A CRACK IN THE GREASEPAINT

How "Saturday Night Live" breaks the mold.

- MICHAEL J. ARLEN

This is probably as good a time as any to say a few words about an appealing new comedy program called “Saturday Night,” which is broadcast at eleven-thirty each Saturday night by NBC and is definitely not to be confused with “Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell,” which comes on earlier in the evening on ABC. The Cosell show and NBC’s “Saturday Night” are both mainly live, but there is a crucial difference between the two programs. Cosell’s show (as is the case with nearly all entertainment on commercial television), for all its “liveness,” is based on and defined by the standard vocabulary of American show business. Some of the acts are well done, others are not so well done. The essential texture of the show, however, depends on that strange fantasy language of celebrity public relations which has been concocted for the public by mass-entertainment producers and stars and in recent years has become almost formalized as a kind of national version of a modern courtier style. It is the language of kisses blown, of “God bless you”s, of “this wonderful human being,” of “a sensational performer and my very dear personal friend,” and of “You’re just a beautiful audience!”—in short, the language of celebrity “hype” or, alternatively (though it amounts to the same thing), of celebrity “roast.” It is the language of not daring to let anything alone to stand by itself, the language of bored artifice—perhaps a contemporary equivalent of dandyism and powdered wigs.