I grabbed my copy of Live From New York off the shelf last night to see if there was any mention of Arnaz being a jerk, but the only mention was Lorne (I think) recalling the Babalu performance. According to him, Arnaz did indeed still have “it” and was pounding away on the drums like he was still 30. Lorne (or whoever was being quoted) claimed they considered cutting away to commercial because they were seriously worried Arnaz would drop dead of a heart attack right there on stage.
I actually remember the Milton Berle episode from first run, but only one segment. It was the family with the enormous butts, and Milton was an uncle. The family ended up showing a slide show on his butt as he bent over.
Milton Berle is in a select class of celebrities and famous people that I don’t think I’ve ever heard or read a positive anecdote about from those who’ve worked closely with them. (Others include Rex Harrison, Jerry Lewis, Garrison Keillor, Shelley Long, Geraldo Rivera, Arthur Godfrey, and from outside show biz RFK, ACLU founder Roger Baldwin, and Nixon.) He was a notorious joke thief (and got really pissed when this was brought up at roasts- including by self confessed notorious joke thief Jackie Gleason). He was impossible to work with from before his Bugsy Siegel years to Ru Paul, he had a terrible reputation for sexually harassing women even as an old man (working his ‘gigantic schlong’ reputation into every conversation), he did not take direction and was prone to improv/go off book but unlike the Marx Bros. he did so when the book was better.
On a reunion of the second incarnation/John Davidson version of Hollywood Squares a few years ago (when Berle was still alive), the regulars from that era (Davidson, Joan Rivers, JM J Bullock, and I can’t remember who else) were all asked their favorite guest stars and all threw out a bunch of names from classic HS (Rose Marie, etc.) to then stars to others, but when asked who they answered to a person “Milton Berle”. Bullock said that when he was given a scripted exchange to do with Berle the old fart refused and said “I’m not doing any fag stuff”, and insisted it be changed to him (Berle) shoving a pie in Bullock’s face (yuk yuk). To quote Bullock, they gave Berle his way, and “It…d-i-e-d! No laughter, no applause, just silence. It was a pie in the face for God’s sake, they’d been seeing that since before talkies and this was just another one!”
Even so I’d like to see that episode of SNL just out of curiosity.
Back on topic, I remember from one of the SNL books that Robert Blake was another host from hell, but it didn’t really say why- just that he was. I wonder if his episode is in rotation (especially considering his murder trial).
And for that matter, do they still show the OJ episode? I don’t think I’ve ever ran across it in reruns, altho I don’t watch a lot of SNL reruns.
I saw the monologue the night it was aired. Because I saw it on the west coast, though, a lot of individual words were muted. Also, towards the end, Lawrence appeared to be reacting to someone who was frantically and angrily signaling him to knock it off.
The night that the cold open was Tim Meadows as O.J., diagramming a play on MNF so that it spelled out “I DID IT,” I chose not to record the show. :smack: Has that sketch ever been rerun?
Speaking of joke thievery, Martin Lawrence’s bit seems at least partly lifted from Redd Foxx’s You Gotta Wash Your Ass! album/routine (though perhaps Patrick Deval gave him permission to use it).
Lawyers.
Lawyers.
Whenever you see a situation you do not understand, look for the lawyers. Especially in showbiz, where they now outnumber working talent.
Yes. I’ve seen that sketch and there was no way I saw it during its original airing, so I must’ve seen it on Comedy Central.
Wouldn’t it be fair to say that, aside from the reruns of SNL that NBC airs at 11:30 PM on Saturday, NONE of the past SNL episodes are ever rerun. At least not in their entirety. Aren’t all the reruns on cable edited to a one-hour time slot? If so, technically, no complete SNLs are ever rerun except on cable. Anybody know for sure?
I think the line about Berle you’re thinking of is: “He came in,” said one of the writers, “with the attitude ‘I am TV.’ Not ‘I used to be TV,’ but ‘I am TV.’”
The only thing close to this I could find in either the Hill/Weingrad book or the Shales/Miller book is: "Bill Murray got so fed up that when Berle spoke out of turn during blocking, Billy loudly corrected him in a sing-song voice reeking with disgust: “That’s not your line, Mr. Berle.”
Wow; I’d forgotten what a crappy stand-up comedian Martin Lawrence is.
Well then. My apologies to Desi’s shade.
Yes, frequently. One of the most popular cold-opens ever for that show.
Two never-rerun-again episodes that I recall seeing (aside from the most infamous Sinead O’Conner one):
Matthew Broderick was the guest host, and there was sketch set at a nudist camp. Everyone in the cast was naked (but obscured by a large wooden railing, and only the men appeared - I guess it must have been a gay nudist camp), and everyone commented on everyone else’s penis. The word ‘penis’ was uttered well over 100 times in the five minute sketch.
A “Night of the Living Dead” paraody, where the living dead rise from their graves, stalk the living…and then masturbate. This one was mildly funny because of the oddity of it, but it certainly didn’t make any sense.
Sorry about the simulpost, but I remembered something a little too late to edit it onto my last post.
While the epsiode was never banned from re-broadcast, there was a Halloween ep. in which the punk rock band “Fear” (with a pre-Chili Peppers Flea) performed. Their act was so pathetic & incoherent that the producers pulled the plug on it - switching to a commercial less than two minutes into their ‘performance.’ (Aside - that same ep. also featured a notoriously hated guest host - Donald Pleasance from the “Halloween” movie series. He showed up drunk at all the rehearsals, and kept demanding to see Gilda, not aware that she had left the show about three years previously.)
Assuming that I’m not mis-remembering another part of that SNL history book, the reason the plug got pulled was because some slam dancers were brought in and someone in the control room thought they were going to rush the stage. SO the plug got pulled and the slam dancers just…stopped.
Fear IIRC got on the show in the first palce as John Belushi was a big fan.
Belushi even made a cameo on that episode (his last appearance on SNL) and was to have been starred as then-newly-canned NBC chief Fred Silverman in Michael O’Donoghue’s “Last Days in Fred Silverman’s Bunker” sketch which was based upon the last days of Hitler. However, the sketch was cut by nervous network execs at the last minute and O’Donoghue ended up getting fired. Overall, that was a pretty tumultuous episode of SNL.
I don’t think it was quite 100 times, but definitely 30 or 40. I’ve seen that sketch in reruns though. I guess Comedy Central didn’t have a problem with it.
The Shales book is very unfair in it’s treatment of O’Donohue and the shows he headed. I got the impression that Shales had not bothered to watch any of his episodes - if he had, he might have noticed that it was the shows best period. Contrary to Lorne Michaels constant quest for recurring characters to have in every stinking episode and to put into horrible spin-off movies (“Night at the Roxbury”, “It’s Pat”, “Superstar”) O’Donohue had to guts to kill off overused characters. Eddie Murphy’s “Velvet Jones” died of overexposure, and the “Nightline” coverage of the assassination of “Buckwheat” was classic.
O’Donohue was abrasive and demanding, and I suspect lazy writers like being able to crank out the same ten skits every week. So nobody had anything good to say about him…and being dead by the time Shales was writing the book, was not able to speak in his own defense. But that period had some brilliant writing like “What If Reagan Had Survived The Assassination?”, a vicious political satire of how Reagan’s actions were contrary to his claimed beliefs. And if the host couldn’t pull off an opening monologue, they just didn’t have one. Bernadette Peters appeared instead as Betty Boop in a Army hygiene film “Johnny, Keep Your Gun Clean” that was howlingly funny.
Is this the one where Gilda Radner knocks on the guest’s dressing room door and tries to get her to come out? And Gilda asks the door something like, “What is it, honey? What’s wrong? Is it cramps?”
If so, then I remember seeing this episode, though I only remember that part with any clarity. What year was it aired? Maybe I saw it the first time.
Maybe I was young and dumb, but I didn’t know it was for real. I thought it was sort of an experimental surrealist sketch, where the joke was there weren’t any jokes.