Live From New York - James H. Miller [80]
Kris Kristofferson was completely wasted during dress rehearsal. He couldn’t say his lines, sloshing around, slurring the words. Lorne said, “Just get the biggest pot of coffee you can.” I remember Louise Lasser on her hands and knees crawling into my office looking for pot. Why she was on her hands and knees, I don’t know. And then the day of the show, she decided she wasn’t going to do the show unless a certain sketch was cut. And we were all preparing to do the show without her. In fact I remember Aykroyd getting excited about it: “We can do it, Lorne. We can get out there and we’ll improv it. We’ll do a helluva show.” And they were ready. And Lorne told her agent that he would make sure everyone knew if she walked out.
DON NOVELLO:
The Frank Zappa show was like one of the worst ever. And I looked at that recently and I really liked seeing how awkward he was in that. Zappa’s a genius, but he doesn’t trust people, he does everything by himself. A lot of performers after dress are shaken; it doesn’t go well and all of sudden, “Oh God, in two hours I’m going on live.” With Zappa what happened was we had a terrible dress and what was he going to do? What he did, not telling anybody, was he turned into Dean Martin. The approach he took was, he read the cards like he was reading the cards — he made a point of it. He was obviously reading the cards. That was his approach to the humor. No one else in the sketches knew it. It was real bad, because I always liked Zappa, I think everybody did, but it was just a terrible show. Lorne was really upset.
HOWARD SHORE:
Hugh Hefner wanted to sing “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” when he hosted, and we rehearsed it endlessly all week and did the dress, which was great. Then we did the show, and during the show he stopped listening, which a lot of amateur singers do. He saw the audience and just stopped listening to the band and went off into his own world. And I looked at Shaffer, who was playing piano, and it was just like, oh my God, he was bars ahead of us and we’re on the air and we’re trying to catch up.
RICK LUDWIN, NBC Vice President for Late Night:
Belushi was thrilled to hear that Milton Berle was coming on, because Belushi admired Milton Berle, and it was one of those things where they were all hanging around Milton’s dressing room for the first day or two of the week, you know — Milton, tell us about this, tell us about that. And then Milton assumed he was not hosting Saturday Night Live, Milton assumed they were doing Texaco Star Theater, and as Milton sometimes did, he took over the production and tried to make it his own, as opposed to being the host. And Lorne disliked the show to such an extent that it’s never been seen on Comedy Central, it’s never been seen anywhere, since. Lorne was so upset with the way Milton had just steamrolled his way over everyone that he never wanted that show to see the light of day again.
ROSIE SHUSTER:
Anne Beatts and I had written this sketch for Gilda and Milton Berle when he hosted. He was to play an old man in an old folks home, and she was going to feed him dinner. And during dress rehearsal Uncle Miltie did these painfully broad spit takes, enough to make Danny Thomas cringe. So I was sent to Uncle Miltie’s dressing room between dress and air to deliver this one simple note, which was, do not go overboard on the spit takes. But he was totally focused on his opening monologue, which was looming in an hour, and he was trying out jokes on me. He was pacing around in his boxer shorts, very proud to parade in his shorts in front of me. Thank God they weren’t briefs, because it was already too much information.
He left me no verbal airspace. I could not get a word in. He was like a totally crazed tennis ball machine spitting shtick at me, a comedy filibuster on my little one note. He just drowned me out. And finally wardrobe fetched him, and I found myself running after him screaming,