George Coe?
August 29th, 2007I was watching a special on NBC last night about the first 5 years of SNL. They showed footage of the opening credits from the first episode, and the cast read as follows, “Ackroyd. Belushi. Chase. Coe. Curtain…” Wait, hold on, go back. Coe? Who’s Coe? Actually it spelled out his full name as “George Coe”. Now I’m fairly familiar with the history of SNL - especially the original cast - but I’ve never heard the name George Coe brought up before.
I can’t recall Lorne Michaels ever saying in an interview, “Gilda and Chevy really pushed for me to hire Coe, even though I knew he was nothing but trouble.” Nor did I ever hear Lorne say, “I think it was during the 3rd or 4th episode where Coe really stepped it up and became the major star he is today.” And I’m pretty sure I never heard, “By the end of the first season it was either going to be the show it became or it was going to be The George Coe Show.”
So what happened to him? Well after checking out his credits on imdb.com, you can see that he has appeared in tons and tons of TV shows and movies. So I guess he’s doing all right. But it’s still weird that he’s never mentioned in any backstage history of SNL. At the very least they should release a Best of George Coe DVD.
August 29th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
According to wikipedia, he was only in three episodes: October 11, 18, and 25 of 1975. He did the voice of fake announcers in commercial parodies.
August 30th, 2007 at 10:50 am
He’s mentioned in the book “Saturday Night” as an older actor they hired to play older roles, but they realized they could just have the regular cast play those roles and no one cared that they were age-inappropriate.
August 30th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Aha! That explains a lot. That’s interested that they quickly scrapped the plan to have older actor play older roles, and have kept ‘em young ever since. I do remember Al Franken mentioning once on some special that in the early nineties the cast might’ve been too young since they had dudes like Spade, Sandler and Farley playing senators.
September 12th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
He was a guest star on The Cosby Mysteries. I just wanted to point that out. I’ve got nothing else to add…and Night Court.