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      Herbert Schlosser, a Force Behind ‘S.N.L.’ and ‘Laugh-In,’ Dies at 95

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      As a top NBC executive, he wrote a memo envisioning the show that became “Saturday Night Live.” He also helped recruit Johnny Carson and oversaw a raft of hit shows.Herbert Schlosser, a longtime NBC executive who put an indelible stamp on the network by negotiating Johnny Carson’s first deal to host “The Tonight Show,” putting “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” on the air and overseeing the development of “Saturday Night Live,” died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 95.His death was confirmed by his wife, Judith Schlosser.Mr. Schlosser was president of NBC in 1974 when he faced a late-night predicament: Carson no longer wanted the network to carry repeats of “Tonight” on weekends. But pleasing Carson, the network’s most important star, led to an inevitable question: What would NBC televise at 11:30 on Saturday nights?Mr. Schlosser wrote a memo in early 1975 that laid out the fundamentals of an original program that would be televised from NBC’s headquarters at Rockefeller Center; would be carried live, or at least taped on the same day, to maintain its topicality; would be “young and bright,” with a “distinctive look, a distinctive set and a distinctive sound”; would “seek to develop new television personalities”; and would have a different host each week.“Saturday Night is an ideal time to launch a show like this,” Mr. Schlosser wrote. “Those who now take the Saturday/Sunday ‘Tonight Show’ repeats should welcome this, and I would imagine we would get much greater clearance with a new show.”A sketch from the first episode of “Saturday Night Live,” seen on Oct. 11, 1975; from left, George Coe, John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner. The formula for the show had been spelled out in a memo by Mr. Schlosser earlier that year.Herb Ball/NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty Images“Saturday Night Live,” originally called just “Saturday Night” — which followed much of Mr. Schlosser’s formula, and which was produced, then as now, by Lorne Michaels — made its debut on Oct. 11, 1975, after Game 1 of the World Series, between the Red Sox and Cincinnati Reds. Mr. Schlosser had attended the game in Boston with Bowie Kuhn, the strait-laced baseball commissioner, and invited him to his hotel room to watch.“He didn’t laugh. And I thought, ‘Well, that’s Bowie,’” Mr. Schlosser recalled in “Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of ‘Saturday Night Live’ as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests” (2002), by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales. “And then after a while, he started to chuckle. And then he’d actually laugh. And I figured, ‘Well, if he likes it, it’s going to have a wider audience than most people think.’”Mr. Michaels, in a phone interview, said that Mr. Schlosser had been a staunch backer of the show.“We wouldn’t have been on the air without him,” he said. “‘Live’ was his idea, not mine. He just believed in the show. He protected it.”Mr. Schlosser, a lawyer, had been an executive in NBC’s business affairs department, where he negotiated programming contracts to carry, among other events, the 1964 Summer Olympics from Tokyo and talent deals like ones with the comedian Bob Hope, whose specials were a mainstay of NBC’s prime-time schedule.“There were always kickers to his deals,” Mr. Schlosser told the Television Academy in an interview in 2007. With each new one, NBC had to buy a piece of land from Hope, one of the largest private landowners in California.“We bought it, got capital gains and never lost money on it,” Mr. Schlosser said.In 1966, Mr. Schlosser was named NBC’s vice president for programs on the West Coast, based in Burbank, Calif. Over six years, he was involved in developing numerous shows, among them some with Black stars, like the popular comedian Flip Wilson’s variety series and “Julia,” a sitcom starring Diahann Carroll as a single nurse with a son. He also hired the first woman and the first Black person to be vice presidents in the department.Flip Wilson, left, and Richard Pryor in 1973 on “The Flip Wilson Show,” which Mr. Schlosser had helped develop.Paul W. Bailey/NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty ImagesMr. Schlosser particularly championed “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” a fast-paced satirical series that made its debut in early 1968. It was considered outrageous then for the political and risqué humor of its skits, performed by a cast of future stars including Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin.George Schlatter, the executive producer of “Laugh-In,” recalled that Mr. Schlosser had protected him from those within NBC who found the show’s content offensive.“Every Tuesday morning there was a parade into his office — censors, lawyers, bookkeepers,” Mr. Schlatter said by phone. “They’d say, ‘Herb, talk to him.’ Then he’d say to me, ‘I promised them I’d talk to you.’ And he’d say, ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing.’”Herbert Samuel Schlosser was born on April 21, 1926, in Atlantic City, N.J. His father, Abraham, owned a furniture store; his mother, Anna (Olesker) Schlosser, was a homemaker.After serving stateside in the Navy, he studied public and international affairs at Princeton University, graduating in 1949. Two years later, he graduated from Yale Law School.He started as a lawyer with a Wall Street firm, but the insurance work there bored him, and he moved to Phillips Nizer Benjamin Krim & Ballon (now called Phillips Nizer LLP), a Manhattan firm with many film and television clients. That experience led to his hiring around 1957 as general counsel of California National Productions, a film, merchandising and syndication subsidiary of NBC. He later became its chief operating officer before moving to NBC’s business affairs department in 1960.Johnny Carson in his first appearance as host of “The Tonight Show,” on Oct. 1, 1962. Mr. Schlosser had led the negotiations that brought him to NBC from ABC.NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty ImagesAs a lawyer with the department, he led the talks to bring Carson to NBC to replace Jack Paar as the host of “Tonight” in 1962. At the time, Carson was with ABC as M.C. of the game show “Who Do You Trust?,” and ABC required him to fulfill the last six months of his contract.Mr. Schlosser said he had agreed to pay Mr. Carson $2,500 a week (about $21,000 today). But when ABC held up his departure, one of Mr. Carson’s agents made a further demand.“He said, ‘Now that you can’t get him, we want more money,’” Mr. Schlosser recalled in the Television Academy interview. “I said, ‘We’re sticking with our price.’”Mr. Schlosser rose steadily at NBC. He was named executive vice president of the television network in 1972; promoted to president a year later; and named president of the National Broadcasting Company, the network’s corporate parent, in 1974 and chief executive in 1977.“He supported quality programs and had an idea that news was probably the most important thing the networks did,” Bud Rukeyser, a former executive vice president of corporate communications for NBC, said in a phone interview. “He gave news the benefit of the doubt. If news wanted a half-hour to do something, the answer was always yes.”But Mr. Schlosser was ousted in 1978 and replaced by Fred Silverman, who had engineered ABC’s rise to first place in prime-time ratings as its chief of programming.Mr. Schlosser’s standing had been hurt by NBC’s inability to produce a new prime-time hit series the previous season and climb out of third place.Shortly before Mr. Schlosser left NBC, the network presented “Holocaust,” a four-part mini-series that he had greenlighted. It won eight Emmy Awards. His main contribution to the project, he said, was persuading the executive producer, Herbert Brodkin, to change the title of the series, which had been called “The Family Weiss,” after some of its main characters.Mr. Schlosser and his wife, Judith, in 2011 at an event held by the Museum of the Moving Image at the Manhattan restaurant Cipriani. Mr. Schlosser was the museum’s first chairman. Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesMr. Schlosser didn’t have to go far for his next job: He was named an executive vice president of RCA, NBC’s parent company. His assignment was to develop software for RCA’s SelectaVision videodisc project. Three years later, he was named to run all of RCA’s entertainment activities, which also included RCA Records (but not NBC).He left in 1985 to become a senior adviser at Wertheim & Company, a Wall Street investment bank, as well as chairman of the planned Museum of the Moving Image, which opened in Queens in 1988. He remained there as either chairman or co-chairman until 2013.In addition to his wife, Judith (Gassner) Schlosser, Mr. Schlosser is survived by his son, Eric, the author of “Fast Food Nation”; a daughter, Lynn Jacobson, a former television executive; five grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.Mr. Schlosser once recalled his certainty that “Saturday Night Live” could be a part of NBC for a long time, just as “Tonight” and “Today” were. Another model of late-night success at NBC under his watch was “The Midnight Special,” a series featuring pop and rock performers, that was broadcast on Fridays after “The Tonight Show” from 1973 until 1981.“NBC had this tradition of succeeding with shows like that,” he told the Television Academy. “To me, it was a no-brainer.” More

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      Cecily Strong Is Starting a New Conversation

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      The “Saturday Night Live” star shares the story of her pandemic experience and a life touched by grief in “This Will All Be Over Soon.”RHINEBECK, N.Y. — It’s hard to think of Cecily Strong and not be reminded of the effusive television characters she plays. If you’re a “Saturday Night Live” fan, you immediately conjure up her exuberant performance as a soused Jeanine Pirro crooning “My Way” while she dunks herself in a tank of wine. Or if you’ve been watching her on the Apple TV+ musical comedy “Schmigadoon!,” you think of her belting out modern-day show tunes praising the pleasures of corn pudding or smooching with a suitor. More

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      Kennedy Center Taps Joni Mitchell and Berry Gordy for Awards

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      Bette Midler, Lorne Michaels and Justino Díaz will also receive tributes at a ceremony that is expected to look much more like it did before the pandemic.The last Kennedy Center Honors aired on television less than two months ago, but on Wednesday, the institution announced a new batch of honorees, taking a step toward getting the program back on schedule after the upheaval of the pandemic.The recipients include the folk singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell; the stage and screen performer Bette Midler; Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown; Lorne Michaels, the creator of “Saturday Night Live”; and the opera singer Justino Díaz.Because of the pandemic, the 2020 honors were delayed until this year and the celebration did not at all resemble the event from prior years, when artists, politicians and other prominent figures packed into the opera house. Instead, the ceremony was split over several days, and television producers stitched together a combination of recorded at-home tributes and in-person performances that aired in June.This time, the ceremony, scheduled for Dec. 5, promises to look more like the Kennedy Center Honors of old, with the house at capacity and, if all goes well, President Biden in attendance. (President Trump was a no-show at the three ceremonies held during his time in office.)Throughout her career, Bette Midler released more than a dozen studio albums. Her starring role in the Broadway revival of “Hello, Dolly!” earned her a Tony Award for best lead actress in a musical in 2017.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“It’s going to be the party to end all parties because we haven’t had one in so long,” said Deborah Rutter, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.The ceremony will air on CBS, but the date has not been set.The honorees, selected on the recommendation of an advisory committee that includes Kennedy Center officials and past award recipients, include two singer-songwriters, Mitchell and Midler, whose careers started to soar in the early 1970s, when they were in their 20s.Fifty years ago, Mitchell, 77, released “Blue,” her fourth album, which went on to have an enduring influence on singer-songwriters for decades to come. Mitchell, who helped shape an era of protest music with songs like “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Woodstock,” said of the honor, “I wish my mother and father were alive to see this.”Midler’s debut album, “The Divine Miss M,” came out a year after “Blue,” and helped propel her into a career that spread to Broadway, television and film. Midler, 75, put out more than a dozen studio albums, and her run as Dolly Levi in the Broadway revival of “Hello, Dolly!” earned her a Tony Award for best lead actress in a musical in 2017.Berry Gordy, right, onstage in 1981 with Smokey Robinson, one of the many singers discovered by Gordy.Joan Adlen/Getty ImagesIn Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, the Kennedy Center is honoring the figure behind an entire generation of musical talent. Gordy, now 91, once borrowed $800 from his family to start the record company and then went on to discover and help ignite the careers of Diana Ross and the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye and more.After announcing his retirement two years ago, Gordy said in an interview, he spends much of his time playing golf, tennis and chess.“Here we are 60 years later and Diana Ross and the Temptations are both coming out with new albums,” he said. “Motown’s legacy continues without me having to do anything.”This year is the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy Center’s opening in 1971, more than a decade after President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation creating a National Cultural Center. Shortly after the grand opening of the center, Díaz, then a 31-year-old opera singer, performed there as the male lead in Ginastera’s “Beatrix Cenci.” He played a villainous count and recalled handling two huge Mastiffs onstage during his first entrance.Now, at 81, Díaz, a bass-baritone who has performed for opera companies across the globe, will return to the opera house to see artists pay tribute to his career.Fifty years ago, Justino Díaz sang at one of the opening performances at the Kennedy Center. Now, he will return for a celebration of his career.Presley Ann/Patrick McMullan, via Getty Image“Little old me?” he said in an interview. He noted that despite his fame in the opera world, he is not a household name.“I say I’m an opera singer,” he said, “and immediately I have to follow with, ‘No, I’m not Plácido Domingo and I’m not Luciano Pavarotti.’”Rutter said that although the last ceremony was limited by social distancing requirements, there are aspects of it that she wishes to maintain. In particular, she said, there was a sense of intimacy in that celebration that had not been there before. At one point, she noted, as the artists mingled outside on a terrace, Rhiannon Giddens picked up her banjo, began playing, and Joan Baez started to dance.“It was spontaneous,” Rutter said. “The artists broke open their instruments and people started singing and dancing together.”(It is unclear whether the attendees this year will be required to wear masks, as they will be required to do for the Kennedy Center’s fall programming.)Michaels, 76, who created “S.N.L.” in 1975, was also forced by the pandemic to drastically rethink his show. In the spring of 2020, “S.N.L.” filmed sketches at its actors’ homes, allowing the audience to connect with the cast members in a new way. Now that they have returned to a live audience, they are thinking of ways to apply what they learned in quarantine.“Those shows had a strong homemade quality, which was part of their charm,” he said. “Once we went back to the audience, we kept pushing the limit of what we could do.” More

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      Paul Mooney, Trailblazing Comedian, Dies at 79

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      A comic writer and performer, he was known for his boundary-pushing routines about racism and social justice and for his work with Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle.Paul Mooney, the boundary-pushing comedian and comedy writer who made his views on race, racism and social justice abundantly clear as Richard Pryor’s longtime behind-the-scenes partner, a contributor to “In Living Color” and a performer and writer on “Chappelle’s Show,” died on Wednesday at his home in Oakland, Calif. He was 79.The cause was a heart attack, said Cassandra Williams, his publicist. Mr. Mooney was found to have prostate cancer in 2014.If you knew Mr. Pryor’s work, you probably knew Mr. Mooney’s words. The two worked together on the short-lived 1977 variety series “The Richard Pryor Show”; “Pryor’s Place” (1984), Mr. Pryor’s unlikely attempt at a children’s show; television specials; the album and film “Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip” (1982); the autobiographical film “Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling” (1986), which Mr. Pryor starred in and directed; and Mr. Pryor’s 1975 appearance as host on “Saturday Night Live.” That episode included a now-famous escalating-racial-insults job-interview sketch with Chevy Chase, written by Mr. Mooney.In an interview with The New York Times after Mr. Pryor’s death in 2005 at 65, Mr. Mooney described himself as Mr. Pryor’s “Black writer.”As a writer on “In Living Color,” Keenen Ivory Wayans’s hit sketch comedy show that had its premiere on Fox in 1990 with a predominantly Black cast, Mr. Mooney was the inspiration for and co-creator of Homey D. Clown, a less than jovial circus-costumed character who was forced to interact with children (part of his parole agreement) and usually ended up frightening them.As a writer and performer on “Chappelle’s Show” in the early 2000s, Mr. Mooney played Negrodamus, a turbaned mystic who foretold the future (Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political prospects, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver’s marriage), appeared as the expert in “Ask a Black Dude” and reviewed movies alongside white female critics. Discussing “Gone With the Wind,” he revealed that Hattie McDaniel, who played the enslaved character known as Mammy, had been reincarnated as Oprah Winfrey — for the money.Mr. Mooney’s film roles included the singer Sam Cooke in “The Buddy Holly Story” (1978) and Junebug, an old-school stand-up comedian with equal amounts of dignity, integrity and genius, in “Bamboozled” (2000), Spike Lee’s dark farce about a television network bringing back the minstrel-show genre.On “Chappelle’s Show” in the early 2000s, Mr. Mooney played Negrodamus, a turbaned mystic who foretold the future.Comedy CentralPaul Mooney was born Paul Gladney on Aug. 4, 1941, in Shreveport, La., to George Gladney and LaVoya Ealy, who were both teenagers. When Paul was 7, he moved with his mother and her parents to Oakland, where he was largely raised by his grandmother, Aimay Ealy.Although some reports said he had taken his stage surname from the Hollywood actor Paul Muni, he corrected that in his 2007 memoir, “White Is the New Black.” His family loved nicknames, he wrote, and his grandmother just started calling him Mooney when he was a child.Paul was 14 when he and his mother moved to nearby Berkeley. There, at a local movie theater, he won his first “hambone” contest, performing an African-American stomping dance that involves slapping and patting the body like a drum. It was then that he realized that he loved applause — and prize money.He had his first taste of fame when he became a teenage regular on a local dance-party television show. After the Army (he was drafted and served in Germany), he came home to all kinds of sales jobs and, even more, to a future in entertainment. He did his first stand-up comedy (alongside friends who were folk singers), created a Black improvisational group called the Yankee Doodle Bedbugs, and joined the noted improv group the Second City. He also took a job for a while as ringmaster of the traveling Gatti-Charles Circus, which, he said, just called for looking good and telling jokes.Mr. Mooney and Richard Pryor (seated) attended the premiere of Spike Lee’s concert film “The Original Kings of Comedy” in Los Angeles in 2000. With them were, from left, Walter Latham, one of the film’s producers, along with Cedric the Entertainer, Steve Harvey, Mr. Lee and D.L. Hughley.Fred Prouser/ReutersHe met Mr. Pryor in the late 1960s at a party, and they soon discovered that their personal lives were antithetical. “Pryor was a self-loathing, drug-addicted genius, Mooney an industrious teetotaler, but they bonded over laughs and a distrust of the white Hollywood power structure,” The Los Angeles Times wrote in 2010.Mr. Mooney continued his comedy career after Mr. Pryor’s death, preserving his routines in documentaries and DVDs like “The Godfather of Comedy” (2012) and “Jesus Is Black — So Was Cleopatra — Know Your History” (2007).In “Jesus Is Black,” his three sons — Shane (whose mother was Yvonne Carothers, whom Mr. Pryor married in 1973) and Daryl and Dwayne (twin sons from an earlier relationship) — appeared as themselves. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Mooney had strong opinions, even about himself.“Whatever that thing is that white people like in Blacks, I don’t have it,” he wrote in his memoir. “Maybe it’s my arrogance or my self-assurance or the way I carry myself, but whatever it is, I don’t have it.”Marie Fazio contributed reporting. More

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      ‘S.N.L.’ Is Just as Confused About the New Mask Guidelines as You Are

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      In the opening sketch of “Saturday Night Live,” Kate McKinnon played Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, attempting to explain the latest recommendations for people who are fully vaccinated.If you still have questions about the newest recommendations for fully vaccinated Americans issued earlier this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Saturday Night Live” has answers. More

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      ‘SNL’ Gets Ready for Elon Musk

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      The choice to have the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire host “S.N.L.” has drawn praise, criticism and some veiled pushback from the show’s own cast members.When “Saturday Night Live” announced last month that this weekend’s broadcast would be hosted by Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and founder of SpaceX, the decision was widely discussed, dissected and lamented. More

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      Elon Musk to Host ‘Saturday Night Live’

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      Musk, who runs Tesla and SpaceX, will become the rare “S.N.L.” host not from the worlds of entertainment, politics or sports.There have been some unexpected “Saturday Night Live” hosts over the years.Turn the clock back far enough and you will find that the long-running late-night comedy series has offered its stage to such unlikely candidates as Brandon Tartikoff, when he was the president of NBC’s entertainment division, and George Steinbrenner, the pugnacious owner of the Yankees.“S.N.L.” has drawn eyeballs and raised eyebrows by occasionally recruiting from the political world, too, including the New York mayors Ed Koch and Rudolph W. Giuliani and presidential hopefuls like Steve Forbes and John McCain. In 2015, it gave a platform to the then-candidate Donald J. Trump in an appearance that the show’s own cast members later said they had come to regret.Now it seems that “Saturday Night Live” is attempting its own moonshot of sorts. NBC said on Saturday that Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and chief engineer of SpaceX, would host the program on May 8. Miley Cyrus, the pop singer and a frequent performer on “S.N.L.,” will be the musical guest that night.The announcement was made a few hours after the Crew Dragon Endeavour, a SpaceX craft, had successfully docked with the International Space Station on Saturday morning, following its launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday.Musk, 49, has previously appeared on shows like “South Park,” “The Simpsons” and “Rick and Morty” and in films like “Iron Man 2” and has gained an online following for initiatives like his recent announcement that Tesla would accept the digital currency Bitcoin for payments.Musk has also been criticized for his treatment of his employees, and his companies and projects have come under close scrutiny.Last month, the National Labor Relations Board upheld a 2019 ruling that found that a tweet Musk had posted, which appeared to threaten workers with the loss of stock options for planning to unionize, was illegal. The board also ruled that Tesla had illegally fired a worker involved in union organizing.And more than 400 workers at a Tesla plant in Fremont, Calif., tested positive for the coronavirus last year after Musk reopened the plant, flouting guidelines from health officials, according to public health data released in March by the website PlainSite.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has confirmed that it is looking into nearly two dozen crashes involving vehicles that were using or may have used Tesla’s Autopilot technology. Musk has said that the technology makes Tesla cars safer than other vehicles.Previous “Saturday Night Live” hosts this season have included the actors Daniel Kaluuya, Carey Mulligan and Regé-Jean Page, the musicians Adele and Nick Jonas and the comedian Bill Burr. More