The early years of Saturday Night Live weren’t exactly the most sober. In retrospect, Lorne Michaels probably should have credited a giant baggy of cocaine as one of the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players.” But even though the cast was far from clear-headed, an early host’s drinking problem was so severe that it nearly derailed the entire show.
During its second season in March of 1977, SNL featured host Broderick Crawford, the legendary actor best known for his Oscar-winning performance in All the King’s Men.
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Unfortunately, Crawford was a severe alcoholic, whose drinking became so bad that he was “arrested several times for DUI.” Oddly enough, this happened while he was working on the TV cop show Highway Patrol.
In a recent interview with The A.V. Club, Dan Aykroyd was asked about the one and only time that Crawford hosted SNL. Aykroyd recounted that Michaels begged Crawford to “watch the drinking” during the show. Crawford’s response? “Lorne, it’s St. Patrick’s Day! Of course I’m gonna get drunk!”
Yeah, apparently someone at SNL thought it would be a good idea to invite an elderly actor famous for his prodigious imbibing to host the show on the Saturday after St. Patrick’s Day! Luckily, Crawford had a solution, “I’ll do the monologue from a chair,” he told Michaels.
“And he did,” Aykroyd recalled. “He did it from a chair. And he was great! He was solid.”
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Neil Levy, a production assistant at the time, claimed that “Broderick Crawford was completely drunk all the time.” And Michales tasked Levy (his cousin) with making sure that Crawford didn’t get totally wasted while rehearsing the show, which proved to be more difficult than you might think.
“Lorne had given me very explicit instructions: ‘You have to stay with him all the time.’ And Crawford tried to trick me.” The actor, then in his late 60s, actually managed to escape at one point. “He’d always try to get to the elevator,” Levy explained, “I’d say, ‘Where are you going?’ He’d say, ‘I gotta go find my script, I left my script downstairs.’ I’d say, ‘I’ll go with you.’ ‘No, you don’t need to come with me.’”
“He did get away from me once,” Levy admitted, “and I found him in a bar.”
Future news anchor and one-time SNL host Brian Williams was actually at the taping of that episode, and later remarked that he was “horrified to see (Crawford) taking oxygen during breaks,” adding, “I believe it remains on Lorne’s list of the top five all-time worst shows.”
Of course, Crawford wasn’t the only SNL guest to drink too much during a show night. The late Kris Kristofferson was, according to Levy, “completely wasted” and unable to say his lines during dress rehearsal, prompting Michaels to order his staff to find “the biggest coffee pot you can.” And The Replacements were famously banned from the show after getting drunk with host Harry Dean Stanton.
Which seems a little hypocritical considering how much airtime they gave to Drunk Uncle.