I don’t know of whom I’m more jealous, Lorne Michaels or Susan Morrison. The latter’s “Lorne” is one of the best biographies I’ve ever read. It’s as though she videotaped his life and the lives of everyone he’s ever spoken to, edited out all the boring parts and left us a book rich in details and anecdotes.
Her achievement is all the more remarkable because Michaels and his “Saturday Night Live” already are reasonably well known, but even more so because he is a complex, not easily definable subject.
Michaels (born Lorne Lipowitz) was raised in a middle-class, Jewish family in Toronto. His father died when Lorne was 13, but Lorne found solace with an uncle who encouraged his show business wanderlust.
He enjoyed success as a writer and performer in clubs and on Canadian radio and television. The same goes for when he moved to Los Angeles and worked as a writer, then producer of television shows such as “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” a Flip Wilson special and “The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show.” “Despite the success,” Morrison writes, “Michaels was nagged by a mental picture of what his career should be.”
He wanted to produce the show he imagined in his head. Working with Lily Tomlin on several specials came close, but it was thanks to Johnny Carson that he finally got his chance.
Carson insisted that his network, NBC, halt Saturday night re-runs of his “Tonight Show.” Afraid local stations would reclaim that time slot if network executives didn’t offer a viable alternative, they searched for a replacement. Enter Michaels.
His pitch was honest, billing the show as “new wine in old bottles.”
”We will always be experimenting on the air and responding to our mistakes,“ Michaels promised. ”I know what the ingredients are, but not the recipe.”
