Feb. 20, 2024, 2:16 p.m.
It's April 24th, 1976, Host Raquel Welch with Musical Guests Phoebe Snow and John Sebastian
Every Episode Ever
Here's some stuff that happened in the past
One of the reasons I have such an intense emotional connection to Saturday Night Live is that we're roughly the same age. Lorne Michaels' venerable show business institution is slightly older, however.
On April 24th, 1976 I was born in a hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. Hundreds of miles and a universe away in Manhattan the Not Ready For Prime Time Players were dealing with the fallout from the previous week's controversial and notoriously ribald Ron Nessen episode.
Saturday Night Live wasn't going to wait for history to render its verdict on the episode hosted by Gerald Ford's press secretary. Instead, it was going to control the narrative and claim victory over Ford and the squares who worked for him.
In "Weekend Update" Chase takes a victory lap for humiliating the President by associating him in the public mind with a vulgar late night comedy show for druggie juvenile delinquents.
In her monologue Welch alludes to the raunchiness of the Nessen episode as well as some of the things the show wanted her to do.
Having one of the world's preeminent sex symbols brought out the naughty little boy in the show's cast and crew. Chevy Chase appears as himself to "jokingly" ask Welch to take off her shirt multiple times. Welch appears in a skimpy bikini in a curious bit riffing on her public feud with Myra Breckenridge author Gore Vidal.
The show's raunchiest bit forces us to contemplate puppet penises, or rather a lack thereof. In one of their final appearances, Muppets Scred and Ploobis try to flirt with Welch, who challenges their sexuality by reminding them that they've got nothing going underneath their waists.
This is her way of not so subtly indicating that these poor souls have no genitalia and consequently wouldn't be able to make sweet, sweet, puppet-on-human love even if she begged them to.
It's a memorable sequence for a number of reasons. The Muppets sketch has an unmistakable meta element to it. It's a puppet version of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of Six Characters in Search of an Author as the puppets become all too aware that they're fictional characters who do not exist in real life.
Welch sings two songs, dances sensuously in Gary Weis' short film of the week and is explosively sexy but she has nothing to do with the episode's two most famous and funny bits.
Michael O'Donoghue's "Claudine Longet International" riffs on actress Longet's arrest for the accidental shooting of her skier boyfriend Spider Sabitch with a skiing tournament where EVERY contestant is accidentally shot by Longet. It's a deadpan delight punctuated with shotgun blasts that the show was forced to apologize for when Longet's protective ex, singer Andy Williams, threatened to sue.
The show's apex is the famous bit where Lorne Michaels offers The Beatles a cool three thousand dollars to reunite on Saturday Night Live and perform three songs.
Michaels specifies that the amount is explicitly for performing three songs. They won't be able to half-ass their way through "All You Need Is Love" and get the full amount.
It's Michaels' finest moment on the show as a performer. The sketch gets its comedic kick from the incongruity of Michaels offering the greatest and most popular rock group in history such a pittance to reunite but also from the distant but very real possibility he might be able to pull it off.
Michaels seemed capable of just about anything at this point. The second episode featured a Simon and Garfunkel reunion. Why should the Beatles be able to resist Michaels' offer of the hippest stage in American television?
Of course Lorne Michaels did not, ultimately, facilitate a reunion of the Fab Four but this classic bit helped ensured that the scrappy little late night show would become legendary in its own right, for its music as well as its comedy.
neat, eh? Man, I LOVE this silly newsletter.
I try not to be too pervy here but there are certain women that make me feel like the Big Bad Wolf in the old Tex Avery cartoons. Raquel Welch is one such women. Good lord was she ever sexy.
Chevy Chase appears as himself to "jokingly" ask Welch to take off her shirt multiple times.
This is the part that acts like pre-emptively throwing a bucket of cold water on whatever outrageous ideas I might have or comments I might make. Because, otherwise, yeah: "insert howls here".
I choose to believe that she is the one that suggested all of the outfits she wears and roles that she plays in this episode. To play to what the audience will react to, to take control of the situation. Because that's more fun than the idea that she wasn't able to say no and is just acting like she is completely comfortable with the situation and having fun with it.
And decades later we found out that the Beatles gag almost worked!
Every movie these days seems in on the "multiverse" concept, and not just the comic book movies. Can someone ask one of those evil AI robots to show us the variant of our world where at least two members of the band actually did show up? I hear that SkyNet can do video now.
I will understand if their version of John Lennon is pictured with too many fingers.