Mardi Gras Was the Site of ‘SNL’s Most Disastrous Show
In the annals of “things that have gone wrong on Saturday NIght Live” — Ashlee Simpson’s lip-synching disaster, Charles Rocket’s inopportune F-bomb, slam dancers destroying Studio 8H during a Fear performance — no individual episode can compare to the debacle surrounding the show’s live, prime-time special from Mardi Gras in 1977.
Saturday Night had become the hottest show on TV, and NBC was ready to cash in on that early success with a primetime special. Lorne Michaels was eager to take his show on the road, using iconic cities’ architecture as urban comedy sets. When someone suggested New Orleans as a possible destination, Michaels was all for it. “Let’s go get steeped in it!” he proclaimed, according to Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live.
The cast was stoked as well. Who wouldn’t want to escape New York’s winter for a week or two in the sunshine? And New Orleans was Garrett Morris’ hometown, a chance for a local-boy-made-good to show off.
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The problem was the plan to center the show around Mardi Gras. Staging sketches around the city, per Michaels’ plan, would be difficult at any time of year. Add thousands of drunken partiers to the mix and you’re flirting with disaster, SNL’s production crew warned. But Michaels had the city’s mayor on board, who promised plenty of police support, the travel bureau and one of his personal aides. What could go wrong?
In a word? Everything. The plan was to broadcast from six different locations around the city, but setting up equipment, lights and reliable power sources proved difficult thanks to drunken tourists crowding the streets. Many of the show’s cast members joined them — with hotel rooms in the French Quarter, the electric nightlife distracted from preparing the show. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, predictably, found trouble right away, writing a sketch about the Bees in a motorcycle gang so they could rent Harleys on NBC’s dime and cruise around the Quarter.
Police security didn’t show up as promised, making rehearsals in live locations around the city a nightmare. When Michael O’Donoghue stood on a balcony to lead tourists in his silly Antler Dance, he was pelted by beer cans and Jack Daniels bottles.
The show was supposed to open with Aykroyd as Jimmy Carter sitting on the back of a horse on Andrew Jackson’s statue in Jackson Square. Ten minutes before the broadcast, the remote van lost power. Michaels threw up. Meanwhile, Belushi was locked in his hotel room refusing to perform, feeling the effects of nonstop partying in the days leading up to the show. When a producer finally convinced him to do his job, Belushi had to sprint to his first location.
A bit with TV’s Laverne and Shirley, Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall, went askew when the director lost contact with Michaels. Once Williams and Marshall were live on the air, they were oblivious despite crew members yelling, “You’re on! You’re on!”
Michaels’ safety net had always been to cut to Jane Curtin and Buck Henry when things went sideways. The two were on a podium above the Mardi Gras parade route — the two could vamp about the bands and floats in a pinch. But the parade got off to a late start, leaving Curtin and Henry with nothing to talk about, other than the wasted men below hollering for Curtin to take her shirt off.
It was worse for Gilda Radner, dressed as Emily Litella and talking to a riverboat captain. When three or four drunken revelers pounced and began pawing her, crew members and cops had to peel the men off and escort Radner to safety.
As for poor Garrett Morris? His one sketch was cut, and he threatened to quit the show for good.
“Every minute of it was weirder than every other minute,” remembered Henry, according to Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live. The New Orleans show was “the only time I’ve ever seen Lorne shaken,” said musical guest Randy Newman, who had to do four songs because nothing else was working. “He said he just had to go to bed for a while.”
There’s a reason you’ve never seen the special. Video is nearly impossible to find. Prior to Mardi Gras, NBC has considered putting Michaels in charge of all late-night programming. The comedy catastrophe in New Orleans ended that talk for decades.
