GARRETT MORRIS: THE EARLY YEARS

The first seasons of Saturday Night Live feature big names we all remember. Bill Murray, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase (OK, we remember Chevy but we don’t have to like him). Most of them went on to movie stardom, celebrity rehab, or both. But there’s one name we hear about much less: Garrett Morris.

Which is strange. Garrett Morris was the first Black performer on Saturday Night Live, paving the way for Black actors in televised sketch comedy. Without Garrett Morris, is there an Eddie Murphy? How about Tracy Morgan or Kenan Thompson? Morris laid the groundwork for Key & Peele and the ladies on A Black Lady Sketch Show.

 
One would think he would be a greater presence in the pantheon of beloved SNL performers. One would think we’d celebrate him every Black History Month. Or that he would constantly be welcomed back to the SNL stage alongside all the other legendary living alums of this show. But he is often forgotten or sidelined.

 
The sad truth? Garrett Morris’s time on the historic comedy show isn’t remembered as a precious moment in comedic history. Rather, it is a bitter time capsule filled with disrespect, heavy drug use, and racism.

 
There was a lot of turmoil for Morris to get onto that Studio 8H stage in the first place.
He came to the show a trained theater actor, not an improv Second City guy like Belushi or Aykroyd. While he did have an improvisational background, it looked a lot different than his castmates’ experiences in Chicago and Toronto.

 
“I learned improv with Imamu Amiri Baraka, not at Second City. And the workshops were more about talking about problems in the ghetto — the aim wasn’t necessarily comedy,” Morris confessed to Maya Rudolph in the Hollywood Reporter. “So, when John Belushi and Gilda Radner got into Saturday Night Live, they had a comedy range from one to a hundred. My range was from “Hate Whitey” to “Kill Whitey.”

Though he was light on improv training, Morris arrived at SNL with some serious chops in his toolbelt. Morris began his journey in show business as a playwright; in fact, he exclusively thought of himself as one. “Mind you, I had two plays that had been produced in New York City,” Morris remembers. “In fact, New York commissioned a play from your boy, okay, and then I wrote another play, which was produced in New York and in L.A.”

 
With his theater work proving successful, it was a leap of faith for Morris to even take the TV job. But despite his reservations, he entered the Saturday Night Live fray as a writer. That position seems like a natural fit given his background but trying to transition from plays to sketch proved to be a challenge for Morris. “I’m a playwright, so I was having trouble getting my stuff down to a minute or a minute and a half, to fit into some sketch.”

 
In addition to the writing challenges, Morris was met with America’s pastime: racism. “I was a little disappointed in Michael O’Donoghue,” Morris remembers. “Because he was associated with National Lampoon, I made some progressive assumptions I shouldn’t have made. He was a racist motherfucker. I suggested I could play in this skit, a doctor. He had the nerve to tell me, ‘Garrett, people would be thrown by a Black doctor.’ … So once or twice, he and I did some stuff together, but I always knew what he really was.”

Being the only Black person in the room is never easy. Often, the solo Black person in question will think the racist comment or moment was in their head, or even that they made it up. Fortunately for Morris (or unfortunately, depending on how you see it), he knew his perception of racist behavior wasn’t simply one man’s opinion. Other cast members noticed what was going on.

 
“Garrett was treated horribly, horribly— by the writers, by some of the performers, and Lorne,” notes OG cast member Jane Curtin. “They just dismissed him... I found it amazing that he let it go on for as long as it did, but it took its toll, it clearly took its toll on Garrett.”

 
So the problem wasn’t just making the transition from theater to TV. It was personal. Morris was not liked by his fellow writers. His sketches were not getting put on the air, not being taken seriously, and even worse, they were stolen.

 
“The first three months or so, a guy there stole an idea and then added a little something to it, and he didn’t even give me credit for co-writing,” Morris remembers about one particularly egregious example of joke theft. “This guy stole from me and then told Lorne I couldn’t write.”

There was a silent coup underway, led by white writers, to oust Garrett Morris from the writer’s room. What was head honcho Lorne Michaels’ response? Put Garrett Morris in the cast! You can’t say Lorne didn’t get creative.

 
“When the challenge came to get rid of me as a writer, Lorne let me audition for the Not Ready for Prime Time Players,” Morris remembers. “He did not fire me. And to this day, I am thankful for that.”

MUSIC BREAK: NOEL COWARD - LET'S DO IT

HISTORY OF A SONG: LET'S DO IT

Songwriter Cole Porter has recorded many controversial songs in his long career, but the lyrics to "Let's Do It" are probably his most controversial. The first of Porter's "list songs", it features a string of suggestive and droll comparisons and examples, preposterous pairings and double entendres, dropping famous names and events, drawing from highbrow and popular culture. Porter was a strong admirer of the Savoy operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, many of whose stage works featured similar comic list songs.

The first refrain covers human ethnic groups, the second refrain birds, the third refrain marine life, the fourth refrain insects and centipedes, and the fifth refrain non-human mammals.

With "Let's do 'it'" a euphemism for sexual intercourse in English, author Sheldon Patinkin wrote that it was "the first hit song to proclaim openly that sex is fun."  The author of Staging Desire: Queer Readings of American Theater History drew a line from Porter's use of barely veiled double entendres such as "Moths in your rugs do it, What's the use of moth-balls?" to his "pleasure" in barely masking his homosexuality from the public.

The song has regularly lent itself over the years to the addition of contemporary or topical stanzas. For example, in 1955 the lines "Even Liberace, we assume, does it," "Ernest Hemingway could just do it" and many more were added by Noël Coward in his Las Vegas cabaret performance of the song, in which he replaced most of Porter's lyrics with his own.

In Porter's publication from 1928, the opening lines for the chorus carried three derogatory racial references: Chinks, Japs, and Laps.

The original was:

Chinks do it, Japs do it,
up in Lapland little Laps do it...

The original line can be heard in several early recordings of the song, such as a recording made by the Dorsey Brothers & their Orchestra (featuring a vocal by a young Bing Crosby), Rudy Vallée, Paul Whiteman And His Orchestra, all in 1928, and a version of the song by the singer and well-known Broadway star Mary Martin (with Ray Sinatra's orchestra), recorded in 1944. Another example is Billie Holiday, in 1941.  Peggy Lee with the Benny Goodman orchestra recorded a version in 1941 with these lyrics.

CBS came up with less offensive lyrics, which NBC adopted, and changed the opening to the refrain: "Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it." when they recognized that the line was offensive...

RECENTLY VIEWED: MARTIN SHORT - LIFE IS SHORT

I am a sucker for a good documentary, especially on my favorite stars. I just finished watching Martin Short: Life Is Short, and it is one of the better documentaries I have seen. This is actually my third one of the year. I also watched the Chevy Chase documentary as well as the John Candy one. After I saw the Chevy Chase one, I disliked him more. After I saw the John Candy one, I felt sad for him. However, after seeing the Martin Short documentary, I surprisingly felt good even though Short has been through his share of tragedy.

Martin Short is a comedy legend to multiple generations.In the 1980s, he created one brilliant character after another with SCTV and Saturday Night Live — from the hyperactive Wheel of Fortune superfan Ed Grimley to the hyper-defensive lawyer Nathan Thurm.Then in the 2000s, he gave the world the clueless film buff Jiminy Glick — and most recently, podcasting sleuth Oliver Putnam on Only Murders in the Building.

In February, after the documentary was finished, his daughter, Katherine, took her own life at the age of 42.Short told Morning Edition host A Martínez, "The reality is that my daughter had a severe disease: mental illness. Like cancer, some diseases are terminal. And hers was terminal."

Short says the documentary's director, Lawrence Kasdan, suggested postponing the film's release.

"My instinct was the opposite," Short said. "Because it's about love, loss and survival… I think we proceed. We must figure a way to survive through grief without denying it or without in any way undermining its importance."

The documentary reveals just how often Short has had to endure the deaths of family members. Between the ages of 12 and 20, he lost his father, mother and brother. Then in 2010, his wife, Nancy Dolman, succumbed to ovarian cancer. Their blissful relationship is a highlight of the film, as told through Short's own home videos.

"When I first saw a rough cut of this documentary," Short remembered, "I said to Larry Kasdan, 'I didn't know you were in love with Nancy!' Because it is a love letter to her."

If you didn't like Martin Short - watch the documentary still because you will like him more after. The home movies were touching, and it showed the absolute love Martin and Nancy had for each other as well as the amount of love everyone has in the business for Martin Short. This documentary has done something none of the others have, it has made me cry. The documentary feels short (no pun intended), because it is so interesting! 

MY RATING : 10 OUT OF 10

MUSIC BREAK: BENNY GOODMAN - LET'S DO IT

HOLLYWOOD URBAN LEGEND: JUDY HOLLIDAY

URBAN LEGEND: Was actress Judy Holliday, who sometimes played dumb blondes on the screen really a genius?

ANSWER: YES!

A New York girl, born and raised, Judith Tuvim was the only child of parents Abe Tuvimand Helen. In school, she excelled in academics, winning several awards for her skills as a writer. While in her early teens, she developed what would become a life-long love for theater. In 1938, she made her professional debut as part of a nightclub act called "The Revuers". Her partners in the act included aspiring playwrights Betty Comden and Adolph Green. "The Revuers" had a loyal following and even their own weekly radio show on NBC. In 1944, The Revuers broke up after a failed attempt to break into films. Judith adopted the stage name of "Judy Holliday" as part of a "makeover" process that was orchestrated by 20th Century Fox.

Despite her image as a "dumb blonde", Judy Holliday had an IQ of 172. She often said that it took a lot of smarts to convince people that her characters were stupid. "You have to be smart to play a dumb blonde over and over and keep the audience's attention without extraordinary physical equipment."

A MOMENT WITH ED O'NEIL

Ed O’Neill, remembered as Al Bundy from Married with Children, never wanted to return to sitcoms. By 2008 he was semiretired, enjoying life in Hawaii, and pursuing occasional dramatic roles. When asked to meet Modern Family creators Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan, he resisted, declaring he was done with sitcoms. Even after agreeing, he warned them: “I did eleven years on Married with Children, and that’s enough.” His aversion came from disliking live-audience formats, which he felt ruined timing. The creators pitched their idea differently—two cameras, shot like a movie—and eventually convinced him to read the script. He was struck by its quality: “Oh shit, this is good.”

But O’Neill wasn’t the obvious choice. Craig T. Nelson was initially favored, chosen after a literal coin toss. Nelson, however, demanded star money, and his reputation for being difficult, coupled with a controversial remark, soured the network. In contrast, everyone described O’Neill as humble and easy to work with. Willing to take less money, he embodied the grounded patriarch Jay Pritchett. The role reinvented his career, balancing humor with gravitas. For O’Neill, Modern Family was more than a hit: it validated his craft and gave him a second iconic character...