Live From New York - James H. Miller [77]
ROSIE SHUSTER:
Was Lorne prejudiced against female writers? I think we sometimes had to try harder. I remember being instructed by Lorne to write at least nine separate drafts of this stupid sketch called “Backstage Banter” that I just wanted to throw in the garbage can. I wanted to chuck it and say to him, “You’re not the boss of me.” There were times we were dismissed, or there were times that I would quietly pitch something in the room in a little voice, ’cause I would not, you know, jump on Lorne’s desk and tap dance it out. I was quiet. Someone else would pick up the idea in the room and then sock it home. Stuff like that happened all the time. But I don’t have any bitterness. I just think we did have to pave the way. We were on new ground. And it was challenging, let’s say. Lorne had a real way of juggling a lot of hot egos. I’m sure he saw backbiting and infighting that we didn’t see; he was probably privy to more of that than any other person. I know he was, because he used to confide certain stuff to me.
AL FRANKEN:
My daughter was the first Saturday Night Live baby, the first new child born to anybody who worked on the show.
TOM DAVIS:
Gilda and G. E. Smith, the musician, were living together in the Dakota, and Gilda wanted to give Al’s wife, Franny, and the new baby a shower. G. E. and I are in the back room of the apartment where all his guitars are, because the shower’s for women — all the secretaries, all the wives, Jane is there, Laraine is there. Everyone is waiting for the baby to arrive and there’s a knock at the door and G. E. and I peek in from the other room.
AL FRANKEN:
My wife came with her sister first and I was to bring the baby. My other sister-in-law came with me. So I got a doll the exact size of the baby and swaddled it — I told Franny I was going to do this — and there’s like thirty women, and I walk in and they’re all going like, “Ohhh… ahhhh,” and I walk in and I hit the baby’s head on this piece of furniture and I go up in the air and I come down with everything, everything, going onto this doll, so that there is no way I didn’t kill the baby. And the screams, the screams!
TOM DAVIS:
The scream that came out of these women, it just made everyone’s hair stand on end. They just witnessed this man kill his newborn baby. To this day, I’ve never heard a more terrifying sound than all those women witnessing this baby being killed by its father.
AL FRANKEN:
And then my sister-in-law Carla walks in with the real baby.
TOM DAVIS:
I’m telling you, Al did shit like that. I love him for it.
STEVE MARTIN:
And then there was Gilda, who was the sweetest, kindest, funniest person. She was so happy on-camera, she had such a happy face on-camera, you really did grow to love her. You understand what it means when people say they “love” a performer, because they’re bringing such happiness into their world.
BILL MURRAY:
Gilda was really an extraordinary and spectacular person. And she was tough. She was really, really tough. Gilda would just give herself up to a moment, she really gave herself up, she sacrificed herself. She knew how to serve a scene or another person in the scene just so devotedly. She really had the most of that of anyone. As a result, because she made other people look good, she herself looked fantastic.
And she had a charm about her and people could write things for her and sketches would be written and somehow she always took it back to that level of her childhood play. They wrote a lot of sketches to that — you know, of her Judy Miller dancing and bouncing on her bed and stuff — but her own sense of childhood play was really her touchstone.
She was a fantastic laugher. I never enjoyed making anyone laugh more than her. Never. I could make her laugh. I remember one day, I made her laugh so hard — you know there are girls who say, “Oh my God, I wet my pants,” all the time — and I made her laugh so hard, she thought she was going to die. And I just couldn