Word: radners
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...rare shot at instant stardom -- an appearance on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live in 1975 -- misfired when producer Lorne Michaels cut his spot from six minutes to one and Crystal pulled out. "It was awful," says Crystal. "Gilda ((Radner)) walked me to the elevator. I was crying all the way home on the Long Island Railroad, the tears running down the makeup." While friends Chevy Chase and John Belushi went on to become household names, he had to settle for a spot on ABC's wacky series Soap, playing television's first prime-time homosexual. Then came...
...SCTV mimics -- Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Martin Short -- did have a problem. On TV they hid like a subversive subtext inside their brilliant impersonations. But in movies an actor doesn't disappear; he displays himself. So Short has put his mimetic, improvisatory genius on hold and marketed one facet of his personality: the winsome whiner...
John Belushi and Gilda Radner are no longer around. The other Not Ready for Prime Time originals have phased into either obscurity or fat-cat Hollywood stardom. The baby boomers who discovered the show in the mid-'70s are now watching alongside their kids and struggling to keep up with the cast changes (which one is Phil Hartman?). Still, an anniversary for Saturday Night Live -- which will mark the start of its 15th season with a prime-time special next Sunday -- is more than just a routine occasion for TV nostalgia. The pressing question: Is Saturday Night still alive...
...sorts. For the 1986-87 season, Michaels pieced together a cast that finally took hold and is now starting its fourth season together. Only one of them -- the silky, moonfaced Jon Lovitz, creator of the pathological-liar character -- seems to capture the old spirit: like Belushi or Aykroyd or Radner, he gets laughs by simply showing up onstage. Still, there's plenty of talent on hand: Dana Carvey, a pixieish comic with devilish impressions of George Bush and Jimmy Stewart; Victoria Jackson, a ditsily appealing blond; and the sparkling, versatile Jan Hooks. If none seem destined for stardom, they have...
...fecund years between 1946 and 1964, reaches mid-life. Former White House Wunderkind David Stockman and Actor Sylvester Stallone (Rocky, Rambo) turn 40 in 1986. So do ex-Mouseketeer Carl ("Cubby") O'Brien, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Director Kenneth Adelman, Real Estate Mogul Donald Trump and Comedian Gilda Radner. At the tail end of the boom, the last members of the vast litter are graduating from college this spring and stepping into a not notably waiting world. Members of a generation that has made a pastime out of prolonged adolescence are being forced by the biological clock to face...