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"Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead" is acatchphrase that originated in 1975 during the first season ofNBC's Saturday Night (now calledSaturday Night Live, orSNL) and which mocked the weeks-long media reports of the impending death ofFrancisco Franco. It was one of the first catchphrases from the series to enter the general lexicon.
The death (on November 20, 1975) of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco during the first season ofNBC's Saturday Night originated the phrase. Franco's presumed imminent death had been a headline story onNBC News and other news organizations for several weeks. On slow news days,United States networktelevision newscasters sometimes noted that Franco was still alive.
Following Franco's death,Chevy Chase, host ofNBC's Saturday Night's comedic news segmentWeekend Update, announced Franco's death and read a statement from former presidentRichard Nixon: "General Franco was a loyal friend and ally of the United States. He earned worldwide respect for Spain through firmness and fairness."[1] As an ironic counterpoint to this, a picture was displayed behind Chase, showing Franco giving theNazi salute alongsideAdolf Hitler.[2]
In subsequent weeks, Chase developed the joke into a parody of the earlier news coverage of Franco's illness, treating his death as the top story. "This breaking news just in", Chase would announce – "Generalissimo Francisco Franco isstill dead!"[3] Occasionally, Chase would change the wording slightly in attempts to keep the joke fresh, e.g. "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still valiantly holding on in his fight to remain dead."[4] The joke was sometimes combined with another running gag in whichGarrett Morris, "head of the New York School for the Hard of Hearing" would cup his hands around his mouth and shout the news as Chase read it. The gag ran until early 1977, with occasional callbacks in later seasons.
The phrase has remained in use since Franco's death.James Taranto'sBest of the Web Today column atOpinionJournal.com used the phrase as a tag for newspaper headlines that indicate something is still happening when it should be obvious. On February 8, 2007, duringJack Cafferty's segment onCNN'sThe Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on the day of her death, he asked the host: "IsAnna Nicole Smith still dead, Wolf?"[5] It was also used now and then onNBC News Overnight in the early 1980s, andKeith Olbermann occasionally used it onCountdown. In 2013, it experienced a brief resurgence in a different context, when it began appearing on social media a few days after the death of Spanish filmmakerJesús Franco.
The Wall Street Journal used the headline "Generalísimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead – And His Statues Are Next"[6] on its front page March 2, 2009. The newspaper used it once again on its front page in the headline "Generalísimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead – But for some not dead enough" on August 21, 2015, when it reported about critics calling to enforce a 2007 anti-Franco law inMadrid and to rename streets and plazas, after thelast election had ended the 24-year reign of conservatives in the city council.[7]
AlthoughSNL's use is the most widely known, it is predated by the"'John Garfield Still Dead' syndrome," which originated as a result of extensive coverage in the wake of actorJohn Garfield's death and funeral in 1952.[8]
After a briefin memoriam duringSNL's40th Anniversary Special on February 15, 2015,Bill Murray ended the segment with the famous phrase which "just came in from Spain."[9]
The phrase is listed inThe Oxford Dictionary of Catchphrases.[10]
Citations
The practice of churning out stories about a deceased celebrity for as long as possible is an old tradition. It used to be known as the "John Garfield Still Dead" syndrome, after the extensive post-funeral coverage of a movie star who had a fatal heart attack in 1952 in the bed of a woman other than his wife.