Speaker 1: Art originals.
Speaker 2: This is an iHeart original.
Speaker 3: On October eighth, nineteen seventy seven, Connie Crawford did what
Speaker 3: a lot of college students were doing every Saturday night.
Speaker 2: I was in my first year at college, and every
Speaker 2: Saturday night, every party shut down and we would all go.
Speaker 2: There was only one TV and every dorm, and it
Speaker 2: was usually one of those big console, old fashioned TVs,
Speaker 2: and everybody would gather around and watch Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 3: That's Connie that year. She was a freshman at Vassar,
Speaker 3: a liberal arts school in Poughkeepsie, New York. As you
Speaker 3: might imagine, parties were frequent. It took a lot for
Speaker 3: students to pass one up in favor of watching television,
Speaker 3: but SNL managed to lure them in. It was hip, irreverent,
Speaker 3: it spoke to them. The entire cast, from John Belushi
Speaker 3: to Gilda Radner to Bill Murray, were becoming some of
Speaker 3: the most famous comic actors in the country. Connie, however,
Speaker 3: was a fan of one cast member in particular.
Speaker 2: Well, they were all great, but I had a crush
Speaker 2: on dan Aykroyd, and when I was in high school,
Speaker 2: I think in the first year Saturday Night Live came out.
Speaker 2: I wrote him a fan letter, and he sent me
Speaker 2: back a picture of him on a motorcycle and in
Speaker 2: crayon underneath. Because I think he thought I was a child.
Speaker 2: He wrote Connie Let's Ride to Nicaragua Together Loved Dan.
Speaker 3: As Connie and her friends watched the episode, something a
Speaker 3: little strange happened. There on screen was Lourene Michaels, the
Speaker 3: creator and executive producer of the show. Michaels was making
Speaker 3: an offer of sorts to the audience, and it wasn't
Speaker 3: a bit. SNL was holding a contest that any viewer
Speaker 3: could enter. The winner would be flown to New York
Speaker 3: City and enter thirty Rockefeller Center on Saturday, December seventeenth,
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy seven for the Christmas episode. That person would
Speaker 3: be the first, and to date, the only civilian to
Speaker 3: ever get one of the most coveted assignments in show business,
Speaker 3: hosting Saturday Night Live. Entries came pouring in, well over
Speaker 3: one hundred thousand of them, with everyone from aspiring performers
Speaker 3: to housewives to at least one governor vying for the spot.
Speaker 3: Some people showed up in person and only partially clothed.
Speaker 3: But was it really possible for anyone to host SNL.
Speaker 3: Could an amateur hold their own against the likes of Belushi,
Speaker 3: Hurry and Radner? Or was SNL setting itself up for
Speaker 3: an epic disaster? Welcome back to Very Special Episodes and
Speaker 3: iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz, and this
Speaker 3: is live from New York. It's your grandmother.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to Very Special Episodes. I am one of
Speaker 4: your hosts, Jason English. There's a famous tweet that reservices
Speaker 4: during every Olympics. It goes something like, in each Olympic event,
Speaker 4: there should be a normal person competing for reference, just
Speaker 4: to show you how phenomenal the actual Olympians are. Today's
Speaker 4: Very Special episode is the television equivalent what would a
Speaker 4: chaotic sketch comedy variety show look like if you just
Speaker 4: picked somebody or somebody's grandma off the street. I will
Speaker 4: let Dana tell you in a minute. First, a quick
Speaker 4: housekeep announcement. We are all hard at work here behind
Speaker 4: the scenes on our next full batch of Very Special Episodes.
Speaker 4: We'll be back to our regular weekly cadence later next month.
Speaker 4: We're talking about adding in a second, still pretty special
Speaker 4: episode on Saturdays. This spring. We'll keep working on that
Speaker 4: and I'll give it back to Dana.
Speaker 3: When Lauren Michaels launched Saturday Night Live in the fall
Speaker 3: of nineteen seventy five, he knew he wanted a different
Speaker 3: guest host each week. Watching a famous actor or comedian
Speaker 3: or athlete get thrown into the choppy waters of live
Speaker 3: sketch comedy is what helped give SNL its reputation for
Speaker 3: being dangerous, and it was also good for ratings.
Speaker 1: Was just not to be missed.
Speaker 5: You know, whatever else you had pends on Saturday night,
Speaker 5: you wanted to get home by eleven thirty so you
Speaker 5: could watch this show. And I mean it just spoke
Speaker 5: to me. The idea was to blow up the convention
Speaker 5: of the variety show with the sketch show.
Speaker 3: That's Bill Carter. Bill is a longtime television critic who's
Speaker 3: covered Late Night for The New York Times since nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty nine. He's also written several books, including The Late Shift,
Speaker 3: a definitive account of the war for Johnny Carson's chair
Speaker 3: at The Tonight Show in the early nineties. His coverage
Speaker 3: of SNL actually dates to the very first episode, a
Speaker 3: time when SNL was less a pop culture phenomenon and
Speaker 3: more of a what the heck is this thing?
Speaker 1: So I was right on top of it when it started.
Speaker 5: And my own situation was pretty interesting because the NBC
Speaker 5: affiliate in Baltimore, WBAL, did not originally carry the show.
Speaker 5: They did not sign on to carry Saturday Night Live
Speaker 5: when it started, so I had to watch the first
Speaker 5: I don't know how many four six episodes something on
Speaker 5: your old antenna TV and trying to get a picture
Speaker 5: through snow from the Washington and affiliate Baltimore.
Speaker 3: Soon caught on, and so did the rest of the country.
Speaker 3: SNL was unlike anything television had produced up to that point.
Speaker 3: There had been variety shows like The Smothers Brothers and
Speaker 3: laugh In with sketches and special guests, and even politicians
Speaker 3: like Richard Nixon spoofing their own image. But SNL took
Speaker 3: it further, much further.
Speaker 5: It was an incredible breath of fresh air to me,
Speaker 5: and it was aimed toward me. I mean, I was
Speaker 5: recent college graduates. You know what else did I want?
Speaker 5: I watched some of those shows, but it wasn't like
Speaker 5: they spoke to the generation I felt like I belonged to,
Speaker 5: and this show did.
Speaker 1: It had the vibe of the stage show.
Speaker 5: Had been done called Lemmings, which I had actually seen
Speaker 5: an off Broadway show, and interestingly, it had both Chevy
Speaker 5: Chase and John Belushi in it. So when Saturday Life
Speaker 5: came out, I had seen them. I'd seen them on
Speaker 5: stage doing this kind of antique kind of stuff, and
Speaker 5: I was very open to it. I really responded to it,
Speaker 5: and I think they just hit it. They hit the
Speaker 5: mark so well from the beginning.
Speaker 3: The humor was born out of the Lemmings, Second City,
Speaker 3: National Lampoon, all institutions where edgy comedy was thriving. Performers
Speaker 3: like Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Jane Curtin and others were
Speaker 3: coming out of those improvisational troops and becoming major stars.
Speaker 3: They got the cover of New York Magazine. There were
Speaker 3: drugs and rock and roll and movies beckoning. SNL became
Speaker 3: the cool hangout. Mick Jagger might have been too big
Speaker 3: to perform on the show, but he was more than
Speaker 3: willing to show up and watch. But one thing SNL did,
Speaker 3: rather something it almost had to do, was very uncool.
Speaker 3: It was the time tested publicity stunt, something out of
Speaker 3: the norm to stir up the media or to drum
Speaker 3: up ratings for sweeps weeks when networks try to grab
Speaker 3: big ratings so they can charge more for advertising.
Speaker 5: They were still becoming sort of part of the network
Speaker 5: while they were, you know, kind of the underground part
Speaker 5: of the network, and Lauren, who's very skillful at managing
Speaker 5: up and always was, I'm sure, was able to sort
Speaker 5: of wrangle this, you know, and say it'll be different,
Speaker 5: let's just try it. And as time went on, they
Speaker 5: didn't really need to do that anymore because they got
Speaker 5: tremendous leverage and they just got this following that wasn't
Speaker 5: gonna all of a sudden kick up wildly because they
Speaker 5: went to a different location.
Speaker 3: But in the early years they weren't above a ratings stunt.
Speaker 3: In the show's second season, NBC arranged for the show
Speaker 3: to air its first and only on location broadcast. Think
Speaker 3: of it as a very special episode of SNL. The
Speaker 3: cast and crew headed for Marty Grass. The idea came
Speaker 3: from Lorne Michaels, who thought sketches based in and around
Speaker 3: the celebration would add a different flavor to the show.
Speaker 3: Cast member Jane Curtin and comic actor Buck Henry would
Speaker 3: anchor the parade itself, commenting on the sites. It aired
Speaker 3: at the more reasonable time slot of nine thirty and
Speaker 3: on a Sunday, and almost immediately things went south. A
Speaker 3: pedestrian was struck by one of the cars in the
Speaker 3: Bacchus parade, which brought it to a halt and messed
Speaker 3: up the show's timing completely. Guest star Cindy Williams, who
Speaker 3: was supposed to appear with her Laverne and Shirley co
Speaker 3: star Penny Marshall, got lost on the way to the shoot.
Speaker 3: Unlike the studio audience in New York, this one was
Speaker 3: made up of mostly drunk college kids who began throwing
Speaker 3: gold coins, beads, and beer cans at the cast. The
Speaker 3: episode never really recovered. Michaels found out SNL could never
Speaker 3: be a traveling road show, but he wasn't done experimenting.
Speaker 3: The next season, he made a rare on screen appearance,
Speaker 3: speaking directly into the camera and with a perfect straight
Speaker 3: man's delivery, he promised members of the fractured Beatles a
Speaker 3: certified check for a whopping three thousand dollars. If they
Speaker 3: agreed to reunite on the show, they could give ringo
Speaker 3: star less of a cut, it was up to them.
Speaker 3: The joke was picked up by the media and has
Speaker 3: endured over the decades, and it came with a punchline
Speaker 3: of sorts. Well two George Harrison actually showed up on
Speaker 3: a later episode to pick up a check for three
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty dollars. Paul McCartney would later say he
Speaker 3: and John Lennon were actually watching SNL the week after
Speaker 3: Michaels made his offer. They talked about taking a taxi
Speaker 3: to thirty Rock just for the hell of it. They
Speaker 3: never did, but the skit was notable for another reason.
Speaker 3: It presented Michaels as an on screen persona something he
Speaker 3: had once flirted with early on by considering casting himself
Speaker 3: in the role of co anchor of Weekend Update.
Speaker 1: Well, Loin was a performer, you know.
Speaker 5: He was in a comedy team that performed in Canada
Speaker 5: before he became a writer producer, and he was comfortable
Speaker 5: with performing for sure. He obviously has a very big
Speaker 5: ego to be running a show like this, but I
Speaker 5: don't think he felt like all the attention had to
Speaker 5: be on him so he had to also be on
Speaker 5: the show. But I think he realized he can't possibly
Speaker 5: do that and run this crazy machine that was going on.
Speaker 5: But you know, his occasional appearances would only happen if
Speaker 5: he wanted it that and so he definitely wanted it
Speaker 5: to happen for sure.
Speaker 3: Michaels wasn't done experimenting, because the show itself wasn't yet
Speaker 3: set in stone. In its third year, and practically every
Speaker 3: year since, critics and viewers wondered if SNL's best days
Speaker 3: were behind it. Chevy Chase had left shortly after the
Speaker 3: second season to begin to pursue a film career. John
Speaker 3: Belushi was filming movies and seemingly had one foot out
Speaker 3: the door. There were critics said, too many recurring characters.
Speaker 3: No one looked at it and said, well, this thing
Speaker 3: will still be on the air in five decades, not
Speaker 3: even Michaels himself, whose contract with NBC expired at the
Speaker 3: end of the season. Michaels was getting tired of the grind,
Speaker 3: saying quote, I can't work eighteen hours a day for
Speaker 3: the rest of my life, or I'll die. But before
Speaker 3: his possible departure, he had another idea, although arguably one
Speaker 3: just as potentially disastrous as the Marti Gras Debacle, the
Speaker 3: show would hold a contest, not a spoof contest or
Speaker 3: the appearance of a contest, but an actual contest. On
Speaker 3: October eighth, nineteen seventy seven, the second show of the season,
Speaker 3: hosted by actress Madeline Cohn, Michaels appeared behind a desk
Speaker 3: and he said, how many of you out there watching
Speaker 3: the show right now are saying to yourselves? You know,
Speaker 3: Madeline con is pretty good, but I think I can
Speaker 3: do a better job than that. Well, here's your chance,
Speaker 3: because now anyone can host Saturday Night Live. Michaels called
Speaker 3: it the Anyone Can Host Contest, and the premise was simple.
Speaker 3: Instead of being a famous star or comic or singer,
Speaker 3: any viewer could potentially be the host for the show's
Speaker 3: Christmas episode in December. No performing experience was needed to
Speaker 3: be considered for the contest. Viewers could mail in a
Speaker 3: postcard and explain in twenty five words or lie us
Speaker 3: why they should be chosen as the guest host. Send
Speaker 3: it to box seven to two radio City Station New York,
Speaker 3: New York one zero zero one nine by midnight November first,
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy seven. If they were one of five finalists.
Speaker 3: They'd be flown out to appear on a November show
Speaker 3: so viewers could vote for their favorite. The winner would
Speaker 3: host the Christmas episode and receive the then standard hosting
Speaker 3: fee of three thousand dollars. Put another way, they'd get
Speaker 3: paid as much as the Beatles. Michaels believed the contest
Speaker 3: was more than just a stunt in a meataway. He
Speaker 3: thought he could demystify the idea of being an entertainer,
Speaker 3: that it was reserved only for a chosen few. He
Speaker 3: joked that quote, comedy is much too important to be
Speaker 3: left to professionals. There was the pressure too of SNL
Speaker 3: getting predictable. If roping in an amateur host was dangerous,
Speaker 3: that was the point, and he offered very few guidelines,
Speaker 3: say for stressing that anyone caught approaching him or a
Speaker 3: cast member in person to make their case would be disqualified.
Speaker 5: I didn't know if it was for real at first.
Speaker 5: You always have to wonder when they do things like that,
Speaker 5: And then I thought, Okay, they're basically saying, this is
Speaker 5: how confident we are that we can do this show
Speaker 5: with anybody, You know.
Speaker 1: What I mean.
Speaker 3: Amateurs had appeared on SNL's stage before. Fran Tarkenton, a
Speaker 3: quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings, hosted, so did Ron Nelson,
Speaker 3: the White House Press secretary under Gerald Ford. These non
Speaker 3: performers gave the show a different feel and energy.
Speaker 5: So they had to really write around that. So they
Speaker 5: didn't do it just because they thought, oh, this will.
Speaker 1: Be a blast.
Speaker 5: I think they did it as part of what they
Speaker 5: were doing overall there, which is just we're just shaking
Speaker 5: up all the conventions. This is another convention we're going
Speaker 5: to shake up. We're going to have a host that
Speaker 5: nobody'd ever heard of.
Speaker 3: But even those hosts were recognizable. The winner of the
Speaker 3: Anyone Can Host contest could be well anyone. The question
Speaker 3: was just how many people wanted to host SNL and
Speaker 3: what lengths would they go to in order to do it.
Speaker 3: Millions of people watched Michaels make his contest announcement, but
Speaker 3: you didn't have to be watching the show to hear
Speaker 3: about it. Many major newspapers covered the contest. It was,
Speaker 3: after all, a chance for literally anyone to headline the
Speaker 3: hottest comedy show in the country. Within weeks, NBC had
Speaker 3: gotten one hundred and twenty thousand responses, with people using
Speaker 3: their allotted twenty five words to make their case. According
Speaker 3: to Barbara Burns, a talent coordinator for the show who
Speaker 3: was overseeing the contest, a surprising number of entries were
Speaker 3: actually threatening in nature put me on the air or else. Those,
Speaker 3: she said, went directly in the garbage. There were a
Speaker 3: lot of nude photos with some people apparently hoping to
Speaker 3: seduce their way onto the show. Those two were discarded,
Speaker 3: and so were entries begging for the three thousand dollars
Speaker 3: host fee. And despite Lorne Michael's cautioning against personal appearances,
Speaker 3: some did show up At thirty Rock. One man came
Speaker 3: as a people card instead of a postcard, dressed in
Speaker 3: a postal sack and boxer shorts. He didn't win anyone over.
Speaker 3: There were even celebrity entrants of sorts. Bella Abzig, a
Speaker 3: former congresswoman, sent in a submission, so did Al Goldstein,
Speaker 3: the widely loathed publisher of an adult publication titled Screw Magazine.
Speaker 3: And then there was Connie Crawford's submission. Connie, you'll remember,
Speaker 3: was a freshman at Vassar who had a standing offer
Speaker 3: to run off to Nicaragua with Dan Akrid. What could
Speaker 3: she say in twenty five words or less that would
Speaker 3: make her postcard stand out from the thousands of other entries.
Speaker 3: It was something she carried with her everywhere, her Vassar
Speaker 3: student identification card.
Speaker 2: And so my friend and I were like, this sucks,
Speaker 2: and what is this ID? And you know without this ID,
Speaker 2: we can't eat. Without this ID, we can't go into
Speaker 2: certain places. This ID rules our life. And so I
Speaker 2: was like, Okay, that's it. The id's stage a revolution.
Speaker 2: My ID and my friend's ID go to the local
Speaker 2: holiday inn and my friend staples my ID on a
Speaker 2: holiday in postcard and I wrote, free me, and that's
Speaker 2: what I sent in. And of course I don't know
Speaker 2: if anybody got the backstory, it doesn't matter. I think
Speaker 2: it was more that it was my actual college ID
Speaker 2: stapled to a holiday and postcard in the words free me.
Speaker 3: Connie sent it off and waited. Meanwhile, SNL still had
Speaker 3: shows to do. Al Goldstein never hosted, but one of
Speaker 3: his peers did. Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine, hosted
Speaker 3: the third episode of the season. Charles Grodin was next,
Speaker 3: and then musician Ray Charles. By this point SNL's staff
Speaker 3: had come to a decision. Out of the now one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty thousand entries received, the finalists had been selected,
Speaker 3: and shortly Connie Crawford's phone rang, or more accurately, the
Speaker 3: phone at the dorm rang.
Speaker 2: And this was Vasser and these are old dorms, so
Speaker 2: each of these phone booths had those folding wooden doors,
Speaker 2: and you'd go in and you'd sit on these little
Speaker 2: wooden things, and it was old school, even first seventy seven.
Speaker 2: And the way you would get messages is they would
Speaker 2: call the dorm and the person at the front desk
Speaker 2: would write down a little message on a piece of paper,
Speaker 2: fold it up and put it in your little slot.
Speaker 2: So that's how I found out. I got a message saying,
Speaker 2: Barbara Burns, the casting coordinator, wants to talk to you
Speaker 2: about the contest. So of course I was really excited.
Speaker 2: And there was an initial interview which I did in
Speaker 2: one of those little wooden booths, and I think it
Speaker 2: was mostly to just see am I crazy? Or you know, really,
Speaker 2: who the fuck am I?
Speaker 3: At first? Connie remembers being told she was one of
Speaker 3: twenty five finalists and being asked to send in a photo,
Speaker 3: but quickly she was one of the final five. Connie
Speaker 3: and four finalists had just a few days to make
Speaker 3: their way into Manhattan. This was surreal. Just days Connie
Speaker 3: was in class. Now she was at SNL, getting a
Speaker 3: chance to see the stage, the audience seats, the cameras,
Speaker 3: and the sheer energy of preparing for a live sketch
Speaker 3: comedy show. Cast members ran around half dressed, moving from
Speaker 3: one sketch to the next in a dry run before
Speaker 3: the live broadcast.
Speaker 2: I mean, you got to understand, they brought in these
Speaker 2: five people and they're in the middle of doing their
Speaker 2: live show and they're running around. They were busy. Bilda
Speaker 2: Radner was very sweet, and the others were all polite
Speaker 2: and everything.
Speaker 3: Connie also got exposed to Bill Murray, who was not
Speaker 3: yet the full force of nature he would become. This
Speaker 3: was Murray's first full season as a cast member.
Speaker 2: He was always on in terms of what I saw,
Speaker 2: which was just moments here and there. So I kind
Speaker 2: of felt like he's the new guy. He's got this
Speaker 2: amazing of Billy to just riff and he's both experimenting
Speaker 2: with riffing. You know, he's practicing and he's doing it
Speaker 2: all the time, which maybe that's him working on his craft.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's him trying to get material, or maybe that's
Speaker 2: just him how he works. I don't know, but brilliant,
Speaker 2: clearly brilliant, because even his little riffs with the costume
Speaker 2: person were just extraordinary.
Speaker 3: But one person seemed to stand out even among this
Speaker 3: group of performers, John Belushi. As a fan of the show,
Speaker 3: Connie got to see some of the sketch rehearsals. In one,
Speaker 3: Belushi reprised his highly popular Samurai, a man in a
Speaker 3: top fun who delivers rapid fire gibberish while struggling to
Speaker 3: adapt to modern customs. He often did the sketch with
Speaker 3: Buck Henry, a frequent host who made for a good
Speaker 3: straight man for Belushi's wild energy.
Speaker 2: In those studios, you know it's a great big room,
Speaker 2: it's actually quite small, and then they have all these
Speaker 2: little modular sets. So they were in one set, and
Speaker 2: as you know, people who do tech are working and
Speaker 2: they don't get sucked into the vacuum of acting because
Speaker 2: they see a lot and they have work to do. Well, Belushi,
Speaker 2: in one of the rehearsals, he just started riffing and improvising,
Speaker 2: and Buck, of course went along with him. And he
Speaker 2: must have gone, I don't know it. It felt really long.
Speaker 2: I mean, I would say it was at least twenty
Speaker 2: minutes for an original. I think the skets like two
Speaker 2: or three minutes. And it was so funny and so
Speaker 2: brilliant that every person in that whole studio stopped what
Speaker 2: they were doing and gathered around this little modular set.
Speaker 2: The more people who watched, the funnier he got. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's one of the greatest performances I've ever seen. On
Speaker 2: both their parts.
Speaker 3: Belushi was also generous with Connie. She recalls he was
Speaker 3: the only one to try and settle her nerves.
Speaker 2: I was sitting around and he came over and just
Speaker 2: started chatting. And he was drinking a beer during the day,
Speaker 2: so we just started chatting. And he also did something
Speaker 2: that was really kind, which was so they did on Saturday.
Speaker 2: They run through the show once for a studio audience,
Speaker 2: and then there's a little break and then you do
Speaker 2: it live. And after the first run through of the show,
Speaker 2: he came up to me and he said, just let
Speaker 2: it go. He said, just pretend you're talking to some
Speaker 2: of your friends at school, and you know, nobody else
Speaker 2: said anything to me. The director nobody else you know,
Speaker 2: basically told me to relax, calm down, and I just
Speaker 2: really appreciated that.
Speaker 3: Connie also met the other finalists, and they were a
Speaker 3: highly eclectic bunch. There was deb Blair, an employment counselor
Speaker 3: and mother of three from Peoria, Illinois, who wrote that quote,
Speaker 3: my three sons only listen to people on TV. Please
Speaker 3: let me host Saturday Night. There are a few things
Speaker 3: I need to tell them. And there was David Lewis,
Speaker 3: a bearded twenty year old college dropout from McMinnville, Oregon,
Speaker 3: who sent in seventy five different entries. In the one selected,
Speaker 3: he wrote that quote, I'm so bored in the town
Speaker 3: where I live. I know all the vending machines by name. David,
Speaker 3: more than anyone, seemed to have a big appetite for
Speaker 3: show business. He told reporters he aspired to get into
Speaker 3: comedy writing, but he didn't seem to make a big impression,
Speaker 3: at least not with Connie.
Speaker 2: The guy from Oregon. I don't even really remember him
Speaker 2: very much.
Speaker 3: Weirdly, there was then current Governor of South Dakota, Richard Neap,
Speaker 3: who wrote that quote, being host could be my big breakthrough.
Speaker 3: In showbiz. Otherwise it's probably back to selling automatic milking
Speaker 3: machines wholesale. Like before I was governor, Connie actually had
Speaker 3: spent time in South Dakota, which made for an easy
Speaker 3: camaraderie with the governor.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was really funny because in between some of
Speaker 2: the shoots, they said, okay, and one of the other
Speaker 2: finalists here is the governor of South Dakota. And I
Speaker 2: looked at him and I went, oh, my god, I
Speaker 2: have spent the happiest months of my life in South Dakota.
Speaker 2: And he said, oh, I love you, know, And so
Speaker 2: we just immediately hugged and became really good friends.
Speaker 3: And finally Connie met an eighty year old grandmother from
Speaker 3: New Orleans named Miskel Spelman. I'm eighty years old and
Speaker 3: need one more cheap thrill since my doctor has just
Speaker 3: told me I only have twenty five years left to live,
Speaker 3: Spelman wrote. The contest was her first visit to New
Speaker 3: York and her first time on an airplane.
Speaker 2: And of course the grandmother was completely charming and sweet
Speaker 2: and just such a great sport.
Speaker 3: And just like that, the final five were set. They
Speaker 3: all settled into stereotypes that made them more palatable to
Speaker 3: both the viewers and the writers. Connie, of course, was
Speaker 3: the comely co ed.
Speaker 2: I think given how little time there was, the writers
Speaker 2: don't know who we are. You know, we're all stereotypes.
Speaker 2: That's how they selected us, you know, the dropout from Oregon,
Speaker 2: the Vassar co ed, the ninety year old grandmother from Louisiana,
Speaker 2: mother of three from Peoria, and the governor of South Dakota.
Speaker 2: You know. So they don't have enough time to know
Speaker 2: who we are to build something.
Speaker 3: It was now up to America to figure out which,
Speaker 3: if any, they liked. On November nineteenth, nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 3: SNL opened with Gilda Radner and Garrett Morris talking about
Speaker 3: the contest finalists in a locker room, as though the
Speaker 3: cast were a sports team about to go out and play,
Speaker 3: and in a sense, they were. They came out to
Speaker 3: meet America dressed in blue and white varsity sweaters. After
Speaker 3: the opening credits, they were joined on stage by the
Speaker 3: host of the episode, Buck Henry. Henry acted as a
Speaker 3: kind of MC. He called them quote five amazingly brave
Speaker 3: people and let each of them speak before reminding viewers
Speaker 3: they had until November thirtieth to vote for a winner
Speaker 3: using a form found in TV Guide. Each one had
Speaker 3: a letter on their shirt ABCD and E in an
Speaker 3: attempt to make voting easier.
Speaker 2: We were moving props more than anything. They would just
Speaker 2: sort of shuffle us into a scene and shuffle us out,
Speaker 2: so we weren't really performing. It was more like furniture.
Speaker 2: And I don't mean that like, uh, treating me like
Speaker 2: pieces chair or something. No, it was more like, Okay,
Speaker 2: you five are gonna come in here and stand here.
Speaker 2: Then you're gonna go sit over there, and next set,
Speaker 2: you know, you'll be in here and you'll do this.
Speaker 3: Later in the show, Henry appeared with each finalist in
Speaker 3: a pre taped bit under the pretense of each trying
Speaker 3: to convince Henry to pick them. The governor told Henry
Speaker 3: he could give him something from his state's gold mines.
Speaker 3: Debbie Blair, the mother of three, went for the guilt trip,
Speaker 3: saying she needed the three thousand dollars hosting fee to
Speaker 3: give her kids a nice Christmas miscl Spilman cautioned she
Speaker 3: might be dead before in New Year's Eve, and as
Speaker 3: the stereotypical comely co ed, Connie's role was to try
Speaker 3: and seduce Henry.
Speaker 2: So I go into this hotel room and there's a
Speaker 2: little lounge area with the sofa, and they introduced me
Speaker 2: to the other contestants and they say, okay, so each
Speaker 2: one of you is going to try to bribe Buck
Speaker 2: so you can be the host. And it's so telling.
Speaker 5: So I was.
Speaker 2: Eighteen when this happened, and when it came my time
Speaker 2: to shoot, they said, okay, you know what to do,
Speaker 2: and I knew what to do, which was try to
Speaker 2: seduce him, and so we just improvised it and they
Speaker 2: used the first take.
Speaker 3: Aside from the contest, the episode unspooled like a normal
Speaker 3: SNL entry. There were coneheads with Akroyd and curtain playing
Speaker 3: aliens with elongated heads and clipped speech and weekend update,
Speaker 3: and John Belushi as a retired world class athlete disclosing
Speaker 3: that his secret to premium performance is cigarette and chocolate donuts.
Speaker 3: The five returned at the end of the show to
Speaker 3: me one final plea. Connie said that by winning, she
Speaker 3: could flunk every other course but at least pass drama.
Speaker 3: Governor Neepe admitted he didn't really want to win, that
Speaker 3: he was just doing the show for his staff and kids,
Speaker 3: and not to vote for him. He later said he
Speaker 3: thought the week needed to rehearse the show would be
Speaker 3: too much of an imposition. Afterward, Connie got maybe the
Speaker 3: second best perk of appearing on SNL getting to attend
Speaker 3: the vaunted after party.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, there is a party. And there
Speaker 2: were all these amazing people there, like Eric Idle was there.
Speaker 2: I mean that to me was huge. And I had
Speaker 2: a little book and I had people autograph stuff, and
Speaker 2: Paul Simon was really snotty to me and everybody else. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was fun.
Speaker 3: The show was about to take the next few weeks off,
Speaker 3: giving staff enough time to prepare their two shows in December.
Speaker 3: The second would feature the winner, who would America Pick.
Speaker 3: People began tearing out the form from their copy of
Speaker 3: TV Guide and scribbling down a letter. Then NBC and
Speaker 3: SNL staffers tabulated the votes after counting viewers had decided
Speaker 3: the next host of Saturday Night Live was the letter
Speaker 3: e and the only contestant who had been born in
Speaker 3: the nineteenth century. Watching the Finalists episode of SNL, one
Speaker 3: thing becomes immediately apparent. The studio audience loved Miskel' Spilman,
Speaker 3: while the other contestants were typically met with silence. Anything
Speaker 3: Spilman said was greeted with laughter. Anything even dead panning
Speaker 3: that she was old drew a big reaction, and so
Speaker 3: when votes came in, Miskel was the overwhelming favorite, beating
Speaker 3: second placed finalist David Lewis by over fifteen thousand votes.
Speaker 3: One letter said, we cast our votes for the eighty
Speaker 3: year young gal. She is a peach. Come on, Granny,
Speaker 3: do your thing, wrote another. At least two people claiming
Speaker 3: to be President Jimmy Carter wrote in endorsing her, making
Speaker 3: at least one of them a fake. Even Governor Neepe
Speaker 3: said he voted for her America at least the America
Speaker 3: voting for a Saturday Night Live host wanted to see
Speaker 3: an eighty year old interact with the not ready for
Speaker 3: primetime players. That was something Connie Crawford picked up on
Speaker 3: pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: Oh well, there was no question from the beginning that
Speaker 2: she was going to win, because she was ninety years
Speaker 2: old and from Louisiana, and she had this little sparkle
Speaker 2: about her, and just the fact that she was willing
Speaker 2: to do this and that she did it with such
Speaker 2: grace and again.
Speaker 3: Spark Okay, so miss gal Spellman wasn't quite ninety. She
Speaker 3: was born in eighteen ninety seven, generations removed from the
Speaker 3: counterculture vibe of SNL, Yet she was an ardent fan
Speaker 3: of the show, which she watched religiously, including Lauren Michael's
Speaker 3: announcement for the contest. Her birth predated the invention of
Speaker 3: television itself. If both comedy and drama come from conflict,
Speaker 3: what could be better than someone like miscal thrown into
Speaker 3: the hippist show on the air.
Speaker 2: That was evident from the first day. I mean, the
Speaker 2: Governor was splashy, but she was the way I saw
Speaker 2: it as like, oh, she's the special one, because you know,
Speaker 2: this was a time where the generational gap was still
Speaker 2: pretty strictured, and here was this ninety year old woman
Speaker 2: coming onto the subversive show and she was from the
Speaker 2: Deep South.
Speaker 3: In looking at the coverage of the contest, it's fascinating
Speaker 3: to see how reporters didn't really get curious about Miskell.
Speaker 3: Out of the five sweeping characters, the co ed, the Governor,
Speaker 3: the dropout. She was a grandmother stereotype. One article mentioned
Speaker 3: in passing she had been a widow for twenty years.
Speaker 3: Someone with her maiden name of Weatherby once worked as
Speaker 3: a telephone operator for a local rotary club. In nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 3: she was commended for fielding two hundred calls in just
Speaker 3: forty five minutes. While we can't say definitively that was
Speaker 3: our Miskal, it probably was. Yet her work, her life,
Speaker 3: none of it seemed relevant so much as the idea
Speaker 3: of an octagenarian was going to host snow And while
Speaker 3: her age was a big reason people voted for her,
Speaker 3: not everyone was certain she could do it. Miskell's son
Speaker 3: Otis was quoted as saying he was unsure about the
Speaker 3: idea that his mother may not have the stamina for
Speaker 3: live television. I think it would be too much for her,
Speaker 3: he said. SNL was taking a risk too. They were
Speaker 3: banking on a woman who had never before been on
Speaker 3: an airplane or in New York, much less on television
Speaker 3: before her finalist appearance, here's Bill Carter again.
Speaker 1: So that was the risk for the show.
Speaker 5: Actually, the show was taken a risk because imagine if
Speaker 5: she had frozen on stage, how bad that would look.
Speaker 5: That they kind of put this woman in that position.
Speaker 5: So you know, they did take a risk pushing her
Speaker 5: out there in front of millions of viewers.
Speaker 3: It turns out that Miskell had plenty of energy. During
Speaker 3: the finalists show, a reporter noticed Miskel was the only
Speaker 3: one of the five who didn't seem all that nervous
Speaker 3: to be going on live television. The rest were smoking, pacing,
Speaker 3: or inhaling donuts. The week before the show, escorted by
Speaker 3: her granddaughter Janine, Miskel boarded a plane from New Orleans
Speaker 3: headed for New York. When she arrived, she was given
Speaker 3: a warm reception by Lorn and the cast. Writers plotted
Speaker 3: how best to utilize her, which was made easier given
Speaker 3: how natural she had been in front of the camera
Speaker 3: during the finalists show. But there was still a loose
Speaker 3: cannon quality to miscal As charming as she was, as
Speaker 3: comfortable as she seemed, she was still an amateur, and
Speaker 3: amateurs can freeze up or lose their mark on stage,
Speaker 3: So Michaels decided to give Miskell an on stage escort.
Speaker 3: Buck Henry Buck, as you'll recall, hosted the five contenders
Speaker 3: in this era of SNL. He was a kind of
Speaker 3: all star, a bit of a nerdy vibe, very suburban dad,
Speaker 3: but with a bit of a dark side. He was
Speaker 3: also reliable.
Speaker 5: He was enormously admired and respected by the cast and
Speaker 5: by Lorne. He was a veteran writer performer. People loved
Speaker 5: his writing. He could handle anything. You know, he could
Speaker 5: handle anything.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: When Belushi cut his head with the sword at one time,
Speaker 5: you know, he handled that. So they had great confidence
Speaker 5: in him on stage.
Speaker 3: It's hard to know exactly what people were thinking or
Speaker 3: hoping for when they switched on their televisions at eleven
Speaker 3: thirty on Saturday, December seventeenth, nineteen seventy seven. Were they
Speaker 3: hoping Miskell proved adept and witty? Were they anticipating the
Speaker 3: cast would have to think on their feet to cover
Speaker 3: up her mistakes. The show opens with John Belushi and
Speaker 3: Lorraine Newman in the cast locker room. They discuss Miskell's age,
Speaker 3: and Belushi makes an eerie joke about how he'll be
Speaker 3: dead before he's thirty. The comment got a laugh then,
Speaker 3: but given his death from a drug overdose at thirty
Speaker 3: three in nineteen eighty two, hits differently now. Belushi, trading
Speaker 3: on his party boy image, tells Newman that Miskell seemed nervous,
Speaker 3: so he gave her a joint to calm her down.
Speaker 3: The show leaned hard on two tropes this episode, Miskell's
Speaker 3: age and the idea of getting a grandmother high.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right, that was in the show. Yeah, that
Speaker 5: kind of humor never hit me well anyway. I mean
Speaker 5: I was like drug joke. Come on, I can do
Speaker 5: better than that.
Speaker 3: After the opening credit sequence, Buck Henry walks out to
Speaker 3: the stage with Miskell on his arm, and Miskell does
Speaker 3: a very good job of pretending to be stoned, telling
Speaker 3: buck Henry she can see colors. From that point on,
Speaker 3: Miskell Spilman is deployed very carefully. She appears sitting next
Speaker 3: to Jane Curtin as curtain reads a holiday story re
Speaker 3: enacted by Belusi and Gilda Radner. In the story, Belushi
Speaker 3: gifts his girlfriend a kidney and she gives him a
Speaker 3: watch chain. Miskell nails her lines, and then it's onto
Speaker 3: the requisite hosting duty of introducing the musical guest ladies
Speaker 3: and gentlemen, Elvis Costello. She then appears briefly in a
Speaker 3: sketch as Bill Murray's mother while Murray's character robs a bank,
Speaker 3: but her real star turn is in the next segment,
Speaker 3: when Belushi returns home from College to greet his parents
Speaker 3: played by Dan Ackrod and Jane Curtin. He wants them
Speaker 3: to meet his new girlfriend, whom he's brought home for
Speaker 3: the holidays. The audience can sense what's going to happen next,
Speaker 3: and they go crazy when Belushi ushers in Miskel his
Speaker 3: new flame. Akrd and Curtain try to make sense of
Speaker 3: it before accepting their son has found true love Harold
Speaker 3: and Maud style. But before the show is over, the
Speaker 3: worst thing possible did happen. Warren Michael's lost control. It
Speaker 3: just wasn't Miskle's doing. During his set, Elvis Costello, who
Speaker 3: had just released his first album in the Uba, stopped
Speaker 3: the song he was playing, less than Zero and told
Speaker 3: his band to move into radio radio instead. For Michaels
Speaker 3: and SNL, this was verboten. Musical acts didn't just decide
Speaker 3: on the fly what they were going to do. As
Speaker 3: rebellious as SNL was, it still had NBC's censors and
Speaker 3: the FCC to contend with. And for all its seeming spontaneity,
Speaker 3: SNL was planned down to the second that Bill believes
Speaker 3: is what really set Michaels off.
Speaker 5: This show has to basically end ninety minutes, so he
Speaker 5: has to have a clock going in his head. So
Speaker 5: if someone comes in and does something like changes the song,
Speaker 5: well the song's gonna be maybe a different lane, so
Speaker 5: that may mess up the whole next whatever the pattern
Speaker 5: is after that. So yes, if somebody does something that
Speaker 5: he doesn't expect or he didn't plan, not obviously an
Speaker 5: ad lib, that's fine. If it's funny, that's fine. But
Speaker 5: to change the structure in some way, that's not going
Speaker 5: to go. And he doesn't like people messing with his show.
Speaker 3: Michaels was furious. He allegedly gave Costello the middle finger
Speaker 3: from offstage, and again allegedly Costello was banned from appearing
Speaker 3: on SNL for a decade, and just like that, the
Speaker 3: show was over. Miskel joined the cast on stage to
Speaker 3: wave goodbye in a missus clause costume while the credits
Speaker 3: rolled for a publicity stunt. It worked spectacularly well. The
Speaker 3: Miskel Spilman episode of Saturday Night Live drew a staggering
Speaker 3: fourteen point five million viewers, the highest rated episode of
Speaker 3: the series up to that point, drawing more attention than
Speaker 3: the season premiere with Steve Martin.
Speaker 5: They had this tremendous publicity, So it doesn't surprise me
Speaker 5: that much that it did extremely well, because beyond everything
Speaker 5: else was a curiosity like, oh my gosh, what is
Speaker 5: I gonna do?
Speaker 3: The record wouldn't stand for long. Chevy Chase, returning to
Speaker 3: host in February nineteen seventy eight, got twenty five million viewers.
Speaker 3: Chase also got into a fight with Bill Murray backstage
Speaker 3: in an apparent clash of egos, which is something else
Speaker 3: Miskel Spilman couldn't brag about. What she could lay claim
Speaker 3: to was being the coolest of customers in a pressure cooker.
Speaker 5: You could tell she was game. She was game for it,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. She wasn't intimidated. She was Okay,
Speaker 5: whatever I'm supposed to do, I'm going to do it.
Speaker 5: And I think people really admire that. You know, she
Speaker 5: as an eighty year old person did not fit naturally,
Speaker 5: but I think they embraced her, and that's why it worked.
Speaker 3: The Miskel Spilman episode remains a remarkable chapter in the
Speaker 3: history of SNL. She wasn't the oldest ever host of
Speaker 3: the show, not even then. In the second season, actress
Speaker 3: Ruth Gordon hosted at the age of eighty one, and
Speaker 3: decades later Betty White would set the record at the
Speaker 3: age of eighty eight, but Miskel Spilman remains the winner
Speaker 3: of the first and only Anyone Can Host competition. No
Speaker 3: one in the forty seven seasons to follow hosted who
Speaker 3: was totally unfamiliar to the audience, plucked from obscurity to
Speaker 3: entertain a pet theory of Michael's. The closest SNL ever
Speaker 3: came again to this grand experiment was in nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: three when Brandon Tartikoff head lined an episode. While he
Speaker 3: wasn't all that well known or much of a celebrity,
Speaker 3: he did have one thing going for him. He was
Speaker 3: the president of NBC's entertainment division. Miskel was the only
Speaker 3: true civilian to ever do it.
Speaker 5: It was in the B range for me, As I recall,
Speaker 5: I haven't gone back and looked at it. I thought
Speaker 5: she was cute and occasionally adorable with what they were
Speaker 5: doing with her, it didn't stand out. I mean, if
Speaker 5: I went back and looked at it, maybe a sketch
Speaker 5: would stand out to me, but it wasn't overly memorable.
Speaker 5: And I think the most notable thing about it is
Speaker 5: that they never did it again.
Speaker 3: They didn't really have to. As the years went on,
Speaker 3: SNL grew from a counterculture maverick to an institution. There
Speaker 3: were some interactive segments. Who could forget Eddie Murphy imploring
Speaker 3: viewers to call in and vote to spare the life
Speaker 3: of a lobster he wanted to boil in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 3: But for the most part SNL had tenure. In nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty four, syndicated columnist Bob Green caught up with Miskel
Speaker 3: to ask about her experience. She said it had been
Speaker 3: the most thrilling night of her life. She said her
Speaker 3: granddaughter was scared she might have a heart attack, but
Speaker 3: that she didn't feel nervous at all. She recalled how
Speaker 3: nice John Belushi was to her, how Bill Murray and
Speaker 3: Gilda Radner invited her and her daughter out for dinner,
Speaker 3: where they all talked until four o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 3: how she and Radner had remained pen pals, writing letters
Speaker 3: to one another for years. Afterward, Miskell was also gifted
Speaker 3: a signed scrap book which congratulated her on winning. Lauren
Speaker 3: Michaels signed it along with several of the writers, so
Speaker 3: did Bill Murray, John Belucy, Jane Curtin, dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner,
Speaker 3: and of course Buck Henry Inside were many of the
Speaker 3: letters sent in that voted for her. As late as
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine, she was still watching the show, admitting
Speaker 3: she had to take a nap to stay up that late.
Speaker 3: Her favorite cast member at that time was Dana Carvey,
Speaker 3: and like most fans of SNL, she thought the show
Speaker 3: wasn't as good as it used to be. In nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety two, Miskell's Spilman, SNL's only civilian host, died at
Speaker 3: the age of ninety five.
Speaker 1: You know what she says.
Speaker 5: She had a line in the show where she said
Speaker 5: they had to give to me because I may only
Speaker 5: live another twenty five years or something.
Speaker 1: Like that, and damn she lived.
Speaker 5: She lived fifteen, She lived fifteen more years.
Speaker 1: She was ninety five.
Speaker 3: The fate of the other contestants is largely unknown. Richard
Speaker 3: Neepe died in nineteen eighty seven, but Debbie Blair and
Speaker 3: David Lewis, who were part of this strange chapter in
Speaker 3: show business, aren't easily found. They were candidates for a
Speaker 3: grand experiment. Michaels had set out to prove anyone could
Speaker 3: host SNL and he did well, maybe he found out
Speaker 3: miss goals. Bilman could host, But could anyone? Could you
Speaker 3: host SNL? Stand on stage in front of millions of
Speaker 3: people and not panic?
Speaker 5: It's not easy. It's not the easiest thing in the
Speaker 5: world to do. As I said, if you don't have
Speaker 5: a level of confidence to be out there in front
Speaker 5: of that live audience and on camera, you could really
Speaker 5: freeze up and have nothing. So I don't believe anyone
Speaker 5: could do it. No, And I admire the fact that
Speaker 5: she did it well. I think there was no built
Speaker 5: in reason why she should have pulled that off, even
Speaker 5: with the writing they had, etc. You see people try
Speaker 5: to get up and just talk at a PTA meeting
Speaker 5: and they can't do it.
Speaker 3: Could Bill Carter?
Speaker 1: Hell No.
Speaker 5: The idea of standing in front of an audience and
Speaker 5: getting them to laugh and the idea of not getting
Speaker 5: them to laugh is like, you know, facing a crocodile.
Speaker 3: For Connie Crawford, the Anyone Can Host contest was meant
Speaker 3: to be a fleeting thrill. After Vassar, Connie went on
Speaker 3: to Juilliard, the prestigious acting school, and got involved in theater,
Speaker 3: including the improv group, the Groundlings. She now teaches acting
Speaker 3: and directing at Brown University. She's never gone back to
Speaker 3: look at the episode where she was able to stand
Speaker 3: next to a legend cast she had revered on television.
Speaker 3: After all, it's called Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 2: I've never seen it, and I've made a point of
Speaker 2: not seeing it just because it was so much fun.
Speaker 2: I don't want to watch it and go oh, or
Speaker 2: you know, I don't want to poison the memory because
Speaker 2: it was live. I mean, that's the whole thing. That's
Speaker 2: kind of hard today to have people understand the how
Speaker 2: ethereal it was. If you missed it, you missed it,
Speaker 2: and that's it, and you would never see it. That
Speaker 2: was kind of the magic of it. And so that
Speaker 2: was the fun of it for me. You know. Then
Speaker 2: I go back to school, and you know, I just
Speaker 2: have this kind of happy memory, and I've just chosen
Speaker 2: to keep it that way because it was really special
Speaker 2: and silly and and it was a great show.
Speaker 3: No oh, she didn't wind up running away to Nicaragua
Speaker 3: with dan Akride.
Speaker 2: It was so disappointing. He didn't love me, no, But
Speaker 2: by that point I wasn't in love with him anymore.
Speaker 2: Uh No, I mean at that point, if I had
Speaker 2: wanted to, it would have been Blue Shie.
Speaker 4: Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Speaker 4: Jake Rowson wrote today's episode. Jake also wrote last week's episode,
Speaker 4: Super Streaker, and if you want to dip into the archives,
Speaker 4: check out E T and Me, another Jake special about
Speaker 4: a suburban kid who helped Steven Spielberg make his most
Speaker 4: ambitious movie to date. Our producer, as always, is Josh Fisher.
Speaker 4: The show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnett and
Speaker 4: Jason English. Editing and sound design by Chris Childs, Mixing
Speaker 4: and mastering by Chris Childs. Original music by Alice McCoy,
Speaker 4: Show logo by Lucy Quintonia. Our executive producer is Jason English.
Speaker 4: If you'd like to email the show, you can reach
Speaker 4: us at Very Special Episodes at gmail dot com. Very
Speaker 4: Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.