The "Trauma" Of Saturday Night Live 50 Years Ago Today (Saturday October 11, 1975) And The Parodies Of Presidents That Sucked Me In

1 posted on 10/11/2025 8:00:15 PM PDT by Nextrush

Here is some interviews on their influence.

CNN) — Chevy Chase didn’t look like Gerald Ford and didn’t sound like Gerald Ford. But in the mid-1970s, when “Saturday Night Live” first went on the air, Chase — then a writer and cast member of the show — made his impression of the president, rife with pratfalls and slapstick, the talk of the country.

He also made the president a butt of jokes, which was intentional, Chase told CNN in an interview.

“[Ford] was a sweet man, a terrific man — [we] became good friends after, but ... he just tripped over things a lot,” he said. “It’s not that I can imitate him so much that I can do a lot of physical comedy and I just made it, I just went after him. And ... obviously my leanings were Democratic and I wanted [Jimmy] Carter in and I wanted [Ford] out, and I figured look, we’re reaching millions of people every weekend, why not do it.”

Over the years, “Saturday Night Live’s” political satires have become a mainstay of the show, sometimes to startling effect.

Al Franken — now the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota — and his then writing partner, Tom Davis, wrote a wicked takeoff of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s book, “The Final Days,” which included Dan Aykroyd as a bitter Richard Nixon and John Belushi as a toadying Henry Kissinger. In the mid-’80s, a sketch starring Phil Hartman as Ronald Reagan showed the president, often lampooned as forgetful, with a razor-sharp command of the Iran-Contra situation, cutting deals in Arabic and barking orders at his staff.

More recently, Dana Carvey’s malaprop-laden impression of George H.W. Bush, Hartman’s puppy-dog Bill Clinton, Will Ferrell’s George W. Bush and Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin have embedded themselves in the culture.

Though Chase believes the show leans left, and Fey’s Palin is an attempt to hurt the Republicans, Marc Liepis, NBC Universal senior director of late night publicity, had no comment.

CNN: You mean to tell me in the back of your mind you were thinking, hey I want Carter ...

Chase: Oh, yeah.

CNN: And I’m going to make him look bad.

Chase: Oh yeah. What do you think they’re doing now, you think they’re just doing this because Sarah’s funny? No, I think that the show is very much more Democratic and liberal-oriented, that they are obviously more for Barack Obama. [In the ‘70s], out of the Nixon era, and it was not unlikely that I might go that direction.

CNN: I talked to one political pundit who said, I think Chevy Chase cost Ford the presidency.

Chase: When you have that kind of a venue and power where you can reach so many millions of people and you’ve become a show that people watch, you know, you can affect a lot of people, and humor does it beautifully, because humor is perspective and has a way of making judgment calls. ... So I think there was no question that it had major effect and in fact, in speaking with his family and then later him, and even reading some of his books ... he felt so, too.

2 posted on 10/11/2025 8:06:53 PM PDT by ansel12 ((NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.))

So it was allowed to be nothing but a weekly vicious campaign ad for the rat Presidential candidate. A undeclared multi million dollar democrat contribution still ongoing to this day.

3 posted on 10/11/2025 8:20:58 PM PDT by iamgalt

They do this on purpose and they invest a lot of money into it if they need to, bringing Tina Fey back could not have been cheap.

They will pay for expensive talent to portray a republican they want to stop and the media takes the skit portrayals out into the voting public and helps them stick.

4 posted on 10/11/2025 8:29:07 PM PDT by ansel12 ((NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.))

Yes that is exactly what they do. That is why the Trump memes give them fits. He is using one of their most potent weapons against them.

5 posted on 10/11/2025 8:36:05 PM PDT by iamgalt

The first SNL was shown on October 11, 1975. Did anybody know who Jimmy Carter was on that date?

6 posted on 10/12/2025 1:17:03 AM PDT by Bernard ("Nothing is as expensive as that which the government provides for free." - Ronald Reagan)

Saturday night, 1975 I sat down with my popcorn and soda pop to watch the usual bad horror movie on FANTASTIC THEATER.(KVOO CHANNEL 2 in Tulsa OK)
Instead this comedy show SNL came on. I sat through it hoping to se my SI-FI movie on afterward. Nope. Still do not watch SNL.
Haven’t been that disappointed since 1960 when I had to set through PLAYBOY PENTHOUSE to see the SI-FI movie on afterward. No naked girls back then, just boring jazz music.

7 posted on 10/12/2025 7:22:12 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar ( REOPEN THE MENTAL HOSPITALS CLOSED IN THE 1970S!)

I liked watching Lloyd Dobyns and his attempt to bring some attitude to television news...

It also had Linda Ellerbee, when she was still hot, and before she went full-feminist.

8 posted on 10/12/2025 7:33:13 AM PDT by dfwgator ("I am Charlie Kirk!")

To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

We had one-time weatherman Bob Wilkins hosting Creature Features in the Bay Area.

http://www.bobwilkins.net/creaturefeatures.htm

Good times.

9 posted on 10/12/2025 1:17:29 PM PDT by Disambiguator

Beat me to it.

I was going to say that it was Ellerbee who brought the wit to the show.

-PJ

10 posted on 10/12/2025 1:21:18 PM PDT by Political Junkie Too ( * LAAP = Left-wing Activist Agitprop Press (formerly known as the MSM))

To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

Pizza, french fries horror movies, old movies normal Saturday night fare. That Playboy show wasn’t on in my area but Hefner liked jazz that’s one thing for sure.

11 posted on 10/12/2025 3:46:55 PM PDT by Nextrush (FREEDOM IS EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS, REMEMBER REV; NIEMOLLER)

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