Chevy Chase Got Donald Trump All Hot and Buttered On SNL’s 15th Anniversary Show

As the hype train picks up steam for the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary party, it’s worth remembering that even the show’s 15th birthday bash featured a star-studded audience. To open the big show, Lorne Michaels chose first-season darling Chevy Chase, who had not yet been banished for crimes against late-night comedy.

The bit is that Michaels is trying to talk Chase out of one of his trademark falls. “Chevy, you’re 58 years old,” he argues. (Chase was actually a month shy of his 46th birthday at the time.) Michaels finally relents when Chase agrees to sign several waivers releasing NBC from liability. The signing is interrupted by the ridiculous appearance of mulleted Joe Piscopo in a tuxedo with the sleeves cut off. The oiled, preening Piscopo flexes as he tries to talk Chase out of the fall, but the cameo simply makes us wonder why it wasn’t Eddie Murphy. (He reportedly was mad about something Billy Crystal said in a Playboy interview and refused to attend if Crystal was there.)

NBC chief Brandon Tartikoff hands Chase a football helmet. The bumbling comic weaves his way through the studio audience before the official start of the show, balancing a large bowl of Michaels’ popcorn. “I’ll get to my dressing room,” he mumbles. “Take a couple of back pills, I’ll be fine.”

The joke’s a little less hilarious when you remember Chase had checked into rehab three years earlier for “chronic and long-term back problems resulting from years of pratfalls and stunts dating to his days on Saturday Night Live,” according to The New York Times. Truth is comedy, I guess.

Chase totters through the tuxedos, handing the popcorn to journalist Diane Sawyer at one point as he fastens the strap on his helmet. The cut to her face doesn’t get much of a response. But Chase gets his big laugh moments later when he lurches down a row and spills the hot, buttered kernels onto the head of mogul Donald Trump.

It’s a good reminder that years before The Apprentice, Trump was famous for being a charismatic, rich a-hole — the perfect foil for a spilled snack. As the audience applauds his comeuppance, he holds up his fist in triumph…

…a defiant gesture he makes whether he’s being attacked by popcorn or bullets. 

Original cast member Garrett Morris, sitting next to Trump, ignores the spill and implores Chase not to do the fall. “You’re going to bust your behind!”

Chase insists he’ll be fine, stumbling his way behind a fake concrete partition so that a helmeted stuntman can emerge from the other side and violently tumble down the stairs on his behalf. Fake Chevy gets to his feet and enters a dressing room so that the real Chase can emerge and shout his “Live from New York!” start to the show. 

Anyway, just a reminder that Saturday Night Live was using Donald Trump as a foil decades before Alec Baldwin threw on that dumb wig.