SNL Season 1 on 12/5/06 (and season sets in general) (1 Viewer)

[David Von Pein]

SNL; Season One (1975-1976):

1 George Carlin / Billy Preston, Janis Ian 10/11/1975
2 Paul Simon / Phoebe Snow, Randy Newman 10/18/1975
3 Rob Reiner / No Musical Guest 10/25/1975
4 Candice Bergen / Esther Phillips 11/08/1975
5 Robert Klein / Abba, Loudon Wainwright III 11/15/1975
6 Lily Tomlin / No Musical Guest 11/22/1975
7 Richard Pryor / Gil Scott-Heron 12/13/1975
8 Candice Bergen / Martha Reeves, The Stylistics 12/20/1975
9 Elliott Gould / Anne Murray 01/10/1976
10 Buck Henry / Bill Withers, Toni Basil 01/17/1976
11 Dudley Moore / Neil Sedaka 01/24/1976
12 Dick Cavett / Jimmy Cliff 01/31/1976
13 Peter Boyle / Al Jarreau 02/14/1976
14 Desi Arnaz / Desi Arnaz, Jr. 02/21/1976
15 Jill Clayburgh / Leon Redbone 02/28/1976
16 Anthony Perkins / Betty Carter 03/13/1976
17 Ron Nessen / Patti Smith Group 04/17/1976
18 Raquel Welch / Phoebe Snow, John Sebastian 04/24/1976
19 Madeline Kahn / Carly Simon 05/08/1976
20 Dyan Cannon / Leon & Mary Russell 05/15/1976
21 Buck Henry / Gordon Lightfoot 05/22/1976
22 Elliott Gould / Leon Redbone, Harlin Collins, Joyce Everson 05/29/1976
23 Louise Lasser / The Preservation Hall Jazz Band 07/24/1976
24 Kris Kristofferson / Rita Coolidge 07/31/1976

 

[David Von Pein]

When thinking some more about the 66-minute run times of these 90-min. SNL episodes, it just occurred to me that a few more minutes of commercial (i.e., non-live) time might have been required for these Live programs....to account for wardrobe changes, set changes, etc.

Otherwise, I'm wondering if these shows would have had longer 70- to 75-min. running times (which they would be if you go by the avg. run time of a 30-min. show back then; 25 x 3).

Of course, some of the "commercials" in SNL are actually integrated into the shows as skits, including some pre-recorded things that the SNL cast did (such as the bit with John Belushi dancing in the cemetery...was that from Season 1?). Hopefully all of the pre-recorded things will be included on the DVDs.

Anyway, just food for SNL thought.

Oh, by the way.......

Knock-Knock...

"Land shark."

 

[Garysb]

Late night TV had more commercials then prime time so I am sure the 66 minute runtime is complete and the commercial parodies will be included. John Belushi dancing in the cemetery was after Chevy Chase left the show so I am fairly certain it is not from the first season. First season does have the Star Trek sketch with Belushi as James T Kirk , Chase as Spock, and Aykroyd as McCoy. Very funny. The Desi Arnaz show has Gilda as Lucy throughout the show including an Untouchables sketch .

 

[Jeff#]

I was a bit reluctant at first to place that DDD order too, Dave, however I've been dealing with DDD for a long time. In the very unlikely event with the missing set description that it isn't what it appears to be, I could then return it unopened for a refund. But consider this: What other SNL set is going to retail for what DDD claims is $99.95?

John Belushi's black & white filmed bit was shot for SNL during his last season before he and Dan Aykroyd quit the show to concentrate on their film careers. That was from the 4th season (1978-1979). It's kind of sad watching it now, because John plays himself in the future as an old man, and he walks around a graveyard of his fellow cast members, including Chevy Chase (who left SNL in November 1976, but returned to host a few times from 1977 through 1992). In the fake documentary, Belushi is the sole surviving cast member yet in reality it was he who died of a tragic overdose in March 1982....and he was only 33. Gilda Radner was the next to go (breast cancer in May 1989 at 43). Danitra Vance (an SNL regular from 1985-86) died in 1997. I think she had cancer too. You probably know about Chris Farley (drug overdose) and Phil Hartman (shot by his wife, who then shot herself) in the late 1990s. The last former SNL cast member to die was Charles Rocket in 2006, and it was an apparent suicide even though he had a long post-SNL career in a variety of character parts in feature films.

And on the subject of Rocket, he was the Weekend Update anchor the year that SNL went downhill (1980-81), and that was the season after the original cast and Lorne Michaels left the show. But it wasn't a total disaster. Rocket was quite good as anchor, and it remains to this day that he was the only professional newsman to hold the "fake news" position! Charles had anchored at a local station in the midwest in the 1970s. In February 1981 he was fired for saying the F word on the air, even though it probably wasn't intentional. (Paul Shaffer got away with it in a 1978 show when he said "fucking" instead of "flogging"). Charles Rocket was scolded for his language by guest-host Bill Murray. That proves that Rocket wasn't fired (ha ha) until his contract ended an episode later.

I wouldn't hesitate to buy "Saturday Night Live 80" at all, and don't forget that was the season in which Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo joined the show. It took Eddie longer to become a full-fledged cast member, but by January 1981 he got to do his stand-up a couple of times on the show plus the classic "Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood". Joe Piscopo got to play Frank Sinatra and a character that the writers didn't bring back after that season: Paulie Herman a.k.a. The Jersey Guy. The 6th season had its moments, and some great musical guests too (James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Jimmy Cliff, host Debbie Harry). Unfortunately, pretty Debbie was not a good host and the writing in her show was horrible. Yet the show that Karen Black hosted had a lot of funny routines, including one in which Charles Rocket played a museum security guard who falls in love with a painting of the Mona Lisa (played by Karen).

Jean Doumanian (who had been Associate Producer under Lorne Michaels before taking over the show herself for 12 episodes in 1980) made the right decision to allow Eddie to do more, promoting him from featured player to cast member, but it took Dick Ebersol to save ths show after she and several of her cast members were fired by April 1981. His first SNL was the 13th of the season, and that's when Mary Gross, Tim Kazurinsky, Robin Duke, and Tony Rosato. were brought in. They appeared with some of Jean's cast (Piscopo, Murphy, Gail Matthius, Denny Dillon, and Gilbert Gottfried) in a greatly improved show. It was also the last time the news segment would be called "Weekend Update" until Lorne returned to his creation in 1985 (Ebersol was promoted to head NBC Sports). So in April 1981 the anchor was guest host Chevy Chase....utilizing his old anchor set!! Ebersol got the summer off to rebuild and he produced SNL for the next 4 years.

The troubled 6th season was one of the shortest in the show's history not only because of horrible ratings, but also due to a writer's strike. There was another strike late in 1987-88 (one of SNL's best seasons, a few years after Lorne Michaels returned), and they only did 13 shows that year too.

 

[Jeff#]

Almost forgot to mention....I have about a half dozen SNL shows on disc already, which I recorded from NBC All Night on a few Sunday mornings over the past year+. The very first one with George Carlin was wonderful, and many of the bits are still funny today -- including Carlin's monologs, such as his classic rants on religion and Football vs. Baseball. If he was high that night, you'd never know from watching the show because he seems quite normal. Future producer Dick Ebersol gets an on-screen Executive Producer credit in the premiere episode, since he was as instrumental as Lorne Michaels in getting the series off the ground.

In the earliest episodes of SNL, you'll notice that when the host was a comedian (Carlin, Robert Klein) that their monologs extended throughout the show. The basic format became more structured around the 4th or 5th show, and it's remained the same ever since (such as musical guests only getting to do 2 numbers....unless of course they were also the host that evening).

That first show from October 11, 1975 had 2 musical guests: The recently late Billy Preston, and his songs are very entertaining! It's easy to see why The Beatles let him jam with them in their Apple Studios in 1969. The other guest was Janis Ian, who sang 2 songs as well including her mellow "Seventeen". Comedian Albert Brooks (who got his professional start in 1970 on The Ed Sullivan Show) made short films for SNL during the 1975 to 76 season, and Jim Henson's Muppets were also regularly featured that year....but not the Muppets you're used to seeing!

The Richard Pryor SNL from November 1975 is another classic, and his show is where John Belushi first played his Samurai. Pryor also plays a samurai in that sketch, and it was the only one in which Belushi briefly speaks English while in character!

What everyone remembers best about the Pryor SNL was the sketch in which Chevy Chase interviews him for a job and the two men verbally attack each other with a number of racial slurs! By the way, if you haven't seen The Richard Pryor Show from 2 years later, I suggest you buy it on DVD.

 

[David Von Pein]

Great info re. the history of SNL, Jeff. Maybe you should package those blurbs and market them as "SNL In A Nutshell" (or somethin' like that there).

I'm looking forward to those '75-'76 Weekend Update segments. (Is Franco still dead, btw? )

Did you know that Dan Aykroyd was only 23 years old when SNL began in October 1975? Just a fresh-faced young-un indeed. I've always enjoyed Dan's material on SNL, and his films too. The super-fast-talking SNL commercials he would do were mini-classics themselves -- "The Bass-O-Matic" is a memorable one.

And Aykroyd's classic tirades (like the one below) from the Weekend Update desk were all hilarious. I hope this one is from Season 1, but it's probably not, because Chevy was the S.1 anchor all season, wasn't he? This is all from memory, and I know I missed at least one line of the tirade, but anyhow.....

"Jane, you ignorant sl*t -- When one talks of the dangers of drugs, one isn't concerned with the casual user, such as yourself, who bows to social pressure and takes an occasional toke or snort as a prelude to sexual intercourse with a stranger. My concern is the habitual user, for whom the cumulative effect of the drug has done damage. .... As for cocaine, all the evidence isn't in -- but early reports point to side effects that include long-term loss of short-term memory, hyper-development of the male mammalia, and a general lack of ambition which has destroyed this nation's economy. .... Maybe Paraquat wasn't such a bad idea -- as a tasteless, colorless, odorless substance which caused lung damage, it deterred at least SOME marijuana consumption. Perhaps a stronger such substance should be added to cocaine -- one that produces the actual, physical coughing of blood. Let's make killer dope killer dope -- so we can rid the world of all these drug-dependant degenerates -- and then we can turn our full attention to all the hagged-out, dried-out ignorant sluts like yourself." --- Dan Aykroyd; "Weekend Update"; Saturday Night Live; National Broadcasting Company, Inc.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Thanks, Dan....That's the news --- good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow."

 

[Jeff#]

Sorry, Dave....but that couldn't possibly be from the first season because the Weekend Update news team format didn't happen until the 4rd season in the fall of 1978. Until then it was indeed Chevy Chase until he quit less than two months into the 2nd season. (Chevy left to get married, and his wife Susan lived in Los Angeles). Bill Murray joined the show 2 months later in January 1977, and Lorne felt it was so he wouldn't look like he was replacing Chevy. Bill was actually one of the comedians who originally auditioned for SNL in 1975, and so did another Bill....Billy Crystal. Billy was already a TV vet by the time Dick Ebersol hired him for SNL in 1984!

And let's not leave out Jane Curtain, who actually substituted as anchor for Chevy once during the first year. She also "inherited" his old WU anchor set in the second. A new blue set replaced the gray original for Season 3, with Curtain still sole anchor. She began co-anchoring with Dan Aykroyd by the 4th season in 1978. As talented as Dan was (and still is), Lorne probably felt he wasn't right in that role. The Point-Counterpoint routines (in which Jane and Danny insulted each other) was only an occasional feature, but other than that Michaels was right. After a few months, Danny became the first Weekend Update anchor to lose that position yet was able to remain on the show (which he was quitting anyway). In later seasons that also happened to Brad Hall in 1983 and the guy who really got screwed -- one of my favorite anchors, Norm McDonald in January 1998. Norm was WU anchor for 3 & 1/2 years, but also a regular for months both before and after his stint behind the desk. His set was similar to Kevin Nealon's, and both were gray and much cooler and modern looking than that tiny set that Chevy and Jane once occupied.

And back to the original series, Bill Murray became Jane's co-anchor early in 1979 in the last months of the 4th season and for all of the 5th. The cool gray set returned, but it was the first in the show's history to feature a large prop (a spinning globe of the Earth in the center) and geographical black maps of the world in the background. Dan Aykroyd still appeared for the rest of the 4th year until he left, but on Weekend Update it was only do to commentaries playing a spectacled, mild-mannered type of character, a concerned local station owner who first appeared on Chevy's WU (and Chevy would make wacky faces and hold his hand as rabbit ears behind a super-serious Danny's head! Jane played a similar straight-woman character in some shows, and Chevy did the same to her early on.

Comedian / writer Don Novello first played Father Guido Sarducci early in 1975 on the second version (NBC's) of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, but it took SNL to make him famous in that role -- and primarily on Weekend Update. Novello didn't play Sarducci on SNL until early in 1978, but he was a writer on the show almost from the beginning.

You've really done well remembering that Paraquat routine, David! I would never be able to memorize a sketch or any comedy material. However, I'm certain it's from the 4th season. I'm not just not sure which show it was.

 

[Andrew Radke]

Excellent posts Jeff. Thanks very much for sharing your knowledge of the show. Definitely an enjoyable (and informative) read.

 

[Jeff#]

No problem, Andrew. Glad I could help. I'm a longtime fan of SNL and classic TV in general (as if it wasn't totally obvious already).

 

[Jeff_CusBlues]

Does John Belushi perform King Bee in the first season. I always liked that sketch/performance but I always heard that Belushi hated performing in the bee suit.

 

[Derek Miner]

Woah, I didn't know Charles Rocket died this year... I knew him from the ABC version of "Max Headroom" and the movie "Earth Girls Are Easy" before I knew he had been on SNL.

I'm really impressed with the volume of SNL knowledge on display here. I've always been interested in the stories behind the show, as well. I was really impressed with the "First Five Years" special that NBC aired and I was really happy when it was released on DVD. Now I'm waiting to see if they follow up and put out the "Saturday Night Live in the 80s" special. One of the highlights for me of that one was finally seeing the moment where Charles Rocket dropped the F-bomb.

 

[WillG]

Possible bad news about Deep Discount DVD. It appears that the set called Saturday Night Live 1 that we have been assuming is the first season may just be a package set of previously released "Best Of" DVDs. Here is my order statement from DDD

Intended Shipping Method: 5 - 10 BUSINESS DAY DELIVERY

Quantity Item # Description Price Status
-------- ------------ ----------------------------------- ---------- ---------
DVD001154 DVD : SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE 1 $ 46.42 In-stock
1 LGE001021 DVD : SNL-DANA CARVEY $
1 LGE001150 DVD : SNL-BEST OF PHIL HARTMAN $
1 LGE001152 DVD : SNL-BEST OF EDDIE MURPHY $
1 LGE001156 DVD : SNL-BEST OF MIKE MYERS $
1 VDM007318 DVD : SNL-BEST OF STEVE MARTIN $

Merchandise Total: $ 46.42
Tax: $ .00
Shipping & Processing: $ .00

Total for this Order: $ 46.42

 

[Jeff#]

I noticed that in my confirmation too, Will. My take on this, however, is that in the E-mail purchase confirmation they are displaying the titles of related SNL video titles on disc in the hope that existing customer might be interested in purchasing them. I'm not because I don't buy Best Of compilations. Besides, the only Best Of on their site is listed at a $119 retail. Saturday Night Live 1 means First Season to me.

At least it's still early enough to cancel IF we ordered the wrong thing. I phoned Deep Discount DVD this morning to inquire, but being the weekend and understandably short-staffed the operator couldn't answer my question. She will find out though.

 

[Marty M]

I think this is probably the wrong item. There is notice that this is a pre-order like on Columbia House, which says this will be released on 12/5/06. Also, according to CH, the list price for the 1st Season of SNL is $69.99. I am going to hold of until I know an etailer is taking pre-orders for the set I want.

 

[Marvin]

DVD Empire has the set on sale and it appears to be the correct item:

http://www.dvdempire.com/Exec/v4_ite...tem_id=1242872

 

[WillG]

Yeah, the fact that the confirmation shows "In Stock" probably is a good indication. I'm cancelling the pre order from DDD until I know more. I changed my pre-order to DVD Empire for now

 

[PaulP]

Can't cancel mine, it's already in the shipping process. Oh well, just refuse delivery, I guess.

 

[AnthonyC]

9 Elliott Gould / Anne Murray 01/10/1976
10 Buck Henry / Bill Withers, Toni Basil 01/17/1976
11 Dudley Moore / Neil Sedaka 01/24/1976
12 Dick Cavett / Jimmy Cliff 01/31/1976

And of course, this is the only time in SNL history IIRC where they did more than three consecutive weeks of live episodes. The fourth week was apparently extremely hard on the cast, so it should be interesting to see it.

 

[Scott_J]

I'll be getting this. Being 24, I've never had a chance to see the full 90-minute versions of these.

 

[TonyD]

charles rocket committed siucide oct LAST year.

this SNL set is hard to believe

i cant wait for this.

"i'm chevy chase.
and you're not!"