Tonight, Saturday Night Live celebrates 40 years on the air. Starting with a "red carpet" special at 7PM Eastern, and then a 3.5 hour extravaganza of secret stuff, this is a big night for creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels, and his crew. By the time you read these words, the live anniversary show itself will be more than half over.
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Grab an orange croissant from the craft services table, and continue below.
I would like to feed your fingertips to the wolverines.
That phrase is a key part of the very first sketch 40 years ago, written by Michael O'Donaghue, featuring himself and John Belushi, and ending with Chevy Chase announcing "
Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!".
In fact, the show's title back then was NBC's Saturday Night. There was another show on the air at that time called Saturday Night Live, hosted by Howard Cosell on ABC. That show was short-lived, and eventually SNL took on its natural title heritage.
A few things from the "red carpet" show:
- The Today show cast, plus Carson Daly, played hosts to interview the celebrities for this pre-game show.
- No sign of Brian Williams.
- A low-key Eddie Murphy showed up, after 32 years away and insisting he would never appear on the show again. (Apparently, he was in a snit over a David Spade segment on Weekend Update referring to Murphy as a "falling star". Things might have been patched up).
- Sarah Palin is there tonight. It seems that anyone who appeared on the show was invited. Donald Trump was seen standing around, too.
- Lorne Michaels was interviewed, with his three adult children standing beside him. He mentioned a "Celebrity Jeopardy!" segment coming up on the live show. When asked about the secrecy that everyone but himself has been sworn to, Michaels said there's only 45 minutes to air, so the veil could be lifted. The show has already been expanded from the originally planned 3 hours, to 3.5 hours. Lorne said that if they run long, they will start tossing pre-recorded segments, to preserve the live segments.
- Dave Chapelle showed up, excited to see Eddie Murphy. He was never on SNL, but has memories of Richard Pryor and many others.
- J.B. Smoove flashed by quickly. He has worked with Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Larry was an SNL writer for one season, but famously didn't get any sketches he wrote actually on the air.
- Rudy Giulani had a famous moment on the show, in the aftermath of 9/11. On the air, Lorne asked Rudy "Can we be funny?" Rudy replied, "Why start now?". It was actually a great moment, in the long haul to recover after 9/11. New York would survive, carry on, and thrive despite the horrors of that day.
- Billy Crystal was a favorite cast member for one year not too long into the show's run. But what few people know or remember is that Billy was scheduled to be a guest, doing stand-up, on the very first episode. After dress rehearsal, the show was running long, and he was asked to cut a portion of his routine. He had a set routine and couldn't break it up, and ended up being cut entirely from the air show.
- We were treated to a portion of the famous "More cow bell" sketch with Christopher Walken, Will Ferrell, and a can't-stop-giggling Jimmy Fallon.
- Betty White is there. No specific word on the presence of her muffin. She's looking forward to seeing "everybody".
- Sigourney Weaver hosted SNL twice. She knows her way around 30 Rock, as her father, Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, was the NBC Executive who created the Today show.
- A segment of Bill Hader's "Stefon" character from Weekend Update was shown. Hader has explained on many occasions that there were usually changes to the script, right up until the moment of his live segment. Some of these he was unaware of, and was reading the lines cold for the first time, live on the air. That is partly the reason for his many hilarious break-ups during the segment.
- Kanye West made a (scripted) barge-in on the last moment of the pre-game show.
There are so many classic and favorite moments from 40 years of SNL, that I can't even begin to outline them. Besides, the copyright owners have been very hawkish on removing clips that appear on YouTube.
There's a new "SNL" app you can download for your iOS device from the App Store, that will allow you to find and watch many clips.
The SNL App is a must-have for any Saturday Night Live fan. Find and watch thousands of sketches spanning the 40-season library, from the most current to the classic. Plus, you’ll get access to never-before-seen clips, an exclusive SNL emoji keyboard and easy access to SNL full episodes on the NBC App.