Birth of a Notion: Howard Cosell

Sunday, October 11, 2015

The Birth of Saturday Night Live

[talking into the telephone] "What are you wearing right now? No bathrobe? [notices the audience, hangs up telephone] Good evening. I'm Chevy Chase!"

Chevy Chase, Oct. 11, 1975

American television changed 40 years ago tonight. At least on Saturday nights.

In 1975, CBS ruled primetime on Saturday nights with "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Bob Newhart Show" and "The Carol Burnett Show" running in a two–hour block from 9 to 11 p.m. (Eastern time), but late night was still a vast, unexplored frontier. NBC's affiliates had been running "Best of Carson" compilations from Johnny Carson's Tonight Show on weekends, but Carson announced in 1974 that he wanted the weekend programs pulled and archived so they could be used during the week when he wanted to take time off.

My memory is that Carson always invited a guest to substitute for him when he took time off, though, right up until his retirement in 1992, and I'm not sure how extensively "Best of Carson" was used, if at all, in some markets. Its weekend schedule was very flexible. Affiliates were allowed to show episodes either on Saturday or Sunday, at their discretion.

In the days leading up to that first show, inaugural host George Carlin appeared on primetime promotional ads in which he was depicted as a participant in a stage construction project. NBC was putting the finishing touches on a new show, he told the TV audience, and he invited everyone to tune in on Saturday night.

If you were a George Carlin fan, you were already familiar with the material he used in the first–ever Saturday Night Live monologues. He didn't deliver an original and topical monologue, as hosts do now. He basically lifted jokes from several albums that had been in circulation for years and compiled them into a monologue.

But it was still a treat to see him doing those routines. And he commanded enough star power to draw audiences. So, too, I suppose did the first show's musical guests, Janis Ian and Billy Preston, both of whom had enjoyed some popularity in the early to mid–'70s.

And that is the primary objective of a new TV program — attract an audience. There certainly was a late night audience waiting to be tapped. In 1975, most of America still had only the three networks, a public broadcasting network in many (but not all) areas and maybe an independent station or two. Cable TV was a presence in only a few areas — and wasn't nearly as extensive as it is today.

Everything about the show was new and evolving. Even the name was different. It started out as just Saturday Night. When the program debuted, there already was a program called Saturday Night Live starring Howard Cosell on ABC, and it remained on the air for the first months of SNL's existence. More than a year after Cosell's program was canceled, the show now known as Saturday Night Live took that name — in March 1977.

What we now know as Saturday Night Live began simply as NBC's Saturday Night. The "live" was a description. Go back and watch Chevy Chase's intros of those early programs. "Live from New York," he always said, "it's 'Saturday Night.'"

If you remember those days, you can probably hear Chevy saying that in your head without having to look up a clip at YouTube or anyplace else. Of course, SNL has been using that inroduce each episode for 40 years now so you don't really have to search your memory bank for an audio file of Chase saying that phrase.

Chase said it that way from the first. Then, as now, the show opened with a skit. That first skit showed two people sitting in chairs facing each other. One was writer Michael O'Donoghue who played a professor giving a European immigrant (John Belushi) English lessons. That skit is remembered as the "Wolverine" sketch because the professor was always giving the immigrant sentences to say that included that word. For example ...

Professor: Let us begin. Repeat after me. I would like ...

Immigrant: [in a thick accent] I would like ...

Professor: ... to feed your fingertips ...

Immigrant: ...to feed yur fingerteeps ...

Professor: ... to the wolverines.

Immigrant: ... to de wolver–eenes.

The English lesson was cut short when the professor clutched his chest and collapsed on the floor.

From off–camera, Chase emerged to announce that it was Saturday Night. Ever since that time it has been a staple of the show to have someone — sometimes several people — break character to utter that familiar phrase.

The show, as I say, was evolving. My memory is that Carlin didn't participate in any skits other than his opening monologue. Today, of course, guest hosts are full participants in that week's show. I don't know when that changed. It probably developed over time. SNL always has been a work in progress.

The skits were handled by the Not–Ready–For–Prime–Time Players, which introduced America to people who became quite familiar in short order — Chase, Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman and Garrett Morris.

Often, SNL has created cultural catchphrases, reaffirming its social relevance after four decades on the air. It has been resilient. In the late '70s, few people thought SNL could survive the departure of Chevy Chase, but it did. It has become a training ground and career launching pad for the stars of tomorrow.

The program's political skits have become so legendary that a compilation program of politically themed skits always airs during a presidential election campaign, and Chevy Chase's early portrayals of a clumsy Gerald Ford are sure to be included.

In countless unexpected ways, SNL has influenced the culture. Who would have thought on this night in 1975 that it would still be on the air in the 21st century?

Wednesday, December 08, 2010

The Day the Music Really Died

When I was a child, Don McLean's song "American Pie" forever dubbed Feb. 3, 1959, the "day the music died" because that was the day that Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash in Iowa.

That was a major event for the young people of that time, but it had no real meaning for me. I hadn't even been born yet.

On Aug. 16, 1977, when Elvis Presley died, that could have been considered the day the music died for people who came of age when Presley was at the top of the charts. But it didn't have the same meaning for me. I wasn't really brought up on his music.

For me, the day the music died was 30 years ago today — when John Lennon was gunned down in front of his apartment building in New York.

That was a traumatic event in my young life — and in the lives of millions the world over, which is really an amazing thing to realize, considering that the members of my generation, perhaps more than any who had come before, were brought up in a world in which violent acts aimed at prominent people — mostly politicians and leaders of political/social movements — were commonplace.

Before I graduated from high school, there had been three presidential assassination attempts (one of which was successful), two assassination attempts on presidential candidates (one of which was successful) and the murders of numerous civil rights figures.

And I heard of death threats against people in other walks of life — sports figures, mostly, like Hank Aaron and Arthur Ashe.

But the shooting of a musician, an entertainer, was truly astonishing.

Shocking.

And, even today, people who lived through that event recall it with a clarity that is reserved for those events that are truly unique in our experience.

I remember the night it happened so vividly. I was out with some friends, eating nachos while we watched Monday Night Football and, late in the game, Howard Cosell told the viewing audience that Lennon had been shot.

It was, he said, an "unspeakable tragedy." And so it was.

Cosell didn't provide too many details. I didn't learn until later that Lennon had been killed by a deranged fan who had approached him for an autograph only hours before — and in approximately the same place where he would shoot the musician.

My friends and I went out into the chilly December night a short time after hearing the news. The all–news cable channel concept was still new and defining itself — and, in most places, only available to those who paid extra for it — and it wasn't possible in those days to simply switch on the TV and get breaking news reports — at least, not where we were, in Fayetteville, Ark.

I insisted to my friends that I didn't believe it was true. A mistake had been made, I told them. Why would anyone want to kill John Lennon? He was one of the Beatles! That would be like killing Elvis!

And then I remember one of my friends looking at me with what were perhaps the saddest eyes I have ever seen and saying, "He's dead, man. John Lennon is dead."

I remember wondering, how could he believe it — after all the times when people in charge had lied to us in the past? But, at that moment, it really began to sink in. It still seemed beyond belief, but that would change as the news delivery systems of that time slowly caught up, and word eventually spread that, yes, it was true.

My friends and I went to our homes, and I switched on my TV, hoping to find something, anything about this, but I found nothing that night. I remember watching the first few minutes of The Tonight Show, hoping Johnny Carson would say something about it (I didn't yet know that The Tonight Show was not broadcast live, that it was taped several hours earlier), but Carson said nothing, of course. So I went to bed, hoping that the next morning I would awaken to find it had been a cruel hoax.

But, of course, it was not.

I recall there was some resentment at the time among Lennon's most devoted admirers for what was considered a rather unfeeling response to the news by his famous ex–bandmate, Paul McCartney.

"It's a drag, isn't it?" the cameras showed him saying casually in London the next day. Some people thought that was unfeeling. McCartney later explained that he had been in shock. It was an explanation I found easy to accept.

Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, issued a statement to Lennon's grieving fans that day.

"There is no funeral for John," it read. "John loved and prayed for the human race. Please do the same for him."

And, in fact, there was no formal funeral service for John Lennon. Instead, Ono asked his fans to observe 10 minutes of silence the Sunday after his death.

But there were candlelight vigils held the world over. That was Lennon's funeral, I suppose.

I remember a radio station in the town where I was in college played Lennon music and Beatles music all week in Lennon's honor and repeatedly reminded listeners of Ono's request. Then, at the appointed time on that Sunday, that radio station went silent for the full 10 minutes. I listened when it went silent and I left my radio on to hear when it came back on the air.

It did so with a playing of "Give Peace a Chance."

That was only the beginning of many tributes to Lennon's life after his death. A section of Central Park across the street from the building in New York where Lennon lived and was murdered was renamed "Strawberry Fields" and has become a popular gathering place for Lennon's fans on the anniversaries of his birthday and his murder — and on other significant days, like the day ex–Beatle George Harrison died in November 2001 and on the occasion of the September 11 terrorist attacks earlier that year.

On the 20th anniversary of his death, in what may have been the most profound of such tributes, Cuban President Fidel Castro unveiled a statue of Lennon in a park in Havana.

As I wrote on the occasion of his 70th birthday in October, I think Lennon would have continued to be a societal influence in these last 30 years, writing and recording songs about all of the major events — and, perhaps, at times, altering the course of events through the sheer magnetism of his personality.

Today is a reminder of how much we lost on that day 30 years ago.