Anne Beatts, who wrote for “Saturday Night Live” from its beginning in 1975 until 1980, a raucous, innovative period that established the show as a central feature of the American cultural landscape, died on Wednesday at her home in West Hollywood, Calif. She was 74.
Her family announced the death in a statement. The cause was not specified.
Ms. Beatts had written for National Lampoon and other outlets when the producer Lorne Michaels signed her for a new late-night sketch show to be aired live on NBC on Saturdays.
“I was lucky that when Lorne Michaels came looking for women comedy writers there weren’t too many in New York at the time,” she told The Orange County Register in 2013. “I was at the top of a very short list.”
The show’s early years featured cast members who quickly became household names, like Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase and John Belushi. The show’s writers often worked in pairs, and Ms. Beatts frequently wrote with Rosie Shuster, creating sketches like the “Nerds” series, which featured Lisa Loopner (Ms. Radner) and Todd DiLaMuca (Bill Murray), a spectacularly awkward couple.
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“That was probably our biggest hit,” Ms. Beatts told The Register.
Image
Ms. Beatts, kneeling, with Lorne Michaels (standing, right), the producer of “S.N.L.,” and a number of the show’s writers and performers, including Al Franken, Dan Aykroyd, Michael O’Donoghue, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray and Ms. Beatts’s frequent writing partner, Rosie Shuster, seated behind her.Credit...Lynn Goldsmith
Ms. Shuster, in a phone interview, said that she and Ms. Beatts had made a point of writing material for the women in the “S.N.L.” troupe. And, she said, Ms. Beatts had no problem holding her own in the largely male “S.N.L.” writers’ room.
“Because she had worked at the Lampoon with a lot of guys, she wasn’t a shrinking violet,” Ms. Shuster said.
Alan Zweibel, who was a part of that room, remembered a humorist with an edge.
“Her words were like weapons — really sharp, really satirical,” he said. “Not only was there a wit; there was a little bit of anger there. But it landed.”
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Ms. Beatts often wrote the parodies of TV commercials that the show used at the time, and sometimes she appeared in them. Mr. Zweibel especially remembered an absurdly overachieving housewife she played in one fake ad — the woman’s secret was a product called Speed.
Ms. Beatts, Mr. Zweibel said, “came at things from a different angle,” a quality the cast member Laraine Newman also remembered.
“Anne Beatts’s writing was very personal and specific,” she said by email. “She brought things to the fore that we all knew about but weren’t depicted or defined. For instance, the Nerds. That was so Anne in its detail. The fact that Lisa Loopner ate egg salad sandwiches. Her writing was very direct, muscular and dark at times, and who doesn’t love that?”
Having explored nerdiness with Lisa and Todd, Ms. Beatts drew from that well again after leaving “S.N.L.” in 1980. In 1982 she created “Square Pegs,” a CBS comedy series that lasted only 20 episodes but anticipated the trend of TV shows about the pressures and pitfalls of high school as experienced by the outcast crowd. It centered on two awkward girls, Patty and Lauren, who were constantly under siege by the cool kids.
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Her family announced the death in a statement. The cause was not specified.
Ms. Beatts had written for National Lampoon and other outlets when the producer Lorne Michaels signed her for a new late-night sketch show to be aired live on NBC on Saturdays.
“I was lucky that when Lorne Michaels came looking for women comedy writers there weren’t too many in New York at the time,” she told The Orange County Register in 2013. “I was at the top of a very short list.”
The show’s early years featured cast members who quickly became household names, like Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase and John Belushi. The show’s writers often worked in pairs, and Ms. Beatts frequently wrote with Rosie Shuster, creating sketches like the “Nerds” series, which featured Lisa Loopner (Ms. Radner) and Todd DiLaMuca (Bill Murray), a spectacularly awkward couple.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
“That was probably our biggest hit,” Ms. Beatts told The Register.
Image
Ms. Beatts, kneeling, with Lorne Michaels (standing, right), the producer of “S.N.L.,” and a number of the show’s writers and performers, including Al Franken, Dan Aykroyd, Michael O’Donoghue, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray and Ms. Beatts’s frequent writing partner, Rosie Shuster, seated behind her.Credit...Lynn Goldsmith
Ms. Shuster, in a phone interview, said that she and Ms. Beatts had made a point of writing material for the women in the “S.N.L.” troupe. And, she said, Ms. Beatts had no problem holding her own in the largely male “S.N.L.” writers’ room.
“Because she had worked at the Lampoon with a lot of guys, she wasn’t a shrinking violet,” Ms. Shuster said.
Alan Zweibel, who was a part of that room, remembered a humorist with an edge.
“Her words were like weapons — really sharp, really satirical,” he said. “Not only was there a wit; there was a little bit of anger there. But it landed.”
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Ms. Beatts often wrote the parodies of TV commercials that the show used at the time, and sometimes she appeared in them. Mr. Zweibel especially remembered an absurdly overachieving housewife she played in one fake ad — the woman’s secret was a product called Speed.
Ms. Beatts, Mr. Zweibel said, “came at things from a different angle,” a quality the cast member Laraine Newman also remembered.
“Anne Beatts’s writing was very personal and specific,” she said by email. “She brought things to the fore that we all knew about but weren’t depicted or defined. For instance, the Nerds. That was so Anne in its detail. The fact that Lisa Loopner ate egg salad sandwiches. Her writing was very direct, muscular and dark at times, and who doesn’t love that?”
Having explored nerdiness with Lisa and Todd, Ms. Beatts drew from that well again after leaving “S.N.L.” in 1980. In 1982 she created “Square Pegs,” a CBS comedy series that lasted only 20 episodes but anticipated the trend of TV shows about the pressures and pitfalls of high school as experienced by the outcast crowd. It centered on two awkward girls, Patty and Lauren, who were constantly under siege by the cool kids.
Anne Beatts, Original ‘S.N.L.’ Writer, Dies at 74 (Published 2021)
Often writing with Rosie Shuster, she created memorable sketches in the show’s early years, including ones involving those nerds Lisa and Todd.
