Dolly Parton Was Game for an ‘SNL’ Sketch That Raquel Welch Refused to Do

Raquel Welch and Saturday Night Live weren’t a match made in comedy heaven. The actress was assigned a “babysitter” to keep her out of Lorne Michaels’ hair when she hosted in 1976, according to Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live. Welch was attempting to make the transition from 1960s sex symbol to Vegas-style dynamo. What could SNL do with a talent like this?

Welch had ideas, like this bizarro, high-kickin’ musical number. SNL viewers must have felt like they were watching a hybrid of a Donny and Marie variety show and a late-night Skinemax movie. 

Of course, SNL writers had their own pitches, mostly centered on her cleavage. Chevy Chase had a brilliant idea — every time Welch was on-screen, he wanted the camera to slowly drift from her face to her breasts. Even funnier (to Chase): No one would tell Welch this was happening, though she’d presumably catch on when the camera tilted down. Michaels nixed the idea.

She also gave the thumbs down to a Michael O’Donoghue parody of the Hindenburg disaster, with her boobs playing the part of the famous zeppelin. At one point, special effects would have made her chest burst into flames, presumably while a narrator cried out, “Oh, the humanity!”

A third sketch actually made it into a book of Saturday Night Live sketches published in 1977, though it’s crossed out with a big red X along with the word “CUT.” Written by Al Franken and Tom Davis, “Planet of the Enormous Hooters” would have featured Jane Curtin, Gilda Radner and Laraine Newman dressed in futuristic space costumes complete with “the biggest breasts that Costumes can come up with.” 

The fake trailer for a sci-fi adventure would have starred Welch as the woman with the smallest bosom on the planet Estrogen. Ridiculed by her peers, Welch was banished to Earth, where “your undersized breasts will go unnoticed and you may live your life in anonymity.”

The sketch was considered long enough for the wardrobe department to design and create costumes with prodigious chests, but Welch ultimately vetoed the sketch.

Franken and Davis would have been justified in thinking their script was dead forever — the entire joke is that the host’s outrageously ample chest would be considered undersized in this fictional world. The bit simply wouldn’t make sense unless a similarly endowed host showed up someday — like Dolly Parton in 1989.

Parton had a different sense of humor than Welch. “I loved Dolly Parton,” Jan Hooks said in oral history Live From New York. “She came in and said, ‘Look, okay, here’s the deal. I won’t use any cuss words, and I won’t make fun of Jesus.’ Those were her two demands. And anything else was carte blanche.”

So Parton performed “Planet of the Enormous Hooters” almost exactly as written nearly 15 years earlier. Hooks, Nora Dunn and Victoria Jackson took over for Newman, Radner and Curtin. Does the bit hold up? Give Franken and Davis credit — it’s a one-joke sketch, and they knew enough to get an initial shock-laugh at the ridiculous costumes and then end it quickly. 

SNL did a similar gag with the Widettes, a family with enormous asses, that inexplicably recurred three times in the late 1970s. 

Gigantic boobs and butts are good for a laugh, but a little bit goes a long way.