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The following is a list of Saturday Night Live hosts and musical guests. Saturday Night Live has been a mainstay of the NBC late-night schedule for over thirty years.
During the opening credits, announcer Don Pardo flubbed the first-ever mention of the regular cast as "the Not For Ready Prime Time Players". According to the cast list shown on screen, the Players include George Coe and Michael O'Donoghue.
Future cast member Billy Crystal was scheduled to appear, but his stand-up segment was cut when the dress rehearsal ran long. Andy Kaufman's segment, which consisted of him playing the Mighty Mouse theme on a record player, survived.
This episode contains an all-time record 11 musical performances. Among the comedy pieces, only Weekend Update and a sketch in which Paul Simon tells the Bees their piece has been cut involve the Not Ready for Prime Time Players.
Rob Reiner is the first host to appear in full sketches with the regular cast.
Denny Dillon appears as a "special guest" with Mark Hampton in a sketch as nuns running a parish talent show. Dillon would later become a cast member during the show's controversial sixth season.
Rob Reiner's then-wife Penny Marshall makes cameo appearances in this episode. She would later appear in a 1996 episode hosted by Rosie O'Donnell, which includes a sketch in which they play nuns running a parish Christmas pageant rehearsal.
ABBA makes two appearances, set on board the sinking Titanic. Although it is widely reported that ABBA were the only musical guest to lip-synch on Saturday Night Live, they in fact only lip-synch their second number. (Captions inform the audience that "It's not their fault. The tapes didn't arrive from Sweden".) During their first performance (of "S.O.S."), the vocals, at least, are performed live.
This episode was the first time SNL would be put on a seven-second delay due to the censors' fear that the host would say something profane.
On the West Coast airing of this episode, the word "ass" was bleeped out of one of Richard Pryor's stand-up routines. All reruns on the West Coast have aired the word unbleeped.
Ron Nessen, press secretary for President Gerald Ford, is the first political figure to host the show. Ford himself appears in a filmed segment during the cold opening where he opens the show with "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!"
Charles Grodin had missed all of his rehearsals during the week and, as a result, stumbled and ad-libbed his way through the episode. He was never asked to host again.
Miskel Spillman was the winner of the first and only "Anyone Can Host" contest. The episode is remembered more for Elvis Costello's performance, in which he halted his band the Attractions thirty seconds into the song "Less Than Zero", and instead launched into "Radio Radio", an as-yet unreleased song critical of mainstream broadcasting. He did not appear on the show again until 1989.
It has been rumored that when Elvis Costello and the Attractions began to play "Radio, Radio", Lorne Michaels flipped off Elvis Costello with both hands from the side of the stage.
Notable for Palin's opening sketch in which he attempted to stuff seafood salad and two live cats down the front of his trousers. This resulted in him being covered in (and smelling of) cat feces for the rest of the show, including sketches with him occupying a confessional box and a small trunk.
At the time of the episode, Eric Idle had caught a fever (which explains why he was in a stretcher during the monologue). Buck Henry was brought in just in case Idle was too sick to perform.
The show went hostless to celebrate their 100th episode. John Belushi and Michael O'Donoghue made return appearances in the cold opening. Bill Murray turned the monologue into a musical tribute to New York City.
During the sketch "The Minstrels of Newcastle", Paul Shaffer inadvertently said "fuckin'" on the air (an almost predictable gaffe since the word "floggin'" was written into almost every line in the sketch).
This episode almost didn't make it to air because of Jean Doumanian's insistence on airing three controversial sketches: one about a heroin addict (played by Charles Rocket) who is taken in by a clean-cut family, one featuring Gail Matthius's Valley Girl Vicki character annoying a receptionist at an abortion clinic, and a filmed piece about NBC talent scouts looking for a virgin female to be an SNL castmember (this caused controversy because of its sequence where the NBC talent scouts go to a convent and find out that one of the nuns there isn't a virgin). The "Virgin Search" short film ended up being cut from this episode, but would air on the episode hosted by David Carradine.
The word "fuck" was said twice in this episode: once by Prince during his song "Partyup" (though nothing was made of it since no one knew if Prince actually said it) and (more infamously) during the goodnights when Charles Rocket (in a wheelchair after getting shot during the last sketch) grumbles, "I'd like to know who the fuck did it" in response to Tilton's query on how Rocket felt after being gunned down.
Larry Hagman, also from "Dallas", was originally asked to host. He declined.
This is the last episode for producer Jean Doumanian, castmembers Ann Risley, Gilbert Gottfried, and Charles Rocket, and feature players Patrick Weathers, and Matthew Laurance. Denny Dillon and Gail Matthius would appear in the next episode, but be fired after that, while Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo would continue as cast members. Yvonne Hudson makes only a few uncredited cameos in the next season.
Dick Ebersol begins producing the show. A show scheduled to be hosted by Al Franken and Tom Davis was set to air after this one, but cancelled due to a writers' strike.
This season was considered so disastrous that NBC has barred episodes from being put into syndication[citation needed]. However, there have been rare times when these episodes would show up: Comedy Central (in America) has aired a few episodes from this season up until the mid-1990s, particularly the Bill Murray/Delbert McClinton episode (albeit a scaled-down 60-minute version instead of the full 90-minute version)[citation needed] during a marathon featuring films and SNL episodes starring Eddie Murphy. The Comedy Channel in Canada has aired the entire season uncut, and even left Charles Rocket's "fuck" incident uncensored. The most recent sighting of a Jean Doumanian-era episode in the USA happened in 2005[citation needed] when NBC aired a full 90-minute rerun of the episode hosted by Jamie Lee Curtis.
The March 7 episode announced a planned show for March 14, with guest host Robert Guillaume and musical guest Ian Dury. The show ended up getting cancelled due to Jean Doumanian's termination and the show being put on hiatus for retooling.
John Belushi appears in the cold opening. Three sketches from this episode were cut after dress rehearsal[citation needed]: "Grand Guingol White House" where Ronald and Nancy Reagan cannibalize Jane Fonda, a sketch where an old man (played by Pleasence) drains the blood of his date and uses it as wine, and a sketch where Nazis discuss "good" reasons why they kill Jewish people.
