In 1974, NBCTonight Show host Johnny Carson asked that the weekend broadcasts of "Best of Carson" (officially known as The Weekend Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson) come to an end (The Tonight Show was a 90-minute program at the time), so he could take two weeknights off; NBC would thus air those repeats on those nights rather than feed them to affiliates for broadcast on either Saturdays or Sundays. Given Johnny Carson's undisputed status as the king of late-night television, NBC heard his request as an ultimatum, fearing he might use the issue as grounds to defect to either ABC or CBS. To fill the gap, the network drew up some ideas and brought in Dick Ebersol – a protégé of legendary ABC Sports president Roone Arledge – to develop a 90-minute late-night variety show. Dick Ebersol's first order of business was hiring a young Canadian producer named Lorne Michaels to be the show-runner.[1]
Television production in New York was already in decline in the mid-1970s (The Tonight Show had departed for Los Angeles two years prior), so NBC decided to base the show at their studios in Rockefeller Center to offset the overhead of maintaining those facilities. Lorne Michaels was given Studio 8H, a converted radio studio that prior to that point was most famous for having hosted Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra from 1937 to 1951, but was being used largely for network election coverage by the mid-1970s.[2]
When the first show aired on October 11, 1975, with George Carlin as its host, it was called NBC's Saturday Night because ABC featured a program at the same time titled Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. After ABC cancelled the Cosell program in 1976, the NBC program changed its name to Saturday Night Live, starting with the 17th episode of the second season – the episode hosted by Jack Burns on March 26, 1977 (and subsequently picked up Bill Murray from Cosell's show in 1977, as well). Starting from the first episode, Don Pardo introduced the cast, a job he would hold for 39 years until his death in 2014.
The original concept was for a comedy-variety show featuring young comedians, live musical performances, short films by Albert Brooks and segments by Jim Henson featuring atypically adult and abstract characters from The Muppets world. Rather than have one permanent host, Lorne Michaels elected to have a different guest host each week. The first episode featured two musical guests (Billy Preston and Janis Ian), and the second episode, hosted by Paul Simon on October 18, was almost entirely a musical variety show with various acts. The Not Ready for Prime Time Players did not appear in this episode at all, other than as the bees with Paul Simon telling them they were cancelled, and Chevy Chase in the opening and in "Weekend Update". Over the course of Season 1, sketch comedy would begin to dominate the show and SNL would more closely resemble its current format.
Andy Kaufman made several appearances over the season, while The Muppets' Land of Gorch bits were essentially cancelled after episode 10, although the associated Muppet characters still made sporadic appearances after that. After one final appearance at the start of season two, the Muppet characters were permanently dropped from SNL.
During the season, Lorne Michaels appeared on-camera four times, the first being on January 10, when during Elliot Gould's monologue in "The Killer Bees" sketch, the camera appears to malfunction and Michaels is introduced as a co-producer. On February 28, Michaels appear during the cold open of a Jill Clayburgh hosted episode where he tries to persuade Chevy Chase to keep opening the show with a fall. On April 24 and May 22, he makes an offer to The Beatles to reunite on the show. In the second appearance, he offered a certified check of $3,000. In the third appearance, he increased his offer to $3,200 and free hotel accommodations. John Lennon and Paul McCartney later both admitted they had been watching SNL from Lennon's apartment on May8 (the episode after Lorne Michaels' first offer) and briefly toyed with actually going down to the studio, but decided to stay in the apartment because they were too tired.[3][4]
Much of the talent pool involved in the inaugural season was recruited from the National Lampoon Radio Hour, a nationally syndicated comedy series that often satirized current events.
This would be the only season for George Coe and Michael O'Donoghue as official cast members. While Coe was billed only in the premiere, he was seen in various small roles through the season before leaving the show altogether. O'Donoghue was credited through the first four episodes and would continue to work for the show as a writer, as well as an occasionally featured performer (particularly as "Mr. Mike"), through season 5.[citation needed]
The cold open features John Belushi as a foreign man learning English being taught by writer Michael O'Donoghue. Following this sketch, Chevy Chase appeared with a headset on and bellows the first "Live From New York, It's Saturday Night!"
During the opening credits, announcer Don Pardo misspeaks and calls the Not Ready for Primetime Players "the Not for Ready Primetime Players".
As host, George Carlin performs stand-up, introduced the musical guests and conducted the goodnight segment. Carlin performed three monologues, including "Baseball-Football". According to the book Live from New York, Carlin did not participate in any sketches because he was completely stoned. Although according to Laraine Newman during an interview with the Archive of American Television, Carlin was set to appear in a sketch about Alexander the Great's high school reunion but it was cut at the last minute, after dress rehearsal.
Andy Kaufman appears in a segment consisting of him playing the Mighty Mouse theme on a record player, standing silent during the verses of the song and miming along with the choruses.
Valri Bromfield makes a guest appearance. Jacqueline Carlin appeared as the mother in the "New Dad Insurance" sketch and as the woman with a book in the "Academy of Better Careers" sketch. Wendy Craig appeared as the salesman in the "Academy of Better Careers" sketch. Richard Belzer (the show's warm-up comedian), writer Tom Davis and talent coordinator Neil Levy appear as jurors in the "Courtroom" sketch.
Since this was a music-heavy show, the Not Ready for Primetime Players appeared only once, as the Bees, when Paul Simon informs them their sketch has been cut. Chevy Chase appears at the end of Paul Simon's performance of "Still Crazy..." to say "Live from New York..." and also appears to anchor Weekend Update.
First episode to feature Chevy Chase doing a pratfall.
Future cast member Denny Dillon appeared as a special guest with Mark Hampton in a sketch as nuns running a parish talent show. Jacqueline Carlin appeared as a swimmer in the "Golden Needles" sketch. Tom Schiller appeared as the priest in the "Wrigley's Gum" sketch and as one of the Bees. Penny Marshall appeared in the "Fashion Show," "Hoe-Down," and "the Bees" sketches. The Lockers and comedian Andy Kaufman make guest appearances.
George Coe appears in the "Golden Needles" sketch.
First appearance of the "News for the Hard of Hearing".
The episode features an Albert Brooks film about heart surgery.
This episode initially ended without goodnights or credits. Future airings of this episode would add credits over the photo montage seen during the title sequence.
ABBA performs "SOS" and "Waterloo".[7] For both of their performances, ABBA lip-synced to a prerecorded track. In a joke subtitle, it is explained this is because their "tapes didn't arrive from Sweden".
Loudon Wainwright III performs "Bicentennial" and "Unrequited to the Nth Degree".[7]
Chevy Chase impersonates rock star Gregg Allman with Lorne Michaels (in his first appearance on the show, albeit in voice over) asking about Allman's love life.
Thalmus Rasulala appeared as one of the priests in the "Exorcist II" sketch. Annazette Chase appears as Polly in the "Black & White" sketch. At Richard Pryor's insistence, his ex-wife Shelley Pryor and Kathrine McKee, his then-current girlfriend make cameo appearances.[9]
The show was broadcast on a seven-second delay.[11]
First episode in which someone other than Chase says, "Live from New York...", in this case, Garrett Morris says it, since Pryor is the first African-American to host.
Candice Bergen appeared in "The Land of Gorch" sketch where she attends King Ploobis's Christmas party while the guests that he had invited are attending the Killer Bees' Christmas party. Bergen performed the song "Winter Wonderland" with the cast.
A live commercial for Polaroid, featuring Candice Bergen and John Belushi airs during the show.
Anne Murray performs the songs "The Call" and "Blue Finger Lou".[7]
The episode features an Albert Brooks film, Audience Test Screenings. Other sketches include "Interior Demolitionists" and a Shimmer commercial parody.
The episode was submitted for the Emmy Award consideration and won SNL its first Emmy in 1977.[12]
Lorne Michaels appears on camera for the first time in the series during a "Killer Bees" sketch gone wrong. Director Dave Wilson also appears during the same sketch. At the end of the episode, Wilson's name is jokingly crossed off in the credits after he gets "fired" by Michaels.
Scred from "The Land of Gorch" appeared in a bee costume hoping to play Aunt Bee in a Bees version of The Andy Griffith Show (to loud groans from the audience), only to be told by Gilda Radner that the sketch was canceled. Scred joins Gilda in introducing Neil Sedaka.
This opening montage is the first in which announcer Don Pardo reads aloud the names of the "Not Ready for Primetime Players".
Cook and Moore perform the sketches "One Leg Too Few", "The Frog and Peach" and "Gospel Truth" from their Broadway show Good Evening.
The episode features the sketch, "Lifer Follies," auditions in a prison warden's office for an upcoming inmate talent show, which includes Garrett Morris' "Shotgun" song.
George Coe appears in the cold open and plays the warden in the "Lifer Follies" sketch.
Humorist Marshall Efron and Al Alen Petersen make cameo appearances.
At the end of the third "Lowell Brock" sketch, Lorne Michaels can be seen playing a prank on John Belushi tying his shoelaces together. When Belushi realizes the prank, over the applause, he is barely heard muttering, "What the fuck? Goddamn!"
Starting with this episode, all cast members (The Not Ready for Primetime Players) are credited individually. Previously, they were only credited as a list of names.
President Gerald Ford appeared in a filmed segment during the cold opening where he opens the show with "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" after Chevy Chase's signature pratfall. He also appeared in filmed segments during the monologue (where he introduces the host) and during Weekend Update (where, following Chevy Chase's signature line "I'm Chevy Chase and you're not", he says "I'm Gerald Ford and you're not").
Contains the Super Bass-O-Matic '76 sketch.
Billy Crystal (billed as Bill Crystal) performs a monologue, eight years before becoming an SNL cast member. Dan Aykroyd impersonates talk show host Tom Snyder.
The episode features a short Gary Weis film on New York garbage men.
Scred and The Mighty Favog cut a deal with Chevy Chase to have Lorne Michaels renew their sketch in exchange that The Mighty Favog gets The Beatles to appear on the show.
The episode begins with Chevy Chase lying down on home base near a folding table and chairs saying the opening spiel only to be informed by director Dave Wilson that he will have to redo the cold open (solo this time, as the other cast members were already changing costumes), because they went on the air a minute early.
Leon and Mary Russell performs "Satisfy You" and "Daylight,"[7] the latter of which featured John Belushi as Joe Cocker.
In her monologue, Louise Lasser, who had been arrested on a drug charge the week before and was very difficult for the cast and writers to work with that week, pretends to have a bout of stage fright and lock herself in her dressing room. She had actually done the same thing in real life just before the beginning of the show; the cast was dividing her parts among themselves. Her self-indulgent behavior led Lorne Michaels to keep this episode out of syndication.[16]
Michael Sarrazin (who would later host in season 3) makes a filmed cameo appearance.
Rita Coolidge performs "Hula Hoop".[7] Host Kris Kristofferson performed the songs "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and "I've Got a Life of My Own".[7] Together, Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge performed "Eddie the Eunuch".[7]
