SNL Icon Rosie Shuster Reflects On the Show’s Origins

In October of 1975, Rosie Shuster—then a 24-year-old emerging comedy writer—helped deliver her then-husband Lorne Michaels’ baby: Saturday Night Live. 

Speaking exclusively with Bill Brioux ahead of SNL‘s 50th anniversary celebration this weekend, Shuster looks back at the roots of the now-legendary series, which extend back to her parents’ house in Toronto where Michaels, whom she met at junior high, soaked up every showbiz lesson her father Frank Shuster (half of the Ed Sullivan-approved Canadian comedy team Wayne & Shuster) could muster.

Candid, witty and self-deprecating at times, Shuster shares honest appraisals of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players she wrote for, including Gilda Radner, John Belushi, and her boyfriend at the time, Dan Aykroyd.

Yes, you read that right. As viewers of Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night film will likely remember, Shuster (played in the film by Rachel Sennott) was both married to Michaels and Aykroyd’s girlfriend at the same time. Hey, it was the ‘70s. As Steve Martin would say, “Excuuse me!”

Read the highlights of the conversation or hear all it from Shuster herself below in a special episode of brioux.tv: the podcast, co-presented by LateNighter:

This interview was conducted by Bill Brioux at the end of January. It has been edited and condensed for length and clarity..

First of all, did you pick a dress yet for the 50th anniversary galas?

There are two events, February 14th [the homecoming concert at Radio City Music Hall] and February 16th [the primetime anniversary special in Studio 8H]. I do not have a dress to answer your question. I mean, people are sending me all these pictures but they’re nothing, if you don’t try them on because a black shroud could… Some of these things look slinky and foxy, but you don’t always know if they’re right or not.

Is it staggering to you? Does it seem possible that this all happened 50 years ago?

No, you know, time and age and all that, it’s just always…it’s surreal to me. It’s like, okay. I see how you calculated that right and I can’t fault your math, you know? So, okay, apparently it’s true.

Let’s talk about The Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour, which aired in Canada on the CBC in 1970 and ‘71.

This next generation comedy-variety series is seen by many as something of a dry run for Saturday Night Live, albeit on a Canadian dime. Michaels produced but also headlined the show as part of a comedy team at the time, partnered with Hart Pomerantz, who wound up having a law career in Canada. The two parlayed a writing stint on Laugh-In into this CBC variety show opportunity. Music guests such as James Taylor and Cat Stevens were featured. A sketch comedy highlight was hippy-haired straight man Lorne’s interviews with the peevish Canadian beaver, played by Pomerantz. Michaels was already married to Shuster at the time, and she was a writer on the series.

Did you write for the Beaver character?

Hart and Lorne did all their own two-man, stand-up, kind of stuff. I don’t think anybody wrote for the beaver but Hart and Lorne. But I did write for The Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour. My brother (Steve Shuster) and I actually did something called “The Karma Game” for it early on.

I’ve seen a few episodes, including the one with James Taylor, who looks about 20 years old. He’s beautifully lit and sounds great, performing to a live audience and the sound and camera work really stands out.

My dad [Canadian comedy veteran Frank Shuster, one half of the team of Wayne & Shuster frequently featured on The Ed Sullivan Show] was mentoring Lorne a lot. Lorne had done Laugh-In [as a writer], although he hadn’t been [allowed] on that set, which drove him crazy. But Laugh-In was a big show, right? He was discovered, but he was more interested in producing than any other aspect of things. And my father was mentoring him constantly. So it wasn’t the humour they absorbed from Wayne & Shuster but how to shoot a comedy and, you know, just different ways to handle the brass, as they used to call them—the suits, and just techniques and tactics.

So I think Lorne came in expecting more than most people asked for, and I think he was able to get it.

The very first quote in Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller’s book, Live From New York is from you saying, “Lorne Michaels arrived in my life before puberty.”

That is absolutely correct sir.

That’s not even a joke, is it?

Yeah, no. That is not a bada-bing, bada-boom. That was sadly true. Yeah. Well, I was waiting for Godot for a while there but, well…

It sounds like, yes, Lorne was keen to learn from your dad but he was struck by you as well. You are also quoted in the Shales book saying that Saturday Night Live was so much a part of something that grew from your home in Toronto.

I totally think the roots and the first seeds of what would become SNL grew from my home. And what people don’t talk about is Lorne was also observing my dad on The Ed Sullivan Show, right? And I haven’t even talked about my theory yet, but I’ll tell you because it’s been on my mind.

Let’s hear it.

Well, Ed Sullivan. He was kind of stiff and awkward and everybody did impressions of him which they would also do with Lorne which was kind of eerie. And Ed Sullivan brought you the Beatles, he brought Elvis before anybody saw him.

He was kind of, you know, appointment TV, people wanted to, could tap into what was new in the Zeitgeist. And I think that really left a strong impression on Lorne who was, you know, very sponge-like in those days, in terms of absorbing, you know, all kinds of different input.

And even though there was comedy, there was variety, there were, you know, elephants and jugglers. But it was how to tap into the Zeitgeist to see what was, you know, what was new. That had an effect on what SNL became, too.

Well, when you look at the first episode of Saturday Night Live, you didn’t have plate spinners, but you did have Muppets, you had films by Albert Brooks. There does seem to be more variety and less sketch comedy in those first three or four episodes.

Right? Absolutely. Well, you know, while you’re still trying to so-called find the show, it does take a while to see what works. And what works live is very different from what you can get your hands on and edit, you know, because you can save a lot of things in editing and you don’t get that luxury. What you do get is you don’t have to do a pilot and the suits can’t give you notes which was a big perk.

The other interesting parallel is that Wayne & Schuster performed live on Ed Sullivan, didn’t they? It was live from New York on the weekend.

Yeah. Comedy variety, you know? Lorne learned more about the suits and how to produce, and how to shoot comedy. A lot of people didn’t know to stay on the reaction shot, you know? But my dad was such a fan of Jack Benny that he really learned that the bigger laugh sometimes was just on the reaction shot.

So that was the kind of stuff [that] I think that Lorne really absorbed. That made him look not like, you know, he just rolled off the turnip truck or whatever the Toronto version of that is…

The maple syrup truck?

…the maple syrup truck. Yeah, right.

Besides their own comedy specials on Canadian television, Wayne & Shuster did a series in the ‘60s where they paid homage to the masters of the craft. It was called An Affectionate Look at… and it profiled The Marx Bros, Jack Benny, WC Fields and other pioneering comedy acts.

These were also two guys from the University of Toronto as well. You had this comedy hybrid – some of the old and some of the new. That insight had to have been an advantage trying to reinvent because that seemed to be the goal of Saturday Night Live, to just blow up television and start again.

Well, the thing that always occurs to me about it is music, reflecting the culture in the ‘60s and ‘70s, because that was the British Invasion. There was Bob Dylan, you know, there were a lot of people that were reflecting what was happening with youth as you know, and movies and television took a little longer.

But, you know, there was Easy Rider and a bunch of different movies. The Graduate and lots of stuff started to reflect what was happening in the culture. Television was like so square. It was such a hip thing to say you didn’t own a TV. It was just Perry Como and Andy whatever-his-name, they were crooners in alpaca cardigans. It was not what was happening in our world, you know? So it was really, there was a void. There was a vacuum.

In reading that book on Saturday Night Live, there’s a lot of notes from NBC. They were panicked that the host of the show, the very first week, George Carlin, would appear in a T-shirt. That seemed to be their big concern.

Well, you know, because there was just this idea that you’re going into people’s living rooms, you have to be very well groomed and respectfully dressed. And you know that was crazy. I mean that was how they felt, though.There was this very staid square kind of idea of what it should be. And so this show wanted to shake all that up and have a mirror of what was actually going on. You know, there was a lot of sex, drugs and rock and roll happening that was never reflected on TV. It was in music and it was in movies.

And then later it was on the 17th floor of Rockefeller Plaza.

Yes, it rolled up into there.

The other Torontonian who came to New York with you was your school friend [and original SNL music director] Howard Shore, right?

He went to West prep, the same school that I went to and Lorne had gone to, and he went to Camp New Moon and Camp Timberlane where we did shows. And so we were at school, and then he lived in the same building as Lorne.

From what I’ve read, even those camp shows were a form of prep for Saturday Night Live.

Well, that was another place to get your chops together and try stuff.

Rosie and Lorne went to the same Junior High in Toronto. They were married in 1967 when she was 17 and he was 23. A year later, Michaels moved to Los Angeles with Hart Pomerantz to work as writers on Laugh-In and The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show,

When did you and Lorne finally move together to New York?

Well, there were probably 30 or 40 trips back and forth to Toronto and LA. And then I stayed in Toronto sometimes and he worked. We were also going through our own internal, you know, weird process. I’d been with him since I was a child. He had a lot of opinions about how I should be, so I was just trying to get a little, you know, freedom, I think, so I didn’t always follow him down. So yeah, sometimes I was there a lot and I wasn’t there a lot, so it was a mix.

Did you work on the Phyllis Diller show or Laugh-In?

He would call me and tell me about the Phyllis Diller show. There were not very many episodes, praise the Lord, it was a big stink-do, and I was in the weird position of having to break it to him because, you know, you get in, you sort of fall in love with the other, all these other pro comedy writers, and they would go to lunches and laugh … so you get an unreal sense of the product. So I think he had fun but I think, you know, it was not a wonderful show.

Later on you did write for Lily Tomlin?

Yes, I did work on Lily Tomlin.

I actually got a monologue on Laugh-In. He and Hart needed a quota of monologues for Rowan and Martin. So I tried my hand at it and they picked mine. I didn’t sign it, I didn’t get credit but I thought I was getting away with something when it went on TV. Pathetic expectations for myself at that point.

Did you get paid?

No nothing. Nothing and nobody said, hey, she… but I was thrilled it went on television,

You should have got at least a Fickle Finger of Fate award or something.

Then there’s the ramp up to Saturday Night Live. You’ve seen Jason Reitman’s movie Saturday Night. That depicts the hours leading up to the first broadcast.

Well, it’s kind of hyper…Jason calls it “hyper realism.” He talked to whoever was left on the green side of the grass who was there on October 11, 1975. And there were fewer of us left but, based on all the input he got, and whatever he read and all the stuff that’s been written, and the two books, and they’re more than two books now, they squeezed it together.

What actually happens between dress rehearsal and air is: the show is always long, you have to cut some pieces, the pieces that go you get notes from Lorne who will, sometimes there need to be internal cuts so the writers have five minutes to do rewrites and to get to cue cards and get to the actors and if necessary get to costumes or props or scenery to just say what what the changes are.

So what Jason did was take a lot of liberties and a lot of stories and squish them into a kind of hyper real. So he was trying to be true to the spirit of what that was like. But it’s all business between dress and air. It’s a very adrenal window. It’s like the cortisol is high and you’re just trying to get it all done before… because the camera…they don’t care, 11:30 is 11:30. They don’t care, right?

But you were right there in the middle of all that. There wasn’t a lot of sketch comedy in that first episode, but there were The Bees and I understand that was yours, right?

Well, I got “New Dad,” which was a commercial parody in that first show, but I was kind of horrified that Lorne had wanted to put The Bees in the first show because it was kind of a conceptual thing and I didn’t think it was going to work in that context, especially not live. I was still thinking of it in a more surreal way. So I wasn’t happy that that was in, but he saw the potential for a running… something that pulled the cast together and so it found its way, but it started, you know, it started an animosity between Belushi and me. I could have skipped that.

And he had a pre-existing animosity against [fellow writer] Anne Beatts because of …

I should ask you to explain that, but maybe not.

No no no. Some of it is not my story to tell really.

All right. Well, let’s stick with your story, there’s plenty there. The notion that’s out there is that Belushi really did not have a lot of confidence in females who wrote on the show. Was that actually true?

I think it was different with the cast members than it was with the writers. He did one piece with Marilyn [Suzanne Miller, who also wrote for The Mary Tyler Moore Show] that was a dramatic scene with Sissy Spacek and he liked that one because he got to show his drama chops. But the truth is I wrote things with Jim Downey and I left my initials off and then Belushi would go to Jim and say, “Do another one of those.” He  didn’t know I had written it.  And then in the book on John Belushi, the only piece that is printed in it is the thing that I wrote with my brother which was “Adopt Belushi for Christmas.” I think Judy [Belushi, John’s wife] was fed up with his coke habit and blah, blah blah, so she’s kind of locked him out. So I wrote a piece and my brother helped me. I remember we were on an airplane for some reason and we wrote it during the flight and it’s the one thing that’s in the Belushi book. And it’s by me. So, booga booga!

You showed him.

 Yeah that’s right.

It was still pretty unique to be a woman writing comedy in television, wasn’t it, at this point?

Well, There weren’t a lot. There had been Lucille Kallen [Your Show of Shows], Madeline Pugh [I Love Lucy]. Very, very few. And what was difficult was there are some female oriented experiences that are less relatable to men. The women are laughing or rolling their eyes or whatever but the guys don’t get it.

That happened with “Hard Hats” which I had the idea. It was just a simple switch, it wasn’t some brilliant premise, but it was just kind of really making a point to have men be the target of just being objectified. And nobody wanted to play it. And finally, I think Lorne twisted Danny’s arm and he was a good sport and he did it.

I’ve read that Belushi in particular refused to do it.

First of all, he was self-conscious about his body and he didn’t want to be wearing just a little pair of short shorts, so right there, big problem-o.

Was it more fun writing for the female cast members? You worked on Roseanne Roseannadanna and Emily Litella?

Yep. It was a lot of fun writing with Gilda because she would participate and she would do pieces of character for you and that just—you saw where the potential was, and it just sometimes, I can’t say they wrote themselves, but you had such a head start.

Gilda had a voice for Roseanne and I kind of went off into the disgustingness of what she was obsessed with. It was in a sketch called “Hire the Incompetent.” She didn’t have her name yet. And I did the first Emily Litella as well, which, somehow, [fellow writer] Alan Zwiebel consumed—it was like taking candy from a baby.

I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t fierce as I would learn I needed to be.

Pretty hard jungle. You must have been fierce on some level.

I was! You were, you just had to put yourself out there and, you know, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

You would already have already known Gilda from Toronto.

I did know Gilda from Toronto. I saw her in Godspell. I just saw this massive hair and this little face and she just lit up the stage.

She just had this quality, that thing that everybody wants to have. All the eyes went to her. She just galvanized attention. She always stayed in touch with the childlike part of her, which was very darling, and genuine—not cutesy [or] put on.

It came through the TV set, didn’t it? That quality?

Well, it was an immediacy, and she was really made to do live theater and live television. She needed an audience to feed on, and later, it may be sad when she was doing these movies, that they just didn’t get who she was, or what could make her shine.

Back home in Toronto, what was your dad Frank’s reaction to all your fame, the Emmys and everything? He must have been very proud of you.

I didn’t exactly know that—he was on the modest side of the scale—but he told me a story. And it’s not going to make sense because the last line is in Yiddish. Let me see if I could do it justice.

He told me that he boasted to Danny Kaye when he was—I don’t know, he ran into him in New York somewhere—that his daughter and son-in-law had won Emmys, and Danny Kaye, who could give a flying, said, “Es iz a groys tsiter in mayn tokhes,” which means, “It’s a big thrill in my ass.”

That should be the title of your next book.

Yes, that will just alienate everybody, especially now.