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Anne Beatts, original SNL writer who broke into boys’ comedy club, dies at 74

 


Her longtime writing and production partner Eve Brandstein confirmed the death but said she did not know the cause.

Ms Beatts had written for National Lampoon and the Village Voice before she was hired for Saturday Night Live with then-boyfriend Michael ODonoghue. Along with Marilyn Suzanne Miller and Rosie Shuster, she was one of three women in the shows’ original writers room, a space that made her feel like Wendy on Lost Boys Island, as she said more late.

Established in 1975, SNL, initially known as NBCs Saturday Night, became a surprise hit, turning actors such as Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Laraine Newman and Gilda Radner into stars. Behind the scenes, artists and writers frequently fought, dated, split up and partied, in what Ms Beatts described as a combination of summer camp and concentration camp.

It was pretty much any adjective you wanted to throw at her, she told the Orange County Register. in 2013. It was exciting, stimulating and fabulous. It was also horrible, boring and exhausting.

Ms Beatts worked at SNL until 1980, partnering with Shuster to create recurring characters such as Uncle Roy, a pedophile babysitter played by guest host Buck Henry and Aykroyds. Irwin Mainway, a chairman of a toy company whose merchandise includes a Johnny Switchblade rubber doll and the aptly named Bag OGlass, which costs $ 1.98.

They were also responsible for Aykroyds Fred Garvin: male prostitute, which offers its clients professional hygiene, discretion and animal gratification, and for the Nerds, a teenage duo that included Todd DiLaMuca (Bill Murray) and bespectacled, Tang-drinking Lisa Loopner (Radner).

Ms Beatts also wrote parody ads, appearing in a as a Cleveland housewife, nuclear physicist and consumer affairs commissioner. How does Ellen Sherman do all of this? She’s smart, a voiceover says as Ms. Beatts recounts her hobbies. She takes Speed. Yes, Speed: The tiny blue diet pill you don’t need to be overweight.

While at SNL, Ms. Beatts shared five Emmy nominations for Outstanding Writing in a Variety Comedy or Musical Series, winning one in 1976, according to IMDb. Yet even though her writing garnered praise, she maintained a complicated relationship with cast members such as Belushi, whom she described as a genius who resented her job.

In a 2009 interview with the television academy, she said Belushi told SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels to fire women writers. He used to refuse to be in pieces that we wrote, she added. Years later, when she created and produced Square Pegs, she hired five writers and one man.

She gave a lot of women their breaks, said Brandstein, who worked as a casting director for the show. The first thing I did with her was Square Pegs and she put together an almost all-female staff. It was really rare. She was truly a pioneer and a lawyer.

First on CBS in 1982, the sitcom starred Sarah Jessica Parker and Amy Linker as teenage girls trying to fit into Weemawee High School, even though it kills us. Washington Post television critic Tom Shales called the series an oasis of delight, while others were amazed that a producer had managed to launch her own prime-time show.

Mary Tyler Moore had Grant Tinker, Carol Burnett had Joe Hamilton, and Lucy had Desi; Anne Beatts a chutzpah, wrote Popular magazines Joshua Hammer.

After 20 episodes, Square Pegs was canceled. In the TV Academy interview, Ms Beatts recalled that she was treated with a certain degree of disbelief and disrespect when working on the show, which was in part inspired by her own adolescence as a disgusting young girl who had started high school at age 12, with one of the glasses and a dry sense of humor.

I always thought that if I died I would, the ex-writer of Saturday Night Live dies in a plane crash, she said. If they could add the Square Pegs credit in there, that would be nice.

Anne Patricia Beatts was born in Buffalo on February 25, 1947 and raised in Somers, New York. His parents were teachers. She studied English at McGill University in Montreal, where she wrote for the school newspaper, and worked as a copywriter in Toronto before moving to New York.

At that point, she was interested in acting and had decided that there was only one way to break into the field. Like she said: you needed a guy to come into the room.

Her breakthrough came from Michel Choquette, a writer she was dating and who worked at National Lampoon, which was started in 1970. He began to bring her to editorial meetings, held at restaurants in town.

The other writers of those dinners couldn’t say let her eat at home, preferably with a doggie dish because I was there, she told Rolling Stone. in 1983. I wasn’t about to leave and didn’t know anyone else in New York. They weren’t used to having daughters. I was the first woman they let in.

As the magazine’s first editor-in-chief, Ms Beatts was perhaps best known for writing the slogan for a fake Volkswagen ad referring to Senator Edward M. Kennedys’ car crash on Chappaquiddick Island : If Ted Kennedy drove a Volkswagen, he would be president today.

Within a few years, she had left National Lampoon and was living with ODonoghue, who recommended her to Lorne Michaels. She thought I hired her for the wrong reasons because ODonoghue was her boyfriend then and when we met she was both friendly and suspicious, Michaels told Rolling Stone. She was a bit combative. But that was in 1975. Everyone was a bit combative in 1975.

Ms Beatts said she was reluctant to take the job, believing that the television was just a lava lamp with sound. She had worked on a book and wanted to finish it. Michaels said she could do both, and in 1976 she released Titters: The First Collection of Humor By Women, an anthology she edited with Deanne Stillman.

She later co-wrote a Broadway comedy show for Radner, which director Mike Nichols adapted into the 1980 film Gilda Live, and wrote the book for the Leader of the Pack musical jukebox. For television, she wrote for shows such as Murphy Brown and produced the first season of A Different World, a spinoff of The Cosby Show.

In recent years, she has taught at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., And was working on the launch of a Blues Brothers animated series, based on the SNL characters played by Belushi and Aykroyd. She was also developing two TV shows with Brandstein: The Girl in the Room, a documentary series about women in comedy, and Funny Boys, a comedy based on her years at National Lampoon.

Survivors include a daughter, Jaylene Beatts, of West Hollywood; a sister; and a brother.

I’m a self-proclaimed satirist, Ms Beatts told Rolling Stone during the making of Square Pegs. I’ve always wanted to use the self-proclaimed word about myself, but I really am. I have my own style. Humor is a weapon for me. When you are unpopular and stay on the sidelines, you develop a keen sense of observation. At one point I learned that these sightings could be fun and that being funny was a way of being popular.

I think people who were really popular in high school never go beyond that, she added. The most successful people I know now were square pegs in high school.

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