Country of origin United States Original network NBC | No. of episodes 20 | |
Original release September 24, 1977 (1977-09-24) – May 20, 1978 (1978-05-20) | ||
The third season of Saturday Night Live, an American sketch comedy series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between September 24, 1977, and May 20, 1978.
Contents
In the "Anyone Can Host" episode—for which a contest found a non-celebrity to host the show—the musical guest, Elvis Costello, halted his band, the Attractions, seven seconds into the song "Less Than Zero", launching into "Radio Radio", an as-yet unreleased song critical of mainstream broadcasting. (The Sex Pistols were originally booked to appear on the show, but were denied visas to enter America.) The change angered Lorne Michaels, who banned future appearances on the show for a while. Costello would not be invited back to the show until 1989.
Chevy Chase hosted during the season, making him the first cast member to host after leaving the show. Right before the end-of-the-show onstage goodbyes, a loud altercation broke out backstage between Chase and relatively new cast member Bill Murray. After several insults were exchanged (including Chase referencing Murray's acne scarred skin and Murray calling Chase a "medium talent"), the two actors began to physically attack each other. Although by most accounts the fight had been at least partially instigated by John Belushi, he was the one (along with Dan Aykroyd) that broke up the Murray and Chase only moments before the entire cast regrouped on stage in front of the live television cameras. Chase would host the show several times throughout the show's history, though he was unpopular with the cast and crew.
The DVD set of the entire season was released on May 13, 2008.
Cast
bold denotes Weekend Update anchor
Writers
Tom Davis and Al Franken got prominent amounts of screen time. Brian Doyle-Murray and Don Novello joined the writing staff. Michael O'Donoghue temporarily left the show.
This season's writers were Dan Aykroyd, Anne Beatts, Tom Davis, Jim Downey, Brian Doyle-Murray, Al Franken, Neil Levy, Lorne Michaels, Marilyn Suzanne Miller, Don Novello, Michael O'Donoghue, Herb Sargent, Tom Schiller, Rosie Schuster and Alan Zweibel. The head writer, like the previous season, was Michael O'Donoghue.
DVD release
Season 3 was released on DVD May 13, 2008