Fashion
Lorne Michaels Archive Going to the University of Texas
Michaels, the creator of “Saturday Night Live,” has donated his papers to the university’s Harry Ransom Center.
The archives of the man behind the tagline “Live From New York” are on their way to Texas.
Lorne Michaels, the creator of “Saturday Night Live,” has donated his archives to the Harry Ransom Center at University of Texas, including hundreds of boxes of material relating to the show, which has its 50th anniversary this year.
The collection includes storyboards for classic “Coneheads” sketches and material chronicling the birth of the Blues Brothers, “Wayne’s World” and thousands of other sketches that have collectively transformed television comedy and American pop culture since the show’s first episode, hosted by George Carlin, aired on Oct. 11, 1975.
Michaels has been a producer or executive producer of “S.N.L.” for all but five seasons in the 1980s, when he left to pursue other creative endeavors.
“It’s an extraordinary resource documenting Lorne Michaels’s career, which in some ways for many of us was our own youth and early adulthood,” Stephen Enniss, the Ransom Center’s director, said. “His impact has been huge.”
The donation came directly from Michaels, who approached the center more than a year ago, Enniss said. It traces the full arc of his career, including his early days as a writer and performer in the comedy scene in Toronto and his pre-“S.N.L.” work on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” and “The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show.”
