Live From New York - James H. Miller [76]
One charge that plagued Saturday Night Live was that the show was a boys club, which meant women had to struggle first for admission and then for recognition. Women writers were easily among the most prominent and creative of the first group yet still remained in the minority — a state that would worsen rather than improve in years to come. Among cast members, men who stood out or became stars have outnumbered women, partly because better roles are written for men on the show — by male writers. During the 1976–77 season, the writing staff consisted of thirteen men and three women — Rosie Shuster, Anne Beatts, and Marilyn Suzanne Miller.
MARILYN SUZANNE MILLER:
There was a sort of sisterhood that extended — you know, there weren’t that many people, so we were like each other’s best friend, because we didn’t even know anybody outside the building. By “we” I mean all six girls, the writers plus the performers.
GARRETT MORRIS:
Either it’s that they were all niggers with me or I was a woman with them — because I got the same raw deal.
LILY TOMLIN:
There was a lot of misogynist stuff that I considered to be demeaning to women — or to any group — on Saturday Night Live. It was not my style, you know. You can do anything about anything if there’s some artistry involved, but I never was very big on imitating celebrities and putting them down either. It was too limited to me. It was too easy in some sense. And it was just not my style. I was much more interested in pervasive culture types. I was mostly trying to feed back the culture, really, and do stuff that I was pretty infatuated with. I was more interested in the humanity that held us together. Not to say that it shouldn’t be satirical and edgy or whatever. It should be.
Their satire is seldom that hard-hitting. It’s more — oh God, I don’t know. I don’t have too many views about analyzing comedy and what everybody does and what everybody didn’t do or how they did it. It rises to the top or it doesn’t, I suppose.
JANE CURTIN:
John absolutely didn’t like being in sketches with women. He told me women were not funny. Actually, Chevy said it to me as well. And I found it stunning.
Lorne didn’t help, because that isn’t what Lorne did. Oh, it was ridiculous. It was just insane. There’s no way you can respond to that, so you just have to learn to live with it, plod on, and hope that Marilyn will get a piece on that week.
LARAINE NEWMAN:
I think Lorne was really a champion of the women writers and gave them an even break. His background was working with women. He started writing for Phyllis Diller, he produced most of the Lily Tomlin specials. He hires women and he’s supportive of women. He is not one of those people that thinks women are not funny.
But the boys got away with a lot. They were bad and we were good. We were punctual and they were late. We were clean and they were dirty. We were prepared and they weren’t — it was that stuff. I don’t think we really got into personalities, because we didn’t really have that many. Jane certainly didn’t have relationships with the guys on any level. She had a life and was married. I was very fond of everybody. It was a family. I always think of that scene in The Right Stuff when they’ve gone to that event that Lyndon Johnson planned for them, and they’re backstage before they’re introduced at this big party on their behalf, and they’re all just sitting around realizing what they’ve all done, and they’re just kind of looking at each other like, you know, “Here we are.” And that is how we all felt. It’s like we’d been through this incredible lifeboat of a situation and we’re all tied together because of it.
DAN AYKROYD:
I think if you look back on the first four years, it was pretty evenly balanced. The women were pretty strong. Jane, Laraine, and Gilda were strong and played strong characters. So I would question whether it was a boys club, just because what would it have been without those women there? It would have been very empty.
MARILYN SUZANNE MILLER
I’m not sure how to say this, but everybody sort of thought