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By Root 1497 0

John says, “Have you ever seen a show called Saturday Night Live?” The woman says, “No.” Then he pulls out this review of the show that he carried around and says, “See, here, this is me, John Belushi.” And she’s looking at him like, “You must be crazy.” And I said, “You’re telling me no one has ever gotten married without an ID, no one, ever? There must be someone who lost all their stuff. What did they do?” She said, “Oh, well, if he had a letter from a judge.” We said, “Okay,” and went to the phone and called a judge. And John said into the phone, “Hello, Judge, I’m sorry to bother you at home, but have you ever heard of a show called Saturday Night Live?” And the judge says yes. And John says, “Oh good, I have this problem, I’m here with my girlfriend and we’re trying to get married.” And the judge came down, and he did an affidavit and okayed it. John showed up everywhere with no ID. He had trouble holding on to his wallet.

AL FRANKEN:

I went up to New Hampshire with my brother, who is a press photographer, to follow the campaign in ’76. And I ran into Ron Nessen, who was the White House press secretary. I told him I was the writer of this show. And I was surprised that he had seen it — and that he liked it. I said, “Well, you should be on the show,” and I went back to the office a few days later and I told Lorne. He kind of had to remind me that he was the producer of the show, and that I had only been in show business for about ten minutes. I was a writer. But anyway, Nessen ended up coming on.

LORNE MICHAELS:

I had to shoot Ford saying “Live from New York” and “I’m Gerald Ford and you’re not” for the show. And I suddenly find myself in the Oval Office, and it’s just me, the president, and this little crew. There’s security too, I’m sure. And Ford does it, but the line reading is wrong, and I realized that it’s just the same as working with anybody else and getting them to relax and do the line properly to camera. We’d done two or three takes, and to relax him, I said to him — my sense of humor at the time — “Mr. President, if this works out, who knows where it will lead?” Which was completely lost on him.

CANDICE BERGEN:

I had one sketch with Gilda and Chevy, I think it was “Land Shark,” and I messed it up. I dropped a line. And Gilda, of course, handled it beautifully. I just started laughing and threw the sketch to the wind.

MAYA RUDOLPH, Future Cast Member:

Obviously in 1975 I was four years old, so who knows how much information I was retaining, but I know I was watching when Gilda was on, because I was doing Roseanne Roseannadanna impressions. I thought I looked like her, because we had the same hair when I was that age. I was probably five or six. I don’t think I could have stayed up late enough to watch the show, but I remember seeing it when my mom was alive. My mom was Minnie Ripperton. She died in ’79. I remember crawling in bed with both my parents and seeing the “Land Shark.” I know my mom was around when I was watching that show. Somehow I was obsessed with it and I loved Gilda. I always did. I think I related to her because she was a girl and I thought she was so pretty, and I also just felt sort of connected to her.

ALAN ZWEIBEL:

I was nuts about Gilda. I was crazy about her. I had first seen her in the Lampoon Show with Belushi. There was one sketch where she was dressed like Jackie Kennedy in Dallas, with the pillbox hat and everything, right? And every time there was what sounded like a gunshot in the sketch, she would start crawling backwards in the opposite direction. And just the way she did that, I swear to God, she didn’t say anything, but I couldn’t believe how much I was laughing. It made me nuts. And then the first day in Lorne’s office, and it’s God’s honest truth, I was really intimidated by what was going on in this room. There was Danny, O’Donoghue, and Belushi and stuff like that, and in the corner of Lorne’s office was this potted plant, and I hid behind it. I actually squatted down because Lorne was now going around asking people their ideas and I couldn’t compete with