Oct. 11, 1975
Hosted by George Carlin, Saturday Night Live (SNL) makes its debut. Created by Torontonian Lorne Michaels, the first season's Canadian content also includes Dan Aykroyd and band leader Howard Shore, who later yields to Paul Shaffer, another Canuck. John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner and Jane Curtin join the first season's cast. Belushi creates some of the most memorable sketches in SNL history, including the sword-wielding Samurai sushi chef and the rage-filled news anchorman.
1980s
Writer Al Franken performs a skit ridiculing NBC president Fred Silverman. It's another salvo in the five-year battle between the network and Michaels, who ultimately resigns. In October, the new executive producer, Jean Doumanian (later a producer of Woody Allen films), hires a new cast, including 19-year-old-Eddie Murphy. Doumanian's relationship with NBC brass is no better than Michaels's. She lasts one season. Dick Ebersol assumes command and promptly fires the entire cast, except for Murphy and Joe Piscopo. The latter does an uncanny Frank Sinatra imitation, while Murphy creates several memorable characters, among them Mr. Robinson, a black version of Mr. Rogers.
But Murphy leaves the show for Hollywood and Piscopo is not invited back. To replace them, Ebersol hires Jim Belushi and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, along with Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer. Shearer is gone by January, citing "creative differences....I was creative...and they were different..." In 1985, Guest and Short leave. Ebersol departs; NBC briefly cancels the show then resurrects it, rehiring Lorne Michaels.
He hires Randy Quaid, Joan Cusack, Dennis Miller, Jon Lovitz, and Robert Downey, Jr., and, the following year, Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Victoria Jackson, and Kevin Nealon. Show packs political bite. Hartman imitates Ronald Reagan; Carvey does George Bush (father and son); Aykroyd returns to do Bob Dole. In fall, 1988, Canadian Mike Myers joins cast, creating the pretentious German TV host Dieter and, with Carvey, Wayne's World, which led to two successful spinoff films.
1990s
Controversy erupts over host comic Andrew Dice Clay's sexist humour. Cast member Nora Dunn boycotts show. She is fired. Chris Farley, Tim Meadows, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, David Spade and Julia Sweeney join the cast, as does Chris Rock. Strong characters include Farley's crazed motivational speaker Matt Foley and Sweeney's sexless Pat. In a controversial move, Canadian wiseacre Norm Macdonald replaces Nealon as Weekend Update anchor. The show hits a low point, with too many one-joke skits that run too long. It improves in 1995, with arrival of Jim Breuer, Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond, Cheri Oteri, Nancy Walls, Chris Kattan and Colin Quinn, frequently satirizing the Clinton-Lewinsky, O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson scandals.
The new decade
Tina Fey becomes the show's first female head writer and with Jimmy Fallon co-anchored the Weekend Update. Politics remains SNL's bread and butter, with regular satires of Al Gore (Darrell Hammond) and George W. Bush. (Will Ferrell). But the show was plagued by cast turnover and embarrassed by Ashlee Simpson's use in October, 2004, of prerecorded vocals. Michaels later allowed it had happened.