In the rerun of the first Saturday Night Live last night — and linked here — I noticed two interesting things in the closing credits and today, my pal Shelly Goldstein reminded me of the significance of one of them. She reminded me that in the Saturday Night movie, one of the thousand-and-one plot lines has to do with whether the very-important-to-the-series writer whose first name was Rosie was going to be listed in the end credits as Rosie Shuster (her birth name) or Rosie Michaels (her name after she married Lorne Michaels). At the last minute — probably too late to have it added in a real broadcast — she decides on Rosie Shuster.
Okay, fine. That's how it was in the movie. In the actual broadcast though, it was like this on the screen…
Just to explain: The "Bud" was a joke during the end credits. Almost everyone listed has "Bud" as a middle name. The point is that if she really did decide on Shuster, it didn't get on the air, at least the first week.
Another interesting thing I noticed: Near the end of the credits crawl, we saw this…
Dick Ebersol was very, very (insert a few verys) important person in the birthing of Saturday Night Live. It probably never would have happened without him and he later stepped into Lorne Michaels' position for several seasons. But at the time this first show aired, he was an NBC employee in a category where such credits were against company policy. Reportedly, there was a huge outrage in him getting this one in that particular form. He didn't get it again and some sources say it was edited out of rebroadcasts of this episode…yet it appeared in the rerun last night and I hear it's on the DVDs.
Okay. That's all I wanted to say here.