John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Bill Murray and Will Ferrell all hated Chevy Chase. Everyone did.

Highlights from "Live from New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests." Part 1 (1975-1999)

“I don’t think it will ever work because the audience for which it’s designed will never come home on Saturday night to watch it.”

— NBC Head of Research

[Read part two of highlights from “Live from New York.”]

Famed Saturday Night Live Executive Producer Lorne Michaels once observed, "Generally when people talk about the best cast I think, 'Well, that's when they were in high school, because in high school you have the least amount of power you're ever gonna have. ... Staying up with friends later on a Saturday is great, and people attach to a cast."

That rings true, but to be fair the cast of SNL during my high school years was Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Darrell Hammond, Jimmy Fallon, Kristen Wiig, Rachel Dratch, Maya Rudolph, Will Forte and many others. Those in high school during the early 90s might have competition, but I think it's objectively true the 2004-2007 cast was the best.

SNL celebrates 50 years on the air next weekend and in honor of the many great cast and characters that have graced the hallowed halls of Studio 8H, I re-read one of my favorite books: "Live from New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests." The authors, Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, compiled interviews with dozens of cast members, writers, producers, hosts and celebrities who tell the story of SNL in their own words.

It’s a wild ride.

1975-1979

Of all the people who had a hand in creating SNL, the man most responsible was Johnny Carson. Carson was tired of seeing reruns of The Tonight Show on Saturday nights, which pushed NBC to come up with original programming. Thus SNL was born.

The first episode aired on Oct. 11, 1975, and barely resembles the show as it exists today. The Muppets were a regular segment. The host, George Carlin, had not one but three monologues. The episode showcased alternative comedy like Andy Kaufman lip-syncing the “Mighty Mouse” theme (I still don’t completely get why this was funny).

If there’s one through line in the story of SNL, it’s that everyone hated Chevy Chase. He rocketed to stardom only to leave after one year, which many resented. The first time he returned to host, Chevy got into a heated shouting match with Bill Murray backstage that nearly ended in a fistfight. Murray felt protective of the other cast members. John Belushi resented his stardom. Jane Curtin thought he was an egomaniac. Al Franken had no use for his bragging about current projects. Everyone, and I mean everyone, hated Chevy Chase.

The early years were fueled by youthful ambition, excitement and cocaine. So, so much cocaine. What was presented on stage was pure fun, but the story backstage was much darker. Drug use differed from cast member to cast member, but by far the worst abuser was John Belushi. Jane Curtin—who often appears to be the only adult in the room—implored Lorne Michaels to do something to no avail:

I would say, “Why aren’t you doing something about John? I found him going through my purse. He set your loft on fire. His behavior is reprehensible. He’s not coming to rehearsals or if he does come, he comes three hours late. Do something!” And he didn’t. He would just sort of throw his hands in the air.

SNL was a boy’s club, but thankfully the female cast members were able to shine through: Gilda Radner, Lorraine Newman and Jane Curtin. Together, the first cast created memorable characters like Roseanne Roseannadanna, The Lounge Singer, Coneheads, The Blues Brothers, Samurai, The Nerds, and The Bees—which John Belushi hated.

After the end of the fifth season, the future of SNL was uncertain. Lorne Michaels was burnt out with an eye for the exits. The all-star cast was ready to follow him, including Gilda Radner, Dan Akroyd, John Belushi and others.

If the show was to go on, it would have to without many of the people who made it a hit.

1980-1984

Jean Doumanian was set up for failure as the first executive producer after Lorne Michaels. Her budget was slashed. The censors were emboldened. The original cast had left with Lorne. When cast member Charles Rocket dropped an F-bomb live on air (a first but not last for the show!), it was the final straw.

Tapped to rebuild the show that was now on life support was Dick Ebersol, a man who had been part of the show’s origins. While he had the managerial skill to keep the show afloat, he lacked Lorne Michaels's comedy instincts. Larry David was a writer for a season and Ebersol failed to understand David’s humor, which would later fuel one of the most successful sitcoms in TV history. As SNL writer Elliot Wald recounts:

The one about trying to get into someone’s apartment at a wake? Elaine did that on Seinfeld, but Larry wrote it first as a sketch. And we were falling down laughing. And Dick would say, “That’s not going on the air; that’s not funny.”

Fortunately for David (and for TV viewers everywhere), plenty of the never-aired sketches became plotlines in Seinfeld. David also used his experience of furiously quitting one night and then coming in like nothing happened as a plotline for George Costanza:

I went up to Dick right before we were going to go on and I said, “That’s it. I’m done. I’ve had it. I quit. It’s over.” And I walked out and started walking home… I went back the next week and pretended I hadn’t quit—which I also used later in a Seinfeld episode. I went in on Monday morning and just pretended the whole thing never happened. And Dick never mentioned it. I think maybe he said, “Is that Larry David down at the end of the table?”

While Ebersol failed to see the genius of Larry David, he did see the potential of a young Eddie Murphy, who became a prominent cast member during that era. Murphy quickly became a star in an era with few other big names. Many argue Murphy’s star power single-handedly saved the show from cancellation. According to Chris Rock, who would join a few years later:

I don’t want to speak for him, bit I think he does get pissed when they make fun of him, only because the show would have gotten cancelled if he hadn’t been there. There would be no show. So he deserves a pass on that aspect. The show would absolutely have gotten cancelled. There were really no stars.

After leaving SNL, Murphy wanted little to do with the show that helped him rocket to stardom. He did not sit down for an interview with this book.

Although there were few stars during the early years of the 80s, that quickly changed in the tenth season when several major players were hired: Martin Short, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest and Julia Louise-Dreyfuss.¹

1985-1989

After a five-year hiatus, Lorne Michaels returned to SNL for the 11th season. And it was rocky. The all-star cast of the tenth season was thrown out in favor of an all-new cast, along with mostly new writers. Hoping to return some of the shine from the first season, Chevy Chase came back to host and, once again, everyone hated him. As Terry Sweeney, the first openly gay cast member of the show, recalls:

When he got there, he was a monster. I mean, he insulted everybody. He said to Robert Downey Jr., “Didn’t your father used to be a successful director? Whatever happened to him? Boy, he sure died, you know, he sure went to hell.” Downey turned ashen. And then Chevy turned to me and he said, “Oh, you’re the gay guy, right?” And he goes, “I’ve got an idea for a sketch for you. How about we say you have AIDS and we weigh you every week?”

Michael’s first year back dabbled in some avante-garde production choices. Francis Ford Coppola directed an episode—it was very meta and self-referential. The season ended with a cliffhanger, with the cast members locked in a burning room. The end credits listed their names with question marks.

The few cast members who returned (survived?) for the next season were joined by many hall-of-famers like Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Victoria Jackson, and Kevin Nealon.

After a rough 11th season, SNL finally found its footing again. The late 80s birthed some of the most iconic SNL sketches, such as Wayne’s World, Hanz and Franz and Church Chat (all starring Dana Carvey).

SNL is a pressure cooker—even to those who appear natural on camera. Dana Carvey’s very first show as a cast member was also the premiere of Church Lady, which became the cold open after it killed in dress rehearsal:

I would essentially cry in my dressing room. I’m emotional. And then I was swearing at myself in the mirror. There was so much pressure, because there I was, thirty-one, I never thought I would get on Saturday Night Live, and here was the first show, I was unknown, I had never done sketch comedy, and the red light was going to come on, twenty million people, the pressure was so extreme, at least the way I felt—and then it came off great.

1990-1994

SNL has often courted controversy—sometimes intentionally, other times not. In 1990, controversial shock comedian Andrew Dice Clay hosted, which caused cast member Nora Dunn to announce she wouldn’t appear that week in protest. The following year, Sinead O’Connor ripped up an image of the Pope live on air.

While plenty of hosts and musical guests caused heartburn for everyone involved, one host became a regular favorite after being not only great on camera, but also great to work with. As then writer Conan O’Brien remembers:

Tom Hanks would actually roll up his sleeves. Sometimes you’d pass him and it’s like four in the morning, and he’s in the corner scribbling away on something, just constantly trying to make it better. That’s what impressed me, people who looked upon it as, “I can make this better right up until the moment we go on air.

Some of the most revered SNL cast members were also the most physical, and Chris Farley followed (too closely) in the footsteps of former stars like John Belushi. This sketch from 1991 is one of the greats, in my opinion.

It was during the late 80s/early 90s that SNL began to engage more directly in political satire. Dana Carvey’s impersonation of George H.W. Bush drew many fans—including the president himself. After a bruising defeat to Bill Clinton (who notoriously avoided invitations to appear on the show over the years), President Bush invited Carvey to the White House to perform for the staff at the White House Christmas Party:

So he invited me out there to cheer up the troops, as he saw it. His sense of it was that it wasn’t mean, that it was mostly silly… And for my wife and me, it’s still one of the peak experiences and most mind-blowing experiences of our life, to be in the White House with the president, who had just lost the election, during Christmas. It was just so gorgeous and surreal.

1995-1999

Chevy Chase came back to host and—surprise!—everyone hated him. According to Will Ferrell:

The worst host was Chevy Chase…. It started right from the Monday pitch; you could just tell something was up. I don’t know if he was on something, but he was just kind of going arond the room and systematically riffing. First, it was on the guys, playfully making fun, until, when he got to one of our female writers, he made some reference like, “Maybe you can give me a hand job later.” And I’ve never seen Lorne more embarrassed and red. In hindsight, I wish we’d all gotten up and walked out of the room.

Those who audition for SNL are often flooded with advice, some of it terrible. Molly Shannon was told not to perform a character who ended up being an audience favorite and spun off a successful movie:

When I auditioned for Saturday Night Live, the person who was having the auditions for Lorne told me, “Whatever you do, please don’t do that Mary Katherine Gallagher character. You’ll never get hired. Lorne won’t like that, he’ll think its disgusting and dirty.”… For some reason, she just didn’t think it was right. I don’t want to say her name. But I’ll never forget that lady.

While the late 90s featured SNL all-stars like Will Ferrell and Darrell Hammond, Molly Shannon was also among the powerhouse female cast members of that era. As Janeane Garofalo notes:

Molly Shannon and Ana Gasteyer and Cheri Oteri and Rachel Dratch and Tina Fey kicked ass. They came in and would not be denied. I’ll admit that I was not prepared to deal with the wall of resistance. Molly was. Molly is a much stronger person than me. And she is easily more talented than me.

In addition to Mary Katherine Gallagher, other memorable characters from the late 90s included Sprockets, The Ladies Man, The Roxbury Guys and the many guests of Celebrity Jeopardy.

Norm Macdonald was revered for his unapologetic humor, which often got him into trouble. Fully aware (or because of) NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer’s longtime friendship with O.J. Simpson, Macdonald mercilessly went after the accused-but-acquitted Simpson for weeks on Weekend Update.

In a stunning rebuke, Ohlmeyer fired Macdonald but quickly relented after Macdonald went on David Letterman and garnered a swell of sympathy and backlash to the decision.

That kind of rebellious, countercultural comedy had long been part of SNL’s DNA, but was beginning to fade. Macdonald became a fan favorite not by pandering to the audience, but by delivering jokes that were unexpected and provocative.

As Macdonald explains, applause is the last thing a comedian should be aiming for:

I don’t like an audience applauding because to me that’s like a cheap kind of high. They kind of control you. They’re like, Yeah, we agree.” That’s all they’re doing, saying they agree with your viewpoint. And while you can applaud voluntarily, you can’t laugh voluntarily—you have to laugh involuntarily—so I hate it when an audience applauses. I don’t want to say things an audience agrees with. I don’t want to say anything an audience already thinks.

As I’ll document in part two of this series on “Live from New York,” that kind of attitude would change dramatically in the decades to come—and to the detriment of late night comedy.

1. Larry David’s short tenure at SNL overlapped with Julia Louise-Dreyfuss and he remembered her when he was casting Elaine for Seinfeld.