‘Saturday Night Live’ Marks 49th Anniversary With OG 1975 Opening Titles
As Saturday Night Live marks a landmark season, the NBC sketch comedy show threw it back to 1975.
Celebrating the 49th anniversary of SNL‘s first broadcast, with Season 50 continuing this weekend, the show shared its original opening credit sequence Friday on social media.
“SNL premiered on October 11, 1975!” they wrote on X with the intro clip for what was then titled Saturday Night.
The lineup included George Carlin, Janis Ian, Billy Preston, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, George Coe, Michael O’Donoghue, Valri Bromfield and Andy Kaufman, with a film by Albert Brooks and Jim Henson’s Muppets.
In honor of the anniversary, Jason Reitman‘s Saturday Night premieres Friday in theaters. The film is set on Oct. 11, 1975, as a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers change television forever. Formerly titled SNL 1975, the film tells the true story of what happened behind the scenes that night in the 90 minutes leading up to the first-ever broadcast of SNL.
The film stars Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels, Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shuster, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, Matt Wood as John Belushi, Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris, Kim Matula as Jane Curtin, Nicholas Braun as Andy Kaufman/Jim Henson, Cooper Hoffman as Dick Ebersol, Kaia Gerber as Jacqueline Carlin and Willem Dafoe as David Tebet.
Meanwhile, SNL‘s milestone 50th season is underway, with Ariana Grande hosting this weekend alongside musical guest Stevie Nicks.