THE LOST "SNL" EPISODE: HENRY KISSINGER, NOVEMBER 30, 1976
For years, talk circulated amongst devoted fans of the popular television show "Saturday Night Live" that a famous "lost episode" was missing from the NBC archives and had never been shown in repeats because Lorne Michaels had the masters burned immediately after the episode went off the air. Rumors that a bootleg copy of the episode existed were disputed until May 29, 2005, when an unknown video-store clerk stumbled across the tape that you will be viewing tonight. The tape only consists of the opening sketch, the monologue, and part of another sketch, but it is an historical document nonetheless. It is so stunning, so shocking, and so bereft of quality, that it somehow seems to fit in nicely with the quality of SNL today. You have been warned...
OPENING SKETCH: Enter GILDA, JOHN, and DANNY from stage left. GILDA is dressed in white dress with oversized lollypop, JOHN and DANNY are dressed as Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, respectively. When they come to center stage, GILDA turns to the camera, while JOHN and DANNY stand behind, engaged in whispering back and forth.
Gilda (exaggerated child's voice): Golly, my lolly is so big! There's no way I can finish it all by myself. Darn it! (mugs for camera, roars of laughter from audience)
John (stage whisper in thick German accent): Do you tink it iz vise to steal from ze lettle fraulein, mein President?
Danny (Nixon-like voice and vibrating jowls): Why, that lollypop is too big for one little girl, Henry! I'm the president of the United States, and I get what I want or my enemies get it in the secret prisons I run in Cuba. You hear that, ladies and gentlemen? Secret prisons! In Cuba! Those Commies are despicable, inhuman bastards, but they know how to run a prison, Henry! Better than your Nazis ever managed! (audience roars at pointed political humor and the irony of Nixon applauding the Communists. Backstage, Al Franken beams as his second joke to ever make it to air goes over well)
John: Meester President, I tink you under-velm ze lettle girl. She is most, how you say, potent at putting up ze fight for ze lolly-poop. (audience roars at mispronunciation of common term, and its associaton with fecal matter)
Danny: Get your head out of the gutter, Henry! Now watch and learn (walks over to Gilda, who has been "licking" at her candy all this time) Hello, little girl! How'd you like to share with the President of the United States!
Gilda (simmering that yet again she is forced to play a pre-feminist ideal of young women in the post-feminist age): Why, you don't look like a president!
Danny: I don't?
Gilda: No, silly. You look like the Grinch! (roars of laughter from audience, who mistakenly assume that referencing a character from popular culture in another show somehow denotes a sense of sophistication and intellect. Such tactics will be used ad nauseum on the future television show "Family Guy" in lieu of a coherent plot)
END SCENE (on punchline that was painfully dull and yet somehow appealing to jaded mid-Seventies audiences)
Don Pardo: Ladies and Gentlemen, it's NBC's Saturday Night! (fans of the show recall that at this time, a rival show with Howard Cosell used the title "Saturday Night Live". They will also note that this show may very well have been worse than the program that finally inherited the title)
ROLL CAST NAMES
Pardo: Musical Guests, the Doobie Brothers! (cut to mid-Seventies fashion disaster that is the Michael McDonald-led version of the band)
Pardo: And your host...Henry Kissinger (a shot of the former Nixon aide in handcuffs, then to a still of Kissinger breaking the cuffs with his bare hands)
ENTER KISSINGER (for monologue)
Kissinger: Tank you, tank you, pleaze, stop it (audience is restrained with applause while he goes on)
Kissinger: Danke, mein friends, it is great to be hosting "Zaturday Night". Why, vhen ze producers called me to host, I said "can ve change ze name to 'Ze Zaturday Night Massacre'?" (hushed response from the audience, uncomfortable with the reference to Nixon's infamous night of hiring and firing three seperate men for the position of Speical Prosecutor during Watergate)
Kissinger (visibly shaken by lack of response): I am sorry, zat joke vas writtin by a dirty, dirty man (cut to Franken backstage, chuckling)
Kissinger: Yes, ve have a very good show for you tonight. It vill feature me, in vigs und make-up, und ver vill be much laughter to be occasioned, jah? (uncomfortable silence from audience).
Kissinger: Ze musical guests, I do not endorse their lifestyle but ze are...ze Doobie Brothers. Jah, I know...Perry Como vas unavailable...
CUT TO: Danny in hipster salesman mode, in front of what appears to be a shredder
Danny: Do you have sensitive legal documents lying around that you need to get rid of? Have you been subpeoned by a federal court and are in danger of impeachment? Just in time for Christmas, it's the Nixon Document Shredder, from Slim-Co! Yes, it shreds, it slices, it dices, and it slashes your wiretap transcripts like that! Let's see it in action...oh, my tie seems to be caught...let's try and turn it off...losing air.
END OF TAPE (The rest of the show was memorable only for Kissinger's obvious distaste for "the special Thanksgiving Day salute to Impeached Ex-Presidents", and "Cambodia Tonite", a skit based on "Fernwood Tonight" in which Belushi hosted from a bombed-out bunker on the VC Trail. Kissinger did not appear onstage during the closing credits, as the Doobie Brothers were snorting lines of coke off Bill Murray's chest. The surviving tapes were destroyed, and the previous fragment is all that survives).
:p
