With the 50th season of Saturday Night Live premiering this weekend, the story of how its first episode took shape has become a legendary piece of showbiz history.
It’s a story of how Lorne Michaels, then 30, hosted a comedy-variety show in New York City with a team of unrecognized writers and performers.
Your vision?
‘A candid and intelligent comedy show for urban young adults’ Biography reported.
And on the night of October 11, 1975, Saturday Night Live was born.
The first episode of Saturday Night Live premiered on October 11, 1975.
The original cast still remembers the show’s debut 50 years later, along with all the madness and chaos that preceded the premiere.
Looking back at the first episode, the ‘not ready for primetime players’, including Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman, appeared on the TV screen with no idea what they were about to do. history.
“I don’t think it worried us in any way,” Chevy Chase said. The New York Times.
‘We were going to do what we do, and if you laugh, great, you laugh. You’ll tell someone else and they’ll laugh next time.
The cast was about to launch the longest-running live comedy show in television history.
After the first sketch, Chevy Chase walked on stage, looked directly into the camera and read the signature line: ‘Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!’ for the first time
The first sketch, titled The Wolverines, features an immigrant, played by John Belushi (left), who is learning English. Head writer Michael O’Donoghue (right) played a teacher who insisted on making Belushi repeat meaningless phrases.
Putting live comedy sketches on national television was a risky move, but it created instant cult success, according to Open Culture.
At the time, impersonating celebrities or criticizing current events was not in the cards.
The first sketch, titled The Wolverines, features an immigrant, played by John Belushi, who is learning English.
Head writer Michael O’Donoghue played a teacher who insisted on making Belushi repeat meaningless phrases, specifically, “I’d like to feed the gluttons with your fingertips.”
It was short and pointless: setting the stage for what the show would offer.
Valri Bromfield was the first woman to perform on Saturday Night
In the first episode, Jim Henson introduced adult characters atypical of the Muppet world.
At the conclusion of the first sketch, Chase took the stage and looked directly into the camera, reading the signature line: ‘Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!’
While the first season of SNL was an experiment in stand-up comedy, it formed the foundation of what would become an established television institution.
Chase originally turned down an offer to join the show, but changed his mind after just a few days and eventually became one of the most famous faces to emerge from the cast.
He said that even though the first episode has a reputation for being chaotic, “it wasn’t chaos at all.”
“We were very controlled about who had to do what,” he told the New York Times.
Billy Preston was the first musical guest on Saturday Night Live, performing Fancy Lady and Nothing From Nothing.
Another sketch showed a home security technician demonstrating how vulnerable a family was to a home invasion.
Jane Curtin walked through the door to audition for SNL in the summer of 1975 and ran into producers who asked her what she had prepared for them.
“The classic anxiety dream,” he told the Times.
“I stayed silent and no one paid attention to me. I didn’t know how to throw. I’ve never had to do that in my life.
Fortunately, he had previously performed in theater, commercials, and in a Boston-area improv group, and had some old material in his bag.
“It was a big bag,” he said.
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In Jane Curtin’s sketch in the first episode, Trial, where she writes what her attacker said instead of saying it.
The Wolverines were the first to appear in episode one.
Curtin suffered from “imposter syndrome” in the weeks leading up to the first episode: she mindlessly wandered around the 17th floor of Rockefeller Plaza wondering how to create new material for herself.
But his faith prevailed and he appeared in several sketches. He remained in a bubble, never paying much attention to the audience, and noted how the first broadcast “went by in a blur.”
When the show started to gain attention, he realized his life was starting to change.
“You walked past people and they shook,” he said.
‘They had a physical reaction to you, because they could feel the energy behind what was happening on 30 Rock. And it was very, very exciting.”
At the Bee Hospital, parent bees are informed about the status of their newborns
In the first episode, Bromfield performed a monologue where he imitates a teacher and a volleyball player.
Valri Bromfield was the first woman to perform on Saturday night. He knew he wouldn’t stay long, as he didn’t want to deal with the stress of competition between showbiz artists.
But he found the atmosphere “exciting.”
“It was a festival of neurodiversity,” he told the Times.
‘ADHD galore. Character disorders, personality disorders. “It was everything you could want.”
Musician Janis Ian performed in the debut episode with strep throat and a 104-degree fever.
Dan Aykroyd’s first appearance on SNL
The original cast of the first episode.
Chase quickly became one of the most notable faces of Saturday Night Live.
She didn’t see it as a career-defining moment but as another appointment on her already busy schedule.
But she’s surprised where the show landed 50 years later.
“It’s become very different from anything anyone could have remotely imagined,” he told the Times.
“No one thought something could last this long. But now it’s mythical and I seem very intelligent.
Lorne Michaels reflected on the original cast and what they all had in common in an unaired clip from 60 Minutes.
‘Everyone I chose had gone through some mistake as a teenager in that original group. Or the death of a parent, divorce, something, some upheaval. The people reported.
Lorne Michaels proposed the idea of Saturday Night Live as a comedy-variety show with a team of unrecognized writers and performers.
As the show prospered, it launched the careers of many familiar faces, from Eddie Murphy and Adam Sandler to Will Ferrell and Tiny Fey.
He noted that the 1975 comedy legends were “all stuck in adolescence” for one reason or another.
During its first seasons, SNL successfully attracted higher ratings and bigger names in comedy and music.
As the show prospered, it launched the careers of many familiar faces, from Eddie Murphy and Adam Sandler to Will Ferrell and Tiny Fey.
Now, the story of SNL’s first-ever episode is being portrayed in the feature-length film Saturday Night, which arrived in select theaters on Friday.
Directed by Jason Reitman, the film depicts the 90 minutes leading up to the show’s premiere.
Saturday Night will hit theaters around the world on October 11, paying tribute to the first episode broadcast on October 11, 1975.
