Inside the very first episode of SNL as it returns to air for the 50th season

As the 50th season of Saturday Night Live premieres this weekend, the story of how the very first episode took shape is a legendary piece of show business history.

It’s a story about how then-30-year-old Lorne Michaels pitched a comedy-variety show in New York City with a team of unknown writers and performers.

His vision?

‘A comedy show, candid and intelligent, for young, urban adults,’ Biography reported.

And on the evening of October 11, 1975, Saturday Night Live was born.

The original cast still remembers the show’s debut fifty years later, along with all the madness and chaos leading up to the premiere.

Looking back on the first episode, the ‘Not Ready for Prime Time Players’ – including Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman – appeared on the television screen with no idea that they were about to make history.

“I don’t think it concerned us one way or the other,” Chevy Chase said The New York Times.

“We were going to do what we do, and if you laugh, great, you laugh. You tell someone else, and next time they’ll laugh.’

The cast was about to launch the longest-running live sketch comedy show in TV history.

Putting live comedy sketches on national television was a risky move, but according to him, it immediately created a cult hit Open culture.

At that time it was not possible to imitate celebrities or comment on current events.

The very first sketch, titled The Wolverines, features an immigrant, played by John Belushi, learning English.

The lead writer, Michael O’Donoghue, played a teacher who insisted on making Belushi repeat meaningless sentences – in particular, “I’d like to feed your fingertips to the glutton.”

It was short and nonsensical and set the tone for what the show had to offer.

At the end of the first skit, Chase walked onto the stage, looked straight into the camera and read the signature line: “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”

Although the very first season of SNL was an experiment in live comedy, it set the stage for what would become an established television institution.

Chase initially turned down an offer to join the show, but changed his mind after just a few days and ended up becoming one of the most famous faces from the cast.

He said that despite the first episode having a reputation for being chaotic, it was “not pandemonium at all.”

“We had a lot of control over who had to do what,” he told the New York Times.

Jane Curtin walked through the door to audition for SNL in the summer of 1975 and met producers who asked her what she had prepared for them.

“The classic anxiety dream,” she told the Times.

‘I was quiet and no one paid attention to me. I didn’t know how to pitch. I’ve never had to do that in my life.’

Luckily, she had previously performed in theater, commercials, and an improv troupe in the Boston area, and had some old material in her bag.

“It was a big wallet,” she said.

Curtin was struck by “imposter syndrome” in the weeks leading up to the first episode – as she mindlessly wandered the 17th floor of Rockefeller Plaza, wondering how to create new material for herself.

But her faith prevailed and she appeared in several sketches. She kept herself in a bubble, never paying much attention to the audience, noting how the first broadcast “went by in a blur.”

When the show started getting attention, she realized her life was starting to change.

“You walked past people and they were shaking,” she said.

“They responded to you physically because they could feel the energy behind what was happening at 30 Rock. And it was very exciting.’

Valri Bromfield was the first female stand-up to perform on Saturday Night. She knew she wouldn’t be here long because she didn’t want to have to deal with the stress of competition between the artists on the show.

But she did find the environment ‘exciting’.

“It was a festival of neurodiversity,” she told the Times.

‘ADHD in abundance. Character disorders, personality disorders. It was everything you could want.”

Musician Janis Ian performed during the debut episode with strep throat and a 104-degree fever.

She didn’t view it as a career-defining moment so much as another booking in her already busy schedule.

But she’s amazed at where the show ended up 50 years later.

“It turned out to be so different from anything anyone could have imagined,” she told the Times.

‘Nobody thought something could last so long. But it’s mythical now and I look very smart.’

Lorne Michaels reflected on the original cast – and what they all had in common – in an unaired 60-minute clip.

“Everyone I chose had experienced some sort of mistake during adolescence in that original group. Either the death of a parent, divorce, something, some unrest,’ People signed up.

He noted that the comedy legends of 1975 were “all stuck in adolescence” for some reason.

During its first few seasons, SNL successfully attracted bigger ratings and bigger names from comedy and music.

As the show flourished, it launched the careers of many famous faces – from Eddie Murphy and Adam Sandler to Will Ferrell and Tiny Fey.

Now the story of the first episode in SNL history is being portrayed in the feature film Saturday Night, which opened in select theaters on Friday.

Directed by Jason Reitman, the film portrays the 90 minutes leading up to the show’s premiere.

Saturday Night will hit theaters everywhere on October 11, paying tribute to the first episode ever broadcast on October 11, 1975.