Saturday Night Live is celebrating the big 5-0. Who better to put it in perspective than the Canadian writer who was there at the start.
On this special presentation from brioux.tv: the podcast and LateNighter, Rosie Shuster tells how it all began. She was born with a funny bone as the daughter of Frank Shuster (half of the comedy team of Wayne & Shuster). She meets Lorne Michaels at junior high, he falls for Rosie, and Lorne then soaks up every showbiz lesson he can from her dad.
Original Saturday Night Live writers (l-r): Rosie Shuster, Tom Schiller, Alan Zweibel, Anne Beatts and Michael O’Donoghue
Together with their Toronto school chum Howard Shore, all three land at 30 Rock in New York, assemble the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, put together the next generation of comedy writers (including Rosie) and create the greatest live TV comedy-music showcase ever.
Shuster talks about the show that came before, CBC’s Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour; writing for Gilda Radner (a joy) and John Belushi (a struggle), getting props from her proud poppa, and her on-again, off-again marriage to Michaels.
NBC and Global will re-broadcast the very first episode of Saturday Night Live, from Oct. 11, 1975, this coming Saturday at 11:30 pm in the regular SNL slot. The next night, Sunday Feb. 16, the three hour SNL50: The Anniversary Special will air on NBC and Global.
To listen to the full, 56-minute podcast interview with Rosie Shuster, click on the white arrow in the blue dot above. In the meantime, here is a small part of what you’ll hear as Rosie looks back at her remarkable career:
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Does it seem possible that this all happened 50 years ago?
No, you know, time and age and all that, it’s just always…it’s surreal to me. It’s like, okay. I see how you calculated that right and I can’t fault your math, you know? So, okay, apparently it’s true.
Let’s talk about The Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour, which aired in Canada on the CBC in 1970 and ‘71.
This next generation comedy-variety series is seen by many as something of a dry run for Saturday Night Live, albeit on a Canadian dime. Michaels produced but also headlined as part of a comedy team at the time, partnered with Hart Pomerantz, who wound up having a law career in Canada. The two parlayed a writing stint on Laugh-In into this CBC variety show opportunity. Music guests such as James Taylor, Melanie and Cat Stevens were featured. A sketch comedy highlight was hippy-haired straight man Lorne’s interviews with the peevish Canadian beaver, played by Pomerantz. Michaels was already married to Shuster at the time, and she was a writer on this series.
Did you write for the Beaver character?
Hart and Lorne did all their own two-man, stand-up, kind of stuff. I don’t think anybody wrote for the beaver but Hart and Lorne. But I did write for The Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour. My brother (Steve Shuster) and I actually did something called the “Karma Game” for it early on.
I’ve seen a few episodes, including the one with James Taylor, who looks about 20 years old. He’s beautifully lit and sounds great, performing to a live audience and the sound and camera work really stands out.
Johnny Wayne, Ed Sullivan and Frank Shuster. Wayne & Shuster appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show 67 times
My dad [Canadian comedy veteran Frank Shuster, one half of the team of Wayne & Shuster frequently featured on The Ed Sullivan Show] was mentoring Lorne a lot. Lorne had done Laugh-In [as a writer], although he hadn’t been on that set, which drove him crazy. But Laugh-In was a big show, right? He was discovered, but he was more interested in producing than any other aspect of things. And my father was mentoring him constantly. So it wasn’t the humour they absorbed from Wayne & Shuster but how to shoot a comedy and, you know, just different ways to handle the brass, as they used to call them – the suits, and just techniques and tactics.
So I think Lorne came in expecting more than most people asked for, and I think he was able to get it.
The very first quote in Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller’s book, “Live From New York” is from you saying, “Lorne Michaels arrived in my life before puberty.”
That is absolutely correct sir.
That’s not even a joke, is it?
Yeah, no. That is not a but-a-bing, but-a-boom. That was sadly true. Yeah. Well, I was waiting for Godot for a while there but, well…
It sounds like, yes, Lorne was keen to learn from your dad but he was struck by you as well. You are also quoted in the Shales book saying that Saturday Night Live was so much a part of something that grew from your home in Toronto.
I totally think the roots and the first seeds of what would become SNL grew from my home. And what people don’t talk about is Lorne was also observing my dad on The Ed Sullivan Show, right? And I haven’t even talked about my theory yet, but I’ll tell you because it’s been on my mind.
Let’s hear it.
Well, Ed Sullivan. He was kind of stiff and awkward and everybody did impressions of him which they would also do with Lorne which was kind of eerie. And Ed Sullivan brought you the Beatles, he brought Elvis before anybody saw him.
He was kind of, you know, appointment TV, people wanted to, could tap into what was new in the Zeitgeist. And I think that really left a strong impression on Lorne who was, you know, very sponge-Like in those days, in terms of absorbing, you know, all kinds of different input.
And even though there was comedy, there was variety, there were, you know, elephants and jugglers. But it was how to tap into the Zeitgeist to see what was, you know, what was new.That had an effect on what SNL became too.
Well, when you look at the first episode of Saturday Night Live, you didn’t have plate spinners, but you did have Muppets, you had films by Albert Brooks. There does seem to be more variety and less sketch comedy in those first three or four episodes.
Right? Absolutely. Well, you know, while you’re still trying to so-called find the show, it does take a while to see what works. And what works live is very different from what you can get your hands on and edit, you know, because you can save a lot of things in editing and you don’t get that luxury. What you do get is you don’t have to do a pilot and the suits can’t give you notes which was a big perk.
The other interesting parallel is that Wayne & Schuster performed live on Ed Sullivan, didn’t they? It was live from New York on the weekend.
Yeah. Comedy variety, you know? Lorne learned more about the suits and how to produce, and how to shoot comedy. A lot of people didn’t know to stay on the reaction shot, you know? But my dad was such a fan of Jack Benny that he really learned that the bigger laugh sometimes was just on the reaction shot.
So that was the kind of stuff. I think that Lorne really absorbed. That made him look not like, you know, he just rolled off the turnip truck or whatever the Toronto version of that is…
… the maple syrup truck?
…the maple sister truck. Yeah, right.
Besides their own comedy specials on Canadian television, Wayne & Shuster did a series in the ‘60s where they paid homage to the masters of the craft. It was called, An Affectionate Look at…The Marx Bros, Jack Benny, WC Fields and other pioneering comedy acts.
These were also two guys from the University of Toronto as well. You had this comedy hybrid – some of the old and some of the new. That insight had to have been an advantage trying to reinvent because that seemed to be the goal of Saturday Night Live, to just blow up television and start again.
Well, The thing that always occurs to me about it is music, reflecting the culture in the ‘60s and ‘70s, because that was the British Invasion. There was Bob Dylan, you know, there were a lot of people that were reflecting what was happening with youth as you know, and movies and television took a little longer.
But, you know, there was “Easy Rider” and a bunch of different movies. “The Graduate” and lots of stuff started to reflect what was happening in the culture. Television was like so square. It was such a hip thing to say you didn’t own a TV. It was just Perry Como and Andy whatever-his-name, they were crooners in alpaca cardigans. It was not what was happening in our world, you know? So it was really, there was a void. There was a vacuum.
