| The National Lampoon Show | |
|---|---|
| Written by | |
| Directed by | (touring)John Belushi (Off-Broadway)Martin Charnin |
| Music by | Paul Jacobs |
| Date premiered | 1975; 50 years ago (1975) |
| Place premiered | New Palladium Club (Off-Broadway) |
The National Lampoon Show, a spinoff of the humor magazineNational Lampoon, was a 1974–1976stage show that helped launch the performing careers ofJohn Belushi,Brian Doyle-Murray,Bill Murray,Gilda Radner, andHarold Ramis.[1][2] The company's stage successor toNational Lampoon's Lemmings (1973), some skits from the show made their way into the 1978 filmNational Lampoon's Animal House.[3]
The show was produced byIvan Reitman.[2][4][1] It was mostly written improvisationally by its original cast[5] ("overlooked" byNational Lampoon writer/editorSean Kelly).[6]
The National Lampoon Show toured colleges in the U.S. in 1974, includingRider University,Slippery Rock University, and theUniversity of Texas at Arlington, with those productions directed by cast member Belushi.[6][5] It openedOff-Broadway inNew York City at theNew Palladium Club on February 17, 1975, directed byMartin Charnin. The original Off-Broadway cast starred Belushi, Doyle-Murray, Bill Murray, Radner, and Ramis. It ran for 180 performances, closing in July 1975.[7] After closing in New York, it went on a second, nine-month-long, national tour.[5]
Shortly after the show closed in New York, Belushi and Radner joined the original cast ofSaturday Night Live, with the Murray brothers soon joining theSNL cast as well.[8] Ramis, meanwhile, used some of the sketches from the show in the script of National Lampoon's first film production,Animal House, released in 1978.[9]
The National Lampoon Show was a satiricalrevue, mixingsocial andpolitical satire. It was fueled byblack comedy, frequently insulting and abusing the audience, with the cast openly expressing hatred for the crowd. The show was a mix of sadistic and masochistic elements, characterized by aggressive, juvenile, and controversial humor.
One skit was a parody of a television fundraiser in whichPatty Hearst (played by Radner), dressed inSLA garb, asked viewers for money to pay for weaponry. (The skit ended with Hearst shooting her fiancé Steven Weed.)[10] Another skit involvedJacqueline Kennedy Onassis being a panelist on a celebritygame show who is so startled by the sound of astarting pistol that she ducks under her seat.[5] Songs included one aboutwhite-collar criminals living comfortably in prison and another being a manic celebration of New York City's mundane aspects (featuring Bill Murray).
The cast included:
Later cast replacements:[13]
The writers included:
The New York Times gave the production a negative review, writing that the show "set new boundaries for impropriety. But... it does not match its bad taste with good humor." Comparing the show unfavorably toLemmings (which it characterized as "half of a very funny evening"), it citedThe National Lampoon Show as being half as clever. The reviewer felt that despite some standout performances, particularly by Belushi, the show fell short in execution, leaving a gap between its ambitious ideas and their comedic realization.[17]
(Reitman:) In 1975, I'd produced an Off-Broadway show calledThe National Lampoon Show, which starred John Belushi, Brian Doyle, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, and Harold Ramis. Here was this extraordinary all-star team, the likes of which I had never seen before.
(Reitman:) Bill worked with me before he worked onSaturday Night Live. I had a show off-Broadway calledThe National Lampoon Show that starred Bill Murray, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Brian-Doyle Murray, Joe Flaherty, and Harold Ramis.
Reitman also worked in the U.S., producing the off-BroadwayThe National Lampoon Show with a cast that included Murray, Belushi, Gilda Radner, and Harold Ramis. That experience led Reitman to pitchNational Lampoon publisherMatty Simmons on a movie inspired by his satirical publication. 'I was a big fan of theLampoon,' Reitman toldEW in 1998. 'One day, I called up Matty Simmons and said, "Let's make movies." ... WhenSaturday Night Live started, Lorne Michaels picked up most of the cast [ofThe National Lampoon Show]. But Harold Ramis was sort of left off. I told Harold we should put a movie together using some of the skits from the Lampoon show.' (Ramis would co-write National Lampoon'sAnimal House withDoug Kenney andChris Miller.)
The stage show, 'The National Lampoon Show,' was popular, but then a good chunk of the cast was signed away by fellow CanadianLorne Michaels for his then-new TV series,Saturday Night Live (Gilda Radner and John Belushi to start and then Bill Murray a year later). One of the only people NOT signed away was Harold Ramis. So Reitman pitched Ramis on taking some of the sketches from the show and turning it into a movie.
Off-Broadway audiences recall The National Lampoon Show of 1975, in which Gilda Radner playing Patty Hearst machine-gunned Steven Weed.
