Arbitrarily, we left out writers Tom Schiller and Marilyn Suzanne Miller, as well as mutliple-Emmy Award-winning Herb Sargent, the show's script consultant. As the inteview was taking place, a new cast members, Bill Murray, and another writer, Jim Downey, were added to the show)

"Things came to an abrupt halt when Danny Aykroyd sent us a subtle signal that he was tired of talking. Gesticulating wildly, he threatened to blow the tops of our heads off with the .44 magnum he claimed was in his top desk drawer. 'He's only kidding,' his pal Belushi assured us. Still, it seemed like a good idea to retire and find a quiet place to ponder the vision of life according to 'Saturday Night.'"

Dan Aykroyd, writer and performer, does possibly the most deadly accurate impression of Jimmy Carter of anyone to date. Aykroyd, a Canadian, was a member of Second City companies in Toronto and Pasadena and starred in the Canadian television series Coming Up Rosie. A glittering eye and a slightly crazed smile are his trademarks as pitchmen in many of Saturday Night's commercial parodies.

Writer Anne Beatts, an ex-contributing editor of the National Lampoon's editorial board from its inception to April 1974. She has written and performed material for the National Lampoon Radio Hour, including Gold Turkey, an album she subsequently recorded. She is also coeditor of the recently published book Titters: The First Anthology of Humor by Women.

John Belushi, writer and performer, also an alumnus of Second City in Chicago, went on to appear in the National Lampoon show Lemmings and to write, direct and act in both the National Lampoon Radio Hour and the off-Broadway National Lampoon Show. A versatile performer,he has impersonated everyone from Marlon Brando to Henry Kissinger to Joe Cocker and is the show's resident samurai.

Chevy Chase, writer and performer, is to date the first superstar to have emerged from the ranks of NBC's Saturday Night. Starting as a writer, he quickly became known for the athletic pratfalls in his Gerald Ford impersonation and for his role as the mugging anchor man of "Weekend Update." Before joining the show, Chase had written for Groove Tube and for the Smothers Brothers. In October 1976, he officially left NBC's Saturday Night to do a series of specials for NBC but continues to appear on the show semiregularly.

Performer, Jane Curtin, the anchor woman of "Weekend Update," was chosen for the cast of NBC's Saturday Night from an audition of 500 people. She had previously been a membe of the Boston improv group The Proposition, toured with The Last of the Red Hot Lovers and co-authored and performed in an off-broadway revue, Pretzels.

Al Franken and Tom Davis, who have worked as a writing and performing team since high school days in Minnesota, admit they hold nothing sacred, with the possible exception of Hubert Humphrey. Before joining the writing staff of NBC's Saturday Night, they had appeared at the Improvisation in New York and Harrah's in Reno and co-authored and performed in the film Tunnelvision.

Lorne Michaels, producer, began his career with Canada's CBC radio and television networks and went on to write monologs for Woody Allen and Joan Rivers. He then wrote for Laugh-In and was a co-writer of the 1973 Emmy-winning TV special Lily starring Lily Tomlin and coproducer of Tomlin's 1975 special. When NBC executives were looking for a late-night weekend comedy show that would appeal to young urban adults, they turned to Michaels. He conceived of a live, presentational show that would incorporate a variety of comedy styles rather than serve one star and that would be as free as possible from the usual restrictions of TV. Promised 17 shows and six months' development time, he put together the talent for the staff and cast of NBC's Saturday Night.

Performer Garrett Morris began his career studying music at Tanglewood, Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music and was a member of the Harry Belafonte folk singers. He has appeared on Broadway in Showboat, Porgy and Bess, and The Great White Hope and his film credits include Where's Poppa?, The Anderson Tapes and Cooley High.

Performer Laraine Newman's ambition to become a heroine of horror films may have spurred portrayal of Luciana Avedon rising from a coffin to drink the blood of teenagers. Newman had studied mime with Marcel Marceau and theater at the California Institute of Arts, then became a member of the Groundlings, an improvisational grouped based in her native Los Angeles. She was chosen for the cast of NBC's Saturday Night after appearing in the 1975 Tomlin special coproduced by Michaels.

Writer Michael O'Donoghue's fascination with the perverse and admittedly bizarre took root when he became one of the original editors of the National Lampoon. He was writer, producer, host of the National Lampoon Radio Hour, has written several books and co-authored the film Savages. Although primarily a writer, he also appears on the show, notably as narrator of the "Least-loved Fairly Tales," in which nobody lives happily ever after.

Gilda Radner, performer, has portrayed many of NBC's Saturday Night's more memorable characters, including the bemused Emily Litella and Baba Wawa, a take-off of Barabara Walters. Radner was originally a member of Second City, then appeared in a Canadian version of Godspell and in several CBC shows. She was subsequently a regular on the National Lampoon Radio Hour and a member of the off-Broadway production of the National Lampoon Show.

Writer Rosie Shuster worked extensively as a writer for the CBC TV network before coming to the United States. She received an Emmy nomination for her work as a writer for the 1975 Tomlin special.

Writer Alan Zwiebel served his apprenticeship in the Borscht Belt, where he wrote material for over 25 comedians. As his own act, he then worked in New York's Improvisation and Catch a Rising Star and in several Playboy Clubs around the country.