Long before white privilege became a mainstream concept, Eddie Murphy in a landmark sketch put on white face makeup to see how he would be treated as a white man in New York.
Dan Aykroyd parodied iconic chef Julia Child in a cooking segment gone horribly wrong: She cuts “the dickens” out of her finger, releasing staggeringly large spurts of blood, tries first aid and then collapses face-first in a puddle of her own blood.
This was the first sketch from the first show, an absurdist-meets-physical comedy interaction between a student — played by John Belushi — and his English teacher, played by head writer Michael O’Donoghue.
NBC banned O’Connor from “SNL” for life, Joe Pesci mocked her during the next week’s show and Frank Sinatra called her “one stupid broad.” Her albums were crushed by a steamroller in Times Square.
In the skit, a cashier won’t take his money for a newspaper (“Slowly, I began to realize that when white people are alone, they give things to each other for free”), a city bus turns into a party after the lone Black passenger gets off and a bank clerk simply hands him $50,000 in cash.
