Saturday Night Live App Now Available
The comedy variety show Saturday Night Live, which celebrated 40 years on the air with a special Sunday night, now has its own app which lets fans of the show relive its greatest moments.
The show has, of course, been produced for 35 of its 40 years by Lorne Michaels, born Lorne Lipowitz in Toronto 70 years ago.
If, by chance, you somehow missed seeing the 3 and a half hour long SNL celebration do not worry. It will surely be repeated again and again and will definitely be available on all sorts of live streaming services like Netflix.
Now you can get an iOS app that offers users the chance to relive some of the show’s most iconic sketches of the last 40 years.
NBC says that the app gets smarter as you go. Its personalization and recommendation engine responds to what you’re watching and how you watch. The more you watch and interact, the more you discover clips that fit your tastes.
The website explains that the app offers a library of thousands of classic and current clips and videos load fast and immediately.
A fast, powerful search allows users to find exactly what they’re looking for – or take your time and browse by season, cast member, episode and more.
Interestingly, Saturday Night Live has not been known for having had very many Jewish cast members over the years. This in spite of the fact that the earliest stars of television comedy were all Jews like Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Jack Benny and George Burns.
Of SNL’s original cast members only Gilda Radner was Jewish. There was also the now Senator Al Franken who was a writer on the show who occasionally appeared on camera and band leader Paul Schaffer who appeared sometimes in sketches in the show’s fifth season.
It was not until 1980 that it had a regular Jewish cast member, Gilbert Gotfried. But he only lasted for one truncated season that only had 12 episodes. Jon Lovitz came along in 1985 and lasted for 6 seasons. Since then there have been people like Adam Sandler and Andy Samberg.
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Laraine Newman is Jewish.
For future reference:
Actors of fully Jewish background: -Logan Lerman, Natalie Portman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mila Kunis, Bar Refaeli, James Wolk, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Julian Morris, Adam Brody, Esti Ginzburg, Kat Dennings, Gabriel Macht, Erin Heatherton, Odeya Rush, Anton Yelchin, Paul Rudd, Scott Mechlowicz, Lisa Kudrow, Lizzy Caplan, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Gal Gadot, Debra Messing, Robert Kazinsky, Melanie Laurent, Shiri Appleby, Justin Bartha, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Margarita Levieva, Elizabeth Berkley, Halston Sage, Seth Gabel, Skylar Astin, Mia Kirshner, Alden Ehrenreich, Eric Balfour, Jason Isaacs, Jon Bernthal, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy.
Andrew Garfield is Jewish, too (though I don’t know if both of his parents are).
Actors with Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers -Jake Gyllenhaal, Dave Franco, James Franco, Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Daniel Radcliffe, Alison Brie, Eva Green, Joaquin Phoenix, River Phoenix, Emmy Rossum, Rashida Jones, Jennifer Connelly, Sofia Black D’Elia, Nora Arnezeder, Goldie Hawn, Ginnifer Goodwin, Amanda Peet, Eric Dane, Jeremy Jordan, Joel Kinnaman, Ben Barnes, Patricia Arquette, Kyra Sedgwick, Dave Annable, Ryan Potter.
Actors with Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers, who themselves were either raised as Jews and/or identify as Jews: -Ezra Miller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alexa Davalos, Nat Wolff, Nicola Peltz, James Maslow, Josh Bowman, Winona Ryder, Michael Douglas, Ben Foster, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nikki Reed, Zac Efron, Jonathan Keltz, Paul Newman.
Oh, and Ansel Elgort’s father is Jewish, though I don’t know how Ansel was raised.
Actors with one Jewish-born parent and one parent who converted to Judaism -Dianna Agron, Sara Paxton (whose father converted, not her mother), Alicia Silverstone, Jamie-Lynn Sigler.