CAVALCADE OF COMEDY

As Saturday Night Live celebrates its 50th season, alumni look back on the people, moments, and humor that shaped their time at an American institution

- 

1970s

GARRETT MORRIS At SNL from 1975–1980

I HAD BEEN IN SHOW BUSINESS FOR about 17 years before Saturday Night Live came along. I was an actor on and off Broadway. I wrote a couple plays, and I did a lot of musicals. SNL was my first television job-a job paying me more than I had ever been paid before, and I was finally paying my rent.

I'm an introvert, so I would usually just do the show and go back to my apartment. This was a mistake, because what you're supposed to do is go to the bar, hang out with the group, and develop relationships. There were some drugs-I was a cocaine fiend, but a teetotaler when it came to alcohol.

But back on set, being the one Black guy, I was just concerned about whether I'd be used at all. It was not an unusual experience to be the one Black person in a cast of mostly white people. I had to fight to get people to write for me. Lorne Michaels came up with the premise of a sketch featuring guys on death row performing as the "Death Row Follies." All he had was a premise. We had to go to our dressing room and come up with something.

I remembered this scene from Art Linkletter, a very popular talk-show host in the 1950s, where a white lady from down South sang, "I'm gonna get me a shotgun and shoot all the n-----s I see." I realized if I replaced n----with whitey, I would have the perfect song for a Black man on death row. So that's how I came up with that sketch.