Reel Beach: Saturday Night Live’s links to local sports legend Bruce Kidd

By BERNIE FLETCHER

“Live from New York. It’s Saturday Night!” Jason Reitman’s film Saturday Night recreates the chaos behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the very first show on Oct. 11, 1975.

Toronto-born Lorne Michaels was the creative force and producer for NBC’s Saturday Night. Reitman credits the success of SNL to the show’s Canadian influence with our perspective on the world and our humour (with a u) woven into its DNA.

Many of the film’s dramatic moments involve less well-known talents who had their roots in the Toronto comedy scene.

Gifted writer Rosie Shuster is the glue that holds the sinking ship together backstage with the quiet gift of handling the show’s temperamental stars.

The two-time Emmy-winner was also dealing with her own love triangle, torn between her husband Lorne Michaels and Dan Aykroyd the youngest performer in the troupe. Lorne keeps asking her what name she wants to use in the credits.

Michaels hired his 20-year-old cousin Neil Levy to be his production assistant. Neil has quite the introduction to show biz, getting too “high” and talked down by Aykroyd. Sleeping on Lorne’s couch in New York, Levy came home one day to find Mick Jagger on his “bed.”

Michaels had a knack of finding terrific performers from the Second City improv group as well as the Toronto production of Godspell (Gilda Radner, Andrea Martin and later Martin Short).

Jason Reitman’s director father Ivan (Ghostbusters) was a friend of Dan Aykroyd who was part of a comedy duo with Valri Bromfield. Both joined the first cast of Toronto’s Second City.

In Saturday Night we see Bromfield’s monologue cut to two minutes while Billy Crystal is bumped off the first show entirely.

“Lorne had this genius about him.”
Billy Crystal

What do runner Bruce Kidd, Lorne Michaels, Rosie Shuster and Superman all have in common? It’s all in the family…the Shuster family.

Flashback to the 1960s. Rosie Shuster tells the story of Lorne Lipowitz (later Michaels) following her home from school just to meet her father, Frank Shuster, half of the famed comedy duo Wayne and Shuster who performed on the Ed Sullivan Show more than any other act (67 times).

As a young teen Lorne had lost his own dad and Frank Shuster became a father figure to him. Lorne married Rosie in 1967 and worked on hits like Laugh-In in Los Angeles before returning home for the CBC’s Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour.

Rosie Shuster has said, “Something about the show came from inside my family. My dad really mentored Lorne in terms of comedy. I saw the whole thing unfold and felt like SNL was so much a part of something that grew from my home.”

Frank Shuster was also very close with his double first cousin Joe Shuster who co-created the Superman comic. (Brothers Julius and Jack Shuster married sisters Bessie and Ida and they all lived together for a time). Joe drew “Metropolis” from memories of the Toronto skyline before his family moved to Cleveland. In 1941 Joe was best man at Frank’s wedding.

Future Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore was Lorne’s buddy at high school and at Timberlane summer camp where they put on shows. Shore joined SNL as music director along with keyboard player Paul Shaffer.

“Every Canadian parent in the 1960s expected their children to live up to the image of Bruce Kidd.”
Lorne Michaels (quoted on the cover of Kidd’s memoir A Runner’s Journey, 2021)

Malvern Collegiate’s Bruce Kidd was the middle-distance running sensation of the early 1960s, twice named Canada’s Male Athlete of the Year as well as being school valedictorian. Like me, Kidd remembers Mr. Gilmore and Les “no jeans” Kerr, our principal.

In his memoir Bruce Kidd writes that Lorne’s genius was “in recruiting and coaching a team of very talented” people.

“I got to know Lorne well in the late ’60s and early ’70s because we were married to first cousins and we all spent a lot of time together. We’ve stayed in touch ever since,” wrote Kidd in his memoir.

In 1967 both married into the Shuster family. Bruce married Varda Burstyn (or Burston), Frank Shuster’s niece. Kidd met Varda in line for a Gordon Lightfoot concert at the Riverboat in Yorkville. What could be more Canadian?

Both marriages ended in divorce. “We burned out like crazy,” said Rosie Shuster.

The Kidd family lived on Kingston Road near Main Street then moved to Neville Park Boulevard where Bruce ran on the Boardwalk and played at the nearby R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant. The Commissioner of Public Works R. C. Harris himself had lived in a beautiful home just a few doors down on Neville.

Can you believe Lorne Michaels turned 80 last week? Where have the last 50 or 60 years gone?

In 1964 the Beatles created a stir on the Ed Sullivan Show, Bruce Kidd ran in the Tokyo Olympics and Lorne Michaels directed the U.C. Follies satirical sketches at U. of T.

The Sixties were a turbulent time of chaos and rebellion. Music and comedy evolved with the arrival of long-hair and the counter culture.

In 1975 Lorne Michaels shook up television and changed the face of laughter.

Where were you in October 1975? I was taking guitar lessons from Frank Shuster’s son, the late comic and musician Steve Shuster.

It’s a small world after all. Maybe we are ships passing in the night, but we are somehow connected by six degrees of separation.

Saturday Night Live will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a three-hour live primetime special that will air Sunday, Feb. 16 at 8 p.m. on NBC. Yes, “Live from New York, it’s Sunday Night!”