Shall attempt to wrap this non-chronological series about late night TV a la The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson up in an untidy way. This will be yet another too many clips, WAY too many clips proposition. Where to start? With a nod to The Story Of Late Night, the 2021 CNN series directed by John Ealer.
The six episode series is overall good, the utterly inexplicable omission of our favorite show of all the post-1990 late-night series, The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson notwithstanding.
The guy who sat behind the coveted host desk for the greatest number of late night shows other than Johnny Carson and David Letterman was (drum roll). . . Jay Leno.
He didn't just helm The Tonight Show from May 25, 1992 to May 29, 2009 and from March 1, 2010 to February 6, 2014, Jay guest hosted for Johnny 333 times; the second and third most prolific Tonight Show guest hosts were Joan Rivers with 201 shows and Joey Bishop with 177.
Tonight Shows featuring Johnny Carson and Jay Leno together could be pretty darn hilarious.
We’re okay with Jay, like him best as a stand-up comedian (and also enjoy his recent Jay Leno’s Garage videos about classic cars). With his hosting literally hundreds of Tonight Shows is it possible to forget how good Jay was at stand-up? Yes.
Jay and Jerry Seinfeld were the hardest working stand-up comics in showbiz and toured ALL THE TIME back in the 1970's and early 1980's.
In succeeding The King Of Late Night, Jay Leno ended up in the same boat as Shemp Howard, who followed Curly in The Three Stooges. No matter how good his version of The Tonight Show was, Jay was destined to be compared to Johnny Carson. Both Shemp and Jay make this comedy fan laugh, but that's the breaks.
Believe it or not, Jay frequently appeared on Late Night With David Letterman in the early to mid-1980's, as he did on The Tonight Show.
There's one compilation of Jay on Letterman in the early 1980's we didn't post because it was three hours long. Meanwhile, Mr. Letterman, who thought he would be the successor to Johnny Carson, has had plenty to say over the decades about his relationship with NBC and Jay Leno.
Further late-night wars involving NBC and The Tonight Show engulfed Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien (spotlighted in Part Four of this series).
Notably, Conan, a writer for Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons prior to hosting Late Night With Conan O’Brien, brought Robert Smigel of Triumph The Insult Comic Dog fame with him as part of a crew of ace writers that included Brian Stack, Brian McCann, Mike Sweeney, Dan Cronin, Berkley Johnson and Matt O' Brien.
At least Conan got Norm to appear on his last Tonight Show!
Jay, interviewed by fellow comic Howie Mandel, elaborates:
And then there was The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn. Don’t know what Mr. Kilborn, host of The Daily Show from 1996-1998 and The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn from 1999 to 2004 is doing these days. Had Kilborn, the snarkiest snark other than David Spade, been in showbiz 30 years earlier, one could envision him as a guest host for Johnny Carson. And, yes, that's right, he preceded Jon Stewart AND Craig Ferguson as host of their respective shows.
Mr. Ferguson, in this writer's opinion the funniest of the latter-day late night hosts, took The Late Late Show into ultra-zany and uncharted territory.
Especially like appearances by Lewis Black, another outstanding stand-up comedian, on The Late Late Show.
While Mr. Ferguson, after ten seasons of his show, has been off the air for a decade, he still has very enthusiastic fans on YouTube. There is a 9 hour compilation of its highlights, playlists from the YouTube poster named Fergufool and the Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson Archive channel, which, among numerous clips, includes excellent comedy from season 7, season 8 and season 9 of the series.
Currently, Craig has his own You Tube channel, where he posts his stand-up specials - the latest is great - and entertaining interviews.
With that, we call this a wrap, having gone as far into modern day 21st century entertainment as this blog ever goes. Won't be covering the more recent series (Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, James Corden), the non-Tonight Show style programs that ran on late night (Later With Bob Costas, and Late Late Show With Tom Snyder) or sketch comedy shows - Fridays, SNL, SCTV - that aired at 11:30 p.m.
Alas, an accurate and complete history of late night TV, sadly, not unlike a history of silent movies, would demand that all those shows that ended up dumped in the East River show up again in pristine condition. After all, Groucho, Ernie Kovacs, Mort Sahl and Bob Newhart all hosted!
How do we finish this series? With The Tonight Show Band playing Johnny Carson’s favorite tune, Here’s That Rainy Day.
As Steve Allen was a pianist/composer/bandleader who doubled as a comedian, music was a key ingredient in The Tonight Show from the beginning. Calypso group Tiger Boy performs in the following 1956 Tonight Show, beginning at 21:03.
Don't find many complete shows from Steve Allen's Tonight Show tenure or those hosted by Ernie Kovacs on Archive.org, YouTube, Vimeo, Daily Motion. There MUST be musical interludes in the Kovacs episodes! Skitch Henderson led the NBC orchestra at that time and into the Jack Parr and Johnny Carson eras. Doc Severinson and Tommy Newsom followed. The big band was patterned on the ensembles led by Count Basie, Quincy Jones, and (later) Thad Jones & Mel Lewis.
Dizzy Gillespie had an excellent time playing his compositions with the Tonight Show band.
All that said, as much as the Tonight Show band exemplified the Atomic Mr. Basie approach, periodically Johnny had a musical guest on who was not from the big band tradition.
Numerous rock, soul, pop and jazz greats performed on David Letterman's NBC and CBS shows. This included the recently departed metal man Ozzy Osbourne & Black Sabbath.
Did the music represented on Letterman run the freakin' gamut? Yes.
Could this band back Keith Emerson and McCoy Tyner? Yes - watch this!
It is not particularly surprising that with The World's Most Dangerous Band took to jazz in a big way. Bassist Will Lee toured with one of our favorites from the jazz universe, Horace Silver.
No doubt, several of musical director Paul Shaffer's heroes got to be on the show.
A memorable spinoff from the NBC incarnation of Late Night With David Letterman involved frequent Letterman guest, session man supreme and Gil Evans Orchestra stalwart David Sanborn, along with Letterman Show bandmates, and would represent something approximating a gold standard in presenting music on late-night television. That was Sunday Night A.K.A. Michelob Presents Night Music. We'll never see its like again.
Can't post the entire series here in this post, so check out this playlist. Would buy a Blu-ray of the complete series, pretty much the last gasp of jazz music on American television (even in late night), if possible.
Am a bit disappointed not to find more clips from The Arsenio Hall Show, which brought quite a variety of music to TV during its late 1980's - early 1990's heydey.
Tend to associate Dick Cavett's late-night program more with rock music than jazz, but, what do you know, here's Buddy Rich, frequent guest of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, bringing that big band sound to The Dick Cavett Show.
In closing, am not quite sure this fits into the late night theme, as Dick Cavett had moved out of the 11:30 p.m. Tonight Show time slot fairly early in his TV career. In any case, this must be one of the earliest instances of David Bowie on American television and precedes his 1979 appearance on Saturday Night Live.
Mr. Cavett did a good job interviewing Miles Davis here. If the guests on his late night and subsequent PBS shows were any indication, Dick Cavett was an enthusiastic aficionado of jazz and rock music.
As expected, could barely scratch the surface of this topic, the mighty music of late night TV, in this post!
Happy to offer a little taste of the goodness that was available on the ol' boob tube way back when.
Smack dab in the middle of the generation that watched Carson, Cavett and Letterman, as a frequently embarrassed boomer, most definitely got carried away in Saluting The Heroes Of Late Night TV Part One, but didn't even come close to running every compelling piece of footage from these great shows. Invariably, the need to actually finish the post someday took precedence - and didn't include at least a baker's dozen clips, starting with Jack Parr on The Dick Cavett Show.
So, here is yet another near-unending cornucopia of clips respectfully tipping our checkered caps (no doubt worn by Lloyd Hamilton and/or Curly Howard) to the heroes of late night, beginning with the debut episode of Late Night With David Letterman.
Big thanks to the Duke Mitchell Film Club for posting the following. Where's Sammy Petrillo?
It's true, Letterman featured some unusual interviews. This may be because Tom Snyder's shows, which specialized in unusual interviews, were also on late night at this time.
The king of scathing one-liners, Don Rickles, insult comic of insult comics, found his way to ALL the late night shows, including a very funny Dick Ebersol-era episode of Saturday Night Live.
Particularly hilarious was a January 1984 Tonight Show hosted by Joan Rivers featuring a guest appearance by Rickles, the only standup comedian (along with Rodney Dangerfield) who could match Joan for speed, ferocity and intensity of jokes. Looks like Don and Joan had a blast!
Steve Allen talked 1950's Tonight Show on a memorable episode of Late Night With David Letterman.
Don't know if the following was from Steve's late night show or his prime time program but who cares. . . he's actually interviewing freakin' Jack Kerouac! That said, Dick Cavett interviewed Allen Ginsburg on his late-night show.
It said something about 1960's TV that John & Jane Q. Public could turn on the orthicon tube and see interviews with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and Groucho Marx. Alas, Chico and Harpo had passed away by then.
Love the concept of booking Groucho and Debbie Reynolds (whose nightclub act was filled with jokes, comedy bits and celeb impressions) on the same show!
The sheer number of complete episodes of The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson available on YouTube is downright shocking, especially considering how many of the 1960's shows remain on the lost film list with LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT and Ernie Kovacs' DuMont Network series. While we didn't find any, unfortunately, with Groucho Marx as the guest host, it is a delight to see these early 1970's Tonight Shows, featuring Johnny at the peak of his comedic powers.
Today's post is a near-unending cornucopia of clips on the topic of (drum roll). . . late-night television, the medium exemplified by Steve Allen, Jack Parr, Johnny Carson and David Letterman.
As the medium has a 75+ year history extending back to the Harry Truman administration, it will not be possible to profile all the Heroes Of Late Night TV in this post, so this shall be merely Part One.
There are SO MANY CLIPS we don't know where to start. STILL looking for a clip from the Merv Griffin late-night show that ran on CBS from 1969-1972 in addition to the ones seen in The Story Of Late Night!
Broadway Open House, the briefly but tremendously popular show starring Jerry Lester and blonde bombshell comedienne Dagmar, which alternated in the early days of late-night on NBC with The Morey Amsterdam Show (not his subsequent 1950's program on the DuMont Network), originated late-night TV.
1954, notable for many things, including tons of excellent jazz, blues and early rock n' roll recordings, was the year The Tonight Show, hosted by Steve Allen, debuted.
At one point, Steve Allen alternated on Tonight with guest host
Ernie Kovacs in 1956. Unfortunately, as of this writing, there are no excerpts from the Ernie Kovacs Tonight Shows on YouTube, Venmo, Daily Motion, although several of the shows exist. Ernie and Steve share a seriously wacky sense of humor with their successors from decades later, David Letterman and Conan O'Brien.
Allen periodically appeared as a guest on talk shows for many decades after hosting his last Tonight Show in January 1957 and going on to several prime time comedy programs, the best known featuring Louis "Heigh Ho Steverino" Nye, Don Knotts, Tom Poston, Pat Harrington and Bill Dana.
There was an brief attempt at a post-Steve Allen late night TV show, America After Dark, that crashed and burned. Classic television and old time radio expert Don Yowp perceptively wrote all about it in a post titled The Tonight Show That Died.
Following Steve Allen as host in 1957: Jack Parr, a host on radio and daytime TV prior to The Tonight Show.
His first Tonight Show announcer, before Hugh Downs, was none other than the excellent movie comedian Franklin Pangborn (note: apologies for the quality of the following clip - it's the only one this blogger could find of Pangborn introducing Jack Parr).
Rather amazingly, kinescopes of Parr's 1957-1962 Tonight Shows exist.
One of this writer's favorite Jack Parr Tonight Show guests is the acerbic composer-pianist-writer and occasional actor Oscar Levant.
Another is the highly original improvisational comic Jonathan Winters, a frequent guest on The Tonight Show With Jack Parr.
There was no small amount of drama as Jack Parr walked off the Tonight Show in 1960 and eventually returned for two more seasons, with his last episode airing on March 30, 1962.
Carson had to complete his commitment to Who Do You Trust, a game show he was hosting, before he could succeed Parr as host in the fall.
Here, Dick Cavett recalls his years as a writer for Jack Parr, and how much he enjoyed Groucho Marx' appearances on the show.
Johnny Carson's first Tonight Show as host aired on October 1, 1962.
It's quite remarkable that they exist, given that Edie Adams, film, video and comedy preservation HERO, didn't personally rescue and preserve the existing Tonight Show tapes, as was done with the Ernie Kovacs shows.
The other two key figures in 1960's late-night television were diametric opposites: Joey Bishop and Dick Cavett.
The former, the sole teetotaler Rat Packer and star of a successful and funny sitcom that featured fellow comedians Corbett Monica, Guy Marks, and Joe Besser, was a frequent guest host for The Tonight Show in the 1960's and early 1970's.
Here's a Rat Packin' episode of Joey's late night show with guest stars Sammy Davis, Jr. and Peter Lawford.
The Dick Cavett Show, both the ABC late-night program and his subsequent interview show on PBS, merit seven or eight blog posts apiece. He merits an additional post for being the first guest on the debut episode of Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast!
We applaud Mr. Cavett for donating tapes of his many shows to the Library Of Congress.
As far as the late-night version of The Dick Cavett Show is concerned, an important sub-topic is how Cavett clearly aspired to something beyond mere showbiz entertainment and tackled the issues of the day in a way that we would NEVER, EVER see now.
Mr. Cavett, the Nebraska-born whitest dude of all of us took on the topic of racism and its accompanying religion of white supremacy in his 1960's late night shows.
Since bigotry, barbarism and cruelty remains a boffo cash cow for the vicious and amoral, this topic remains a third rail in horrifying 2025. Does it take courage to interview someone possessing such powerful intellect as James Baldwin did, knowing he could easily make you look like a blithering idiot at any moment? Yep.
Mr. Cavett nervously stumbled at several points in the interviews and flat-out admitted when he didn't understand questions and responses.
Cavett also liked jazz and rock n' roll as much as any television host until Letterman and Paul Shaffer came along.
Two of the most prolific Tonight Show guest hosts in the 1960's were Bob Newhart and Joan Rivers. Get Joan on the airwaves with Betty White and laughs shall follow!
Joan, veteran of Second City and countless standup gigs, could get Johnny ROFL!
Sincerely hope those early episodes of The Tonight Show turn up in some vault somewhere. Just one among stalwarts who appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in the 1960's, the exceptional actor and stand-up comic Godfrey Cambridge. He was on Tonight with Johnny three times!
Back in the mid-1970's, saw Bill Cosby, a comic Louis C.K. is truly ecstatic has not yet died, guest host the Johnny Carson Tonight Show and perform some extremely zany sketch comedy, the kind of material Eddie Murphy would brilliantly take to the next level just a few years later, for much of the show's 90 minutes. Eddie, not surprisingly killed on ALL the late night talk shows, as he did on Saturday Night Live.
Also guest hosting often: Garry Shandling, David Brenner, Joey Bishop and. . . that's right, Jerry Lewis. Here's Jerry with the most ubiquitous standup comedian on TV not named Alan King from the early 1950's through the 1970's, Jack Carter.
During the transition between Parr and Carson in 1962, Jerry guest hosted for Johnny, as did Groucho Marx, Art Linkletter, Donald O'Connor, Joey Bishop, Hugh Downs, and Mort Sahl and got chart-topping Neilsen ratings, so ABC-TV, with high hopes to replicate the late night magic of Parr and Carson in prime time, signed him for an ambitious 2 hour Saturday night program with elements of both the traditional variety program a la Ed Sullivan and the Tonight-style talk show.
There is a complete episode of The Jerry Lewis Show on YouTube. It's known to music fans for an appearance by the great Sam Cooke. Historian Kliph Nesteroff, writer of several superlative books as well as the History Of Comedy documentary series, penned a superb piece about Jerry's short-lived 1963 variety show, as well as the late-night successes of Steve Allen, Jack Parr and Johnny Carson, for WFMU's Beware Of The Blog.
Before moving on from The King Of Late Night to another potentate of Late Night, one who could be imagined saying "at least I'm not an impotentate" - David Letterman.
There's a decade between Cavett's late night show and the debut of Late Night With David Letterman in February 1982. David Letterman and his team of writers, led by Merrill Markoe, crafted a franchise which was both more sophisticated and goofier than Carson. Letterman started on NBC, after guest hosting for Johnny Carson numerous times in 1980-1981, with a morning show that was enjoyably unorthodox and almost as wacky as the Ernie Kovacs morning show extravaganzas.
Much appreciated the Late Night With David Letterman focus on spotlighting three generations of comedians. Love seeing the likes of Bob & Ray, the Pythons and the stalwarts of Second City on with Dave? In the words of former San Francisco Giants outfielder Hunter Pence, YES! YES! YES!
So now, after Jack Parr's 1983 appearance on Late Night With David Letterman, Part One of Saluting The Heroes Of Late Night TV closes. We respectfully doff a battered top hat worn by either Dagmar, Jerry Lester or Milton Delugg from Broadway Open House to Don Giller, source of Dave clips galore, as well as Dick Cavett, whoever found all those 1960's Tonight Shows and the knowledgeable 20th century pop culture aficionados who produced the 70 Years Of The Tonight Show videos seen in this post.
Today, we pay tribute, three years short of his 100th birthday, to the highly original, groundbreaking and brilliant standup comedian Jonathan Winters.
The improvisational standup comedian and comic actor (in such movies as It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World and The Loved One) was born on this day in 1925.
First became familiar with him via comedy records.
What was this pop culture vulture's favorite part of The Dean Martin Show? No, not the comely and undulating Gold Diggers, but the very funny guest star comedians, among them Jonathan Winters, Paul Lynde, Dom DeLuise, Bob Newhart, Foster Brooks, Jackie Vernon, Allan Sherman and Guy Marks.
The Tonight Show, especially the incarnations hosted by Jack Parr and Johnny Carson, provided a showcase for standup comedians. Winters was a favorite of both Tonight Show hosts.
Parr's Tonight offered free rein to comedians, including Jonathan Winters.
Jonathan Winters would continue making frequent appearances on The Tonight Show when Johnny Carson hosted.
Favorite Winters appearances on Carson? Those featuring both Jonathan Winters & Robin Williams!
He also periodically could be seen on Late Night With David Letterman - sometimes with Robin!
Winters was also responsible for gazillion cartoon voices. Author Jerry Beck wrote at length about Jonathan Winters' many contributions to animation in The Animated Jonathan Winters 1925-2013. These voices included a continuing role as Papa Smurf and key characters in the I GO POGO special.
In closing, here are, from Archive.org, some of the earliest Jonathan Winters TV appearances.
A roomful of varied hats off to the great Jonathan Winters!
In need of laughs as April ends, Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog today pays tribute to 20th century standup comedy.
Spotlighted the hilarious Billy Crystal in the Easter 2021 post. . . why stop there? Here's Billy's pal and frequent collaborator Robin Williams.
The following Robin Willians routine should be played in its entirety prior to The Masters every year without fail.
The historical record of mid-20th century standup comedy performances begins with The Ed Sullivan Show; fortunately for us comedy and pop culture vultures, a slew of Sullivan Show excerpts have been recently downloaded to YouTube.
Of the many comics who appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, I especially enjoyed "sad sack standup" Jackie Vernon.
While standup comedians and The Tonight Show tend to be associated with Johnny Carson, the previous incarnation of Tonight hosted by Jack Parr provided a showcase for comics as well.
Have seen few episodes of the first version of The Tonight Show, hosted by Steve Allen, but understand that he often featured stand-up comics - most famously a cleaned-up Lenny Bruce.
Mostly recall Steve Allen's Tonight for an episode in which Ernie Kovacs was the guest host and turned the show upside down, sometimes literally (note: it's on this DVD box set).
Parr's Tonight offered free rein to comedians. The one, the only Jonathan Winters was a regular.
Not to be outdone, Johnny Carson made a point of booking stand-up comedy legends on The Tonight Show.
Carson would revel both in his role of King Of Late Night and in bringing combinations of comedy stalwarts on his shows, sometimes simultaneously (note - a longer clip from the following show can be found here).
A few years before the episode featuring Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters, arguably the very best ever to hit The Comedy Store stage were on The Tonight Show together.
Johnny was no fool. Richard Pryor, a one of a kind talent, was on often.
As a comedian who manages to be a storyteller, satirist, actor and social commentator simultaneously, Richard Pryor is still unsurpassed, 15 years after his passing.
David Letterman offered a showcase through his runs on both NBC and CBS. Dave's love of and respect for comedy and comedians is clear.
Of the comics who first appeared on Letterman, this blogger is particularly fond of the late, lamented, highly original and wildly imaginative Mitch Hedberg.
Saturday Night Live has had a complex and at times unfathomable relationship with stand-up comedians and comediennes, partly due to the show's genesis in Second City/Groundlings style improv.
Many Saturday Night Live cast members first made their name as stand-ups, with some enjoying breakthrough success and others having their difficulties withstanding the brutal backstage politics and unrelenting pressure cooker of live television.
Standup comics from Richard Belzer to Robert Klein to Stephen Wright to Sam Kinison appeared on the show. George Carlin hosted the premiere episode and Richard Pryor hosted the seventh one in 1975.
After the first five SNL seasons, quite a few luminaries from the world of stand-up comedy would become cast members, with varying results. The fearless, unorthodox and delightfully brutal Gilbert Gottfried, the most surreal of stand-up comedians and to this day the only comic to do a dead-on impersonation of Jackie Vernon, was mis-cast and mis-used on the infamous (but not entirelyterrible - the musical guests are consistently top-notch) season 6, which also featured an inexplicably under-utilized Eddie Murphy.
There was a stretch, mostly during the early 1980's years when Dick Ebersol produced the show, in which Saturday Night Live frequently booked stand-up comics as guest performers and gave them the spotlight. Some, such as Stephen Wright, were several steps and universes ahead of the (by comparison) earthbound comedy sketches.
The show also featured such wonderful vaudeville-style acts as magicians Harry Anderson, Michael Davis and Penn & Teller back in those days. These creative performers were a welcome addition and it's too bad this practice ended as the 1980's did.
There are cases where things don't work out for even the most talented comedy performers, actors and actresses in the unrelenting grinder that is television, when the cast blends like oil and water. When it comes to live TV, this sort of thing happens, even with a terrific cast, imaginative writers and the best of intentions. It's never due to lack of talent, creativity or enthusiasm; even the incomparable Your Show Of Shows cast and writers periodically produced sketches that were clunkers.
For reasons unknown to all who were not in the SNL writers' room in 1994-1995, season 20 was arguably the worst in the series' history, or at least tied with the infamous seasons 6 and 11, as well as the less infamous but equally lackluster season 30.
Lots went wrong, very wrong in the 1994-1995 season, even given the blazing talent and incredible standup comics working on the show, in front of and behind the cameras. Season 20 would be a prolonged last gasp for stalwart SNL cast members Kevin Nealon and Mike Myers, both affected by departures from the cast (Phil Hartman especially) in a profound way. These departures also shifted the comedy load emphatically to Adam Sandler, David Spade and larger-than-life physical comedian and Second City Chicago star Chris Farley. This limited opportunities for new additions to the cast; only Molly Shannon and standup comedian Norm Macdonald returned for subsequent seasons.
As had been emphatically the case with the entire doomed Saturday Night Live '80 troupe, the 20th season had difficulty figuring out way to do with new cast members. British actress and animation voice artist Morewenna Banks was a featured player for four episodes, but only appeared in a couple of sketches and then was unceremoniously fired by NBC. In her one-year stint as a cast member, filmmaker and comedienne Laura Kightlinger, later a writer and performer on Will & Grace, was seen less than The Invisible Man. Spinal Tap's Michael McKean and Mark McKinney of The Kids In The Hall joined the cast in season 20, but would be under-utilized in their time as cast members.
The powers that were at SNL, still reeling from the aforementioned departures of two of the greatest cast members in the show's history, the irreplaceable Jan Hooks and Phil Hartman, as well as key writers who left to join the Late Night with Conan O'Brien staff, could not figure out how to incorporate the new additions to the show into the mix. Established comedians were added instead of young unknowns from Second City and The Groundlings. Actress/stand-up comedienne Janeane Garofolo and frequently hilarious Late Night With David Letterman comic Chris Elliott were among the new additions, but repeatedly mis-cast and mis-used on SNL season 20. Go figure!
The unsuccessful efforts to incorporate Late Night with David Letterman's distinctive style of comedy into the Saturday Night Live mix brings to mind that Janeane Garapolo hosted Late Show with David Letterman when Dave was recovering from heart surgery in March 2000; in contrast to her extremely unhappy experience in a half season as an SNL cast member, she excelled and had fun in the process. Had she wanted the job, Janeane could have shined as a new kind of late-night host.
As the 1980s and early 1990s progressed, the Saturday Night Live cast increasingly would be chock full of standup comedians, including Adam Sandler, David Spade and Rob Schneider. Eddie Murphy, Dana Carvey, Chris Rock and Norm Macdonald - brilliant stand-up comedians all - were indeed SNL cast members.
Other outstanding comedy performers auditioned but didn't make the cut; as the old saying goes, that's show business. The list includes some formidable talents: Kevin Hart, Marc Maron, Jim Carrey, Lisa Kudrow, John Goodman, Zach Galifianakis, Kathy Griffin and Michael McDonald (of The Groundlings and Mad TV - not the pop singer/songwriter). Lorne Michaels approached Jennifer Aniston with an offer to join the SNL cast, but she declined and soon afterwards made the big bucks as one of the stars of the successful sitcom Friends.
It has been extended tough sledding at this blogger's household, as we have lost two beloved pets in a short time, but after much quality time spent with the iconic comedians of silent movies (a.k.a. The Old Masters - Chaplin, Keaton, Chase, Langdon, Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy) and a deep dive into both favorite stand-up philosophers and the mid and late 20th century television programs that spotlighted them (many of which can now been seen on YouTube, Archive.org and Vimeo), hints of sunlight are visible on the horizon.
In closing, we extend big thank yous and several respectful tips of top hats worn by John Belushi, Bill Murray and Elliott Gould in the infamous (but funny) "Castration Rag" sketch to websites that have been reviewing Saturday Night Live in detail. These would include the One SNL A Day Project, the SNL Review index on Existentialist Weightlifting and My Saturday Night Life. Dove into both websites for research and screen caps in this post. In addition, there are now numerous Saturday Night Live shows of past decades on Archive.org - and many interviews with Saturday Night Live cast and writers conducted by Marc Maron for his podcast.
