SNL episode #1, hosted by George Carlin

For its 50th anniversary, Saturday Night Live released its first episode, in full. It was initially aired in 1975. It was quite interesting to contrast the form and style with the SNL that we know today and that has been established for a couple of decades.

The biggest difference is that SNL started out with much shorter skits. They got to the point, delivered the punchline and…basta. They had a lot more skits; the host delivered several monologues; there were two musical guests and they both played twice. I prefer the shorter skits to the drawn-out “beating a dead horse” length they tend to use now.

SNL’s First Episode with Host George Carlin and Musical Guest Billy Preston and Janis Ian by SNL (YouTube)

After watching it, I took the following notes,

• The cold opening was about a minute long. It was a language lesson involving wolverines and is quite famous. The feel of the skit felt much more like Monty Python than modern-day Saturday Night Live—or any SNL from the last 30 years.
• The entire show was just under 68 minutes long.
• Each of the two musical guests played twice. Janis’s songs were each about 4–5 minutes long. She was interesting, singing songs that were almost like poetry that she wrote for herself—we just got to listen along. The second song sounded kind of like the beginning of Gutter Ballet by Savatage; at other times, she sounded a bit like Billy Joel.
• The skits in general were much, much shorter, so there were more of them.
• Original SNL cast (partial)Dan Akroyd was very good, not reading from his cards at all.
• There was a long segment involving muppets, which was absolutely amazing.
• George Carlin hosted and did about 15 minutes of material, distributed over about five different segments throughout the show. He did not clean up his act for the show, shooting straight at religion pretty heard, as is his wont.
• Albert Brooks presented a film that was quite odd, and quite risqué, with a quick segment about Oregon having lowered its age of consent to seven years old—and then showing a date with a man and a seven-year-old girl eating a sundae. Avant-garde as hell.
• Chevy Chase did a Weekend Update.
• Andy Kaufman lip-synced part of the Mighty Mouse theme, illustrating his more-than-offbeat brand of comedy and amply showing why he was funny. He was funny because we couldn’t figure out why he made us laugh, so we laughed more. So, he was a comedian.
• Al Franken in the credits as a writer.
• There was some on-the-street stuff featuring a blind cab driver.
• Garrett Morris was there but didn’t get a lot of airtime yet.
• Gilda Radner was still getting her wheels under her; her oddball comedy kind of shone through but she seemed somewhat reserved (kind of inebriated?)
• There was a short skit about the population of the state of Georgia switching places with the people of Israel.
• There was an odd two-minute stand-up by a comedienne I’d never heard of, and whose name I already cannot remember.
• There was a fake commercial mocking the razor-blade companies for ever thinking that anyone could need more than two blades on a razor, presenting what they clearly deemed a laughable number of blades: three.