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Tom Davis, SNL Writer, 59
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La N.
Jul 19, 2012, 5:39:45 PM7/19/12
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/arts/television/tom-davis-saturday-night-live-comedy-writer-dies-at-59.html?_r=1&smid=tw-share
July 19, 2012
Tom Davis Dies at 59; 'S.N.L.' Writer and Comedy Partner to a Future Senator
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
In 2004, contestants on "Jeopardy!" were stumped by the clue "He was the
comedy partner of Al Franken."
Tom Davis, that comedy partner, sighed as he watched. He was so inured to
being second fiddle to Mr. Franken, now a Democratic senator from Minnesota,
that he called himself Sonny to Mr. Franken's Cher.
But the fact is that Mr. Davis helped shape Mr. Franken's comedy, and vice
versa, from the time they entertained students with rebellious, razor-edged
humor at high school assemblies in Minnesota.
In 1975, Mr. Davis, brilliant at improvisational comedy, and Mr. Franken, a
whiz at plotting funny sequences, became two of the first writers on a new
show called "Saturday Night Live," which has lasted 37 years. (The two
should actually be called one of the show's first writers: they accepted a
single salary of $350 a week. Each, singly, was called "the guys.")
Mr. Davis never lost the quirky, original voice that helped shape the show,
and in his last months he referred to death as "deanimation." He deanimated
on Thursday at his home in Hudson, N.Y., at age 59. The cause was throat and
neck cancer, his wife, Mimi Raleigh, said.
With Mr. Franken and others, Mr. Davis helped create the clan of
extraterrestrials known as the Coneheads, who attributed their peculiarities
to having come from France. He and Dan Aykroyd collaborated on Mr. Aykroyd's
impersonation of Julia Child, in which the television chef cuts herself and
bleeds to death after grabbing a phone to dial 911, only to find it's a
prop. Her last words: "Bon app�tit!"
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Aykroyd spoke of Mr. Davis's "massive
contribution" to the show, characterizing him as "very disciplined" and able
to herd less focused writers toward something concrete. "There was no
frivolous waste of time," he said.
Mr. Davis was present at the creation of Irwin Mainway (played by Mr.
Aykroyd), head of a company that made "Bag o' Glass" and other dangerous
toys. He midwifed Theodoric of York, a medieval barber-surgeon played by the
guest host Steve Martin, who believed bloodletting cured everything. A
famous sketch about a drunken President Richard M. Nixon stumbling around
the White House conversing with past presidents' portraits and spouting
anti-Semitism? Mr. Davis and Mr. Franken wrote it.
They flirted with the margins of taste: a sketch about the Holocaust was
rejected, but others about child abuse and the murder of lesbians made it
onto the air.
In the early years of "Saturday Night Live," Mr. Davis and Mr. Franken also
appeared as a comic duo. One routine was "The Brain Tumor Comedian," in
which Mr. Franken, his head bandaged, tried to tell jokes but kept
forgetting the punch line. Mr. Davis fought tears as he implored the
audience to applaud.
Mr. Davis shared three Emmys for his writing on the show and another for
"The Paul Simon Special" in 1977.
Thomas James Davis was born in Minneapolis on Aug. 13, 1952, and attended
the private Blake School, where he and Mr. Franken bonded over comedians
like Jack Benny and Bob and Ray. Their announcements of school events at the
morning assembly were peppered with sarcasm, and soon they were performing
at a local comedy club.
After graduating, Mr. Franken headed for Harvard, while Mr. Davis chose the
University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., because, he said, he had
heard that it had a foreign study program in India, where he hoped to smoke
opium. (They did, and he did.)
After a year of college, Mr. Davis returned to Minneapolis to work in
improvisational comedy. And after Mr. Franken graduated from Harvard, the
two convened in Los Angeles to do stand-up and caught the attention of Lorne
Michaels, the creator of "Saturday Night Live." He summoned them to New
York, where he negotiated with the writers' union to offer the two a single
apprentice job.
In a recent interview, Senator Franken said he and Mr. Davis had
complemented each other, Mr. Davis bringing his improvisational experience
to the act while Mr. Franken was adept at structuring a routine. Mr. Davis's
humor had a sardonic, even cynical, sting, he said, but retained "sweetness
and a Minnesota outlook."
Mr. Davis lived a defiantly unconventional life. In his 2009 memoir,
"Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL From
Someone Who Was There," he wrote that he first did LSD while watching "2001:
A Space Odyssey" at a Minneapolis drive-in. At the peak of the Vietnam War,
he decided to join the Marines, he said, then decided against it after
undergoing a revolution in consciousness at a Jimi Hendrix concert.
Mr. Davis worked for "Saturday Night Live" from 1975 to 1980, and again from
1986 to 1994. In addition to writing, he produced shows in his second stint.
He also collaborated with Mr. Aykroyd and Bonnie and Terry Turner to write
"Coneheads" (1993). (The "Conehead" characters, he wrote in his memoir, were
inspired by a trip Mr. Davis and Mr. Aykroyd took to Easter Island, famous
for its towering stone statues.) With Mr. Franken he starred in the film
"One More Saturday Night" (1986).
Mr. Davis retired in the mid-1990s but returned to "SNL" as a writer as
recently as 2003.
He and Mr. Franken were so close that Mr. Franken named his daughter
Thomasin Davis. But the two broke up as a team in 1990 as Mr. Franken tired
of his friend's drug abuse. They reconciled a decade later, and Mr. Davis
obliged his friend by publishing his all-too-candid autobiography only after
Senator Franken was elected. In his book, Mr. Davis wrote, "I love Al as I
do my brother, whom I also don't see very much."
In addition to his wife and his brother, Robert, Mr. Davis is survived by
his mother, Jean Davis.
In his last two years, Mr. Davis helped a friend write a book about Owsley
Stanley, famed for handling sound for the Grateful Dead and supplying the
group with LSD. He searched out objects like old barn doors and stones with
which to make large sculptures. And he worked with Mr. Aykroyd on a script
for a possible "Ghostbusters III" film.
As in his comedy, Mr. Davis said, "I'm improvising."
July 19, 2012
Tom Davis Dies at 59; 'S.N.L.' Writer and Comedy Partner to a Future Senator
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
In 2004, contestants on "Jeopardy!" were stumped by the clue "He was the
comedy partner of Al Franken."
Tom Davis, that comedy partner, sighed as he watched. He was so inured to
being second fiddle to Mr. Franken, now a Democratic senator from Minnesota,
that he called himself Sonny to Mr. Franken's Cher.
But the fact is that Mr. Davis helped shape Mr. Franken's comedy, and vice
versa, from the time they entertained students with rebellious, razor-edged
humor at high school assemblies in Minnesota.
In 1975, Mr. Davis, brilliant at improvisational comedy, and Mr. Franken, a
whiz at plotting funny sequences, became two of the first writers on a new
show called "Saturday Night Live," which has lasted 37 years. (The two
should actually be called one of the show's first writers: they accepted a
single salary of $350 a week. Each, singly, was called "the guys.")
Mr. Davis never lost the quirky, original voice that helped shape the show,
and in his last months he referred to death as "deanimation." He deanimated
on Thursday at his home in Hudson, N.Y., at age 59. The cause was throat and
neck cancer, his wife, Mimi Raleigh, said.
With Mr. Franken and others, Mr. Davis helped create the clan of
extraterrestrials known as the Coneheads, who attributed their peculiarities
to having come from France. He and Dan Aykroyd collaborated on Mr. Aykroyd's
impersonation of Julia Child, in which the television chef cuts herself and
bleeds to death after grabbing a phone to dial 911, only to find it's a
prop. Her last words: "Bon app�tit!"
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Aykroyd spoke of Mr. Davis's "massive
contribution" to the show, characterizing him as "very disciplined" and able
to herd less focused writers toward something concrete. "There was no
frivolous waste of time," he said.
Mr. Davis was present at the creation of Irwin Mainway (played by Mr.
Aykroyd), head of a company that made "Bag o' Glass" and other dangerous
toys. He midwifed Theodoric of York, a medieval barber-surgeon played by the
guest host Steve Martin, who believed bloodletting cured everything. A
famous sketch about a drunken President Richard M. Nixon stumbling around
the White House conversing with past presidents' portraits and spouting
anti-Semitism? Mr. Davis and Mr. Franken wrote it.
They flirted with the margins of taste: a sketch about the Holocaust was
rejected, but others about child abuse and the murder of lesbians made it
onto the air.
In the early years of "Saturday Night Live," Mr. Davis and Mr. Franken also
appeared as a comic duo. One routine was "The Brain Tumor Comedian," in
which Mr. Franken, his head bandaged, tried to tell jokes but kept
forgetting the punch line. Mr. Davis fought tears as he implored the
audience to applaud.
Mr. Davis shared three Emmys for his writing on the show and another for
"The Paul Simon Special" in 1977.
Thomas James Davis was born in Minneapolis on Aug. 13, 1952, and attended
the private Blake School, where he and Mr. Franken bonded over comedians
like Jack Benny and Bob and Ray. Their announcements of school events at the
morning assembly were peppered with sarcasm, and soon they were performing
at a local comedy club.
After graduating, Mr. Franken headed for Harvard, while Mr. Davis chose the
University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., because, he said, he had
heard that it had a foreign study program in India, where he hoped to smoke
opium. (They did, and he did.)
After a year of college, Mr. Davis returned to Minneapolis to work in
improvisational comedy. And after Mr. Franken graduated from Harvard, the
two convened in Los Angeles to do stand-up and caught the attention of Lorne
Michaels, the creator of "Saturday Night Live." He summoned them to New
York, where he negotiated with the writers' union to offer the two a single
apprentice job.
In a recent interview, Senator Franken said he and Mr. Davis had
complemented each other, Mr. Davis bringing his improvisational experience
to the act while Mr. Franken was adept at structuring a routine. Mr. Davis's
humor had a sardonic, even cynical, sting, he said, but retained "sweetness
and a Minnesota outlook."
Mr. Davis lived a defiantly unconventional life. In his 2009 memoir,
"Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL From
Someone Who Was There," he wrote that he first did LSD while watching "2001:
A Space Odyssey" at a Minneapolis drive-in. At the peak of the Vietnam War,
he decided to join the Marines, he said, then decided against it after
undergoing a revolution in consciousness at a Jimi Hendrix concert.
Mr. Davis worked for "Saturday Night Live" from 1975 to 1980, and again from
1986 to 1994. In addition to writing, he produced shows in his second stint.
He also collaborated with Mr. Aykroyd and Bonnie and Terry Turner to write
"Coneheads" (1993). (The "Conehead" characters, he wrote in his memoir, were
inspired by a trip Mr. Davis and Mr. Aykroyd took to Easter Island, famous
for its towering stone statues.) With Mr. Franken he starred in the film
"One More Saturday Night" (1986).
Mr. Davis retired in the mid-1990s but returned to "SNL" as a writer as
recently as 2003.
He and Mr. Franken were so close that Mr. Franken named his daughter
Thomasin Davis. But the two broke up as a team in 1990 as Mr. Franken tired
of his friend's drug abuse. They reconciled a decade later, and Mr. Davis
obliged his friend by publishing his all-too-candid autobiography only after
Senator Franken was elected. In his book, Mr. Davis wrote, "I love Al as I
do my brother, whom I also don't see very much."
In addition to his wife and his brother, Robert, Mr. Davis is survived by
his mother, Jean Davis.
In his last two years, Mr. Davis helped a friend write a book about Owsley
Stanley, famed for handling sound for the Grateful Dead and supplying the
group with LSD. He searched out objects like old barn doors and stones with
which to make large sculptures. And he worked with Mr. Aykroyd on a script
for a possible "Ghostbusters III" film.
As in his comedy, Mr. Davis said, "I'm improvising."
marina...@gmail.com
Jul 19, 2012, 6:09:11 PM7/19/12
to La N.
Tom Davis, ‘SNL’ writer and comedy partner of Al Franken, dies at 59
By T. Rees Shapiro, Washington Post
Tom Davis, the longtime stand-up comedy partner of Al Franken and a writer who created many of the most memorable sketches on “Saturday Night Live,” including the alien “Coneheads,” which he dreamed up while on LSD, died July 19 at his home in Hudson, N.Y. He was 59.
He had a metastatic tonsil cancer, said his wife, Mimi Raleigh.
Mr. Davis and Franken began writing jokes together as teenagers at the private Blake School in Minneapolis, making mock announcments over the public address system, including a satirical Ku Klux Klan march called “Superpatrioticanticatholicsegregatious.”
They joined “Saturday Night Live” before its debut season in 1975 and shared a single apprentice writer's salary of $350 a week, where they collaborated on sketches culled from politics, pop culture, and the bizarre.
Mr. Davis said he spent a small fortune throughout his lifetime on marijuana, hashish, cocaine, LSD and heroin, and enjoyed the substances with his friends Timothy Leary, John Belushi and Jerry Garcia.
The idea for the “Coneheads” came after a drug-fueled vacation to Easter Island with Dan Aykroyd, where Mr. Davis hallucinated that his own forehead had grown 10 inches.
Mr. Davis created the recurring Steve Martin character “Theodoric of York,” a medieval barber who dispatched sage advice on medicine and the law.
In one skit, Theodoric is called upon to rule judgment against a criminal, John the Tanner, who was accused of adultery.
“You were found guilty of theft and your right arm was cut off,” Theodoric says. “You were found guilty of lying and your tongue was cut out. Now, hmm, adultery.”
Mr. Davis's other characters included Bill Murray as Nick the lounge singer, who had a penchant for ad-libbing lyrics to wordless songs, such as John Williams' “Star Wars” theme: “Star Wars! Nothing but Star Wars! Gimme those Star Wars! Don't let them end!”
One of Mr. Davis’s best-known sketches was the scene in which culinary doyenne Julia Child tries to remain calm after she cuts the “dickens out of my finger.” She bleeds profusely all over her holiday chicken and shrieks, before passing out, “Save the liver! Save the liver!”
In 1990, Franken and Mr. Davis had a falling out and split up. Franken pursued ambitions as a radio pundit and politician — he's now a U.S. senator from Minnesota — while Mr. Davis largely faded into obscurity, recovering from his earlier life as a prolific drug user.
By 2004, Mr. Davis had been reduced to a footnote in comedic history as the answer to a trivia question that stumped record-setting “Jeopardy!” champion Ken Jennings: “He was the comedy partner of Al Franken.”
The pair reconciled by the time Franken became a senator in 2008 and after Mr. Davis had spent three years in a narcotics rehab center.
“If we were Sonny and Cher, he would be Cher,” Mr. Davis once said, noting that he refers to himself as “the guy who held Al Franken back for 20 years.”
Thomas James Davis was born Aug. 13, 1952, in Minneapolis. His father worked for 3M and his mother was the 1950 Queen of the Lakes at the Minneapolis Aquatennial summer festival.
As teenagers, Mr. Davis and Franken performed improvisational comedy at Dudley Riggs’s Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis. In the 1970s, Mr. Davis toured India “as a hippie” while Franken finished college at Harvard. Afterward, they moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, doing stand-up as a team.
After playing clubs on the fringes of stardom, the pair hit it big when they were recruited — blindly — by Lorne Michaels in 1975 and became staples of the “Saturday Night Live” writing crew.
The two were largely inseparable and worked in tandem for much of their comedy careers. Franken even named his daughter in his best friend's honor, Thomasin Davis Franken.
Mr. Davis wrote a memoir, in 2009, “Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL from Someone Who Was There.” The title, he said, came from the fact that he had spotty memory throughout his life, even before he began using drugs.
Survivors include his wife of 21 years, Mimi Raleigh, of Hudson and Mount Kisco, N.Y., where she owns and operates a veterinary clinic; his mother, Jean Davis, of Minnetonka, Minn.; and a brother.
“On Tuesdays, we'd stay up all night writing,” Mr. Davis once said, “Those were the best and worst times, because it was agonizing. But if you found yourself rolling on the floor laughing at 2 in the morning, that was as much fun as you could have, really, except for getting those huge laughs on-air. . . . And then to be in a restaurant the next day and overhear a conversation at the next table where they are talking about your piece, that's real payoff. That's real fun.”
By T. Rees Shapiro, Washington Post
Tom Davis, the longtime stand-up comedy partner of Al Franken and a writer who created many of the most memorable sketches on “Saturday Night Live,” including the alien “Coneheads,” which he dreamed up while on LSD, died July 19 at his home in Hudson, N.Y. He was 59.
He had a metastatic tonsil cancer, said his wife, Mimi Raleigh.
Mr. Davis and Franken began writing jokes together as teenagers at the private Blake School in Minneapolis, making mock announcments over the public address system, including a satirical Ku Klux Klan march called “Superpatrioticanticatholicsegregatious.”
They joined “Saturday Night Live” before its debut season in 1975 and shared a single apprentice writer's salary of $350 a week, where they collaborated on sketches culled from politics, pop culture, and the bizarre.
Mr. Davis said he spent a small fortune throughout his lifetime on marijuana, hashish, cocaine, LSD and heroin, and enjoyed the substances with his friends Timothy Leary, John Belushi and Jerry Garcia.
The idea for the “Coneheads” came after a drug-fueled vacation to Easter Island with Dan Aykroyd, where Mr. Davis hallucinated that his own forehead had grown 10 inches.
Mr. Davis created the recurring Steve Martin character “Theodoric of York,” a medieval barber who dispatched sage advice on medicine and the law.
In one skit, Theodoric is called upon to rule judgment against a criminal, John the Tanner, who was accused of adultery.
“You were found guilty of theft and your right arm was cut off,” Theodoric says. “You were found guilty of lying and your tongue was cut out. Now, hmm, adultery.”
Mr. Davis's other characters included Bill Murray as Nick the lounge singer, who had a penchant for ad-libbing lyrics to wordless songs, such as John Williams' “Star Wars” theme: “Star Wars! Nothing but Star Wars! Gimme those Star Wars! Don't let them end!”
One of Mr. Davis’s best-known sketches was the scene in which culinary doyenne Julia Child tries to remain calm after she cuts the “dickens out of my finger.” She bleeds profusely all over her holiday chicken and shrieks, before passing out, “Save the liver! Save the liver!”
In 1990, Franken and Mr. Davis had a falling out and split up. Franken pursued ambitions as a radio pundit and politician — he's now a U.S. senator from Minnesota — while Mr. Davis largely faded into obscurity, recovering from his earlier life as a prolific drug user.
By 2004, Mr. Davis had been reduced to a footnote in comedic history as the answer to a trivia question that stumped record-setting “Jeopardy!” champion Ken Jennings: “He was the comedy partner of Al Franken.”
The pair reconciled by the time Franken became a senator in 2008 and after Mr. Davis had spent three years in a narcotics rehab center.
“If we were Sonny and Cher, he would be Cher,” Mr. Davis once said, noting that he refers to himself as “the guy who held Al Franken back for 20 years.”
Thomas James Davis was born Aug. 13, 1952, in Minneapolis. His father worked for 3M and his mother was the 1950 Queen of the Lakes at the Minneapolis Aquatennial summer festival.
As teenagers, Mr. Davis and Franken performed improvisational comedy at Dudley Riggs’s Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis. In the 1970s, Mr. Davis toured India “as a hippie” while Franken finished college at Harvard. Afterward, they moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, doing stand-up as a team.
After playing clubs on the fringes of stardom, the pair hit it big when they were recruited — blindly — by Lorne Michaels in 1975 and became staples of the “Saturday Night Live” writing crew.
The two were largely inseparable and worked in tandem for much of their comedy careers. Franken even named his daughter in his best friend's honor, Thomasin Davis Franken.
Mr. Davis wrote a memoir, in 2009, “Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL from Someone Who Was There.” The title, he said, came from the fact that he had spotty memory throughout his life, even before he began using drugs.
Survivors include his wife of 21 years, Mimi Raleigh, of Hudson and Mount Kisco, N.Y., where she owns and operates a veterinary clinic; his mother, Jean Davis, of Minnetonka, Minn.; and a brother.
“On Tuesdays, we'd stay up all night writing,” Mr. Davis once said, “Those were the best and worst times, because it was agonizing. But if you found yourself rolling on the floor laughing at 2 in the morning, that was as much fun as you could have, really, except for getting those huge laughs on-air. . . . And then to be in a restaurant the next day and overhear a conversation at the next table where they are talking about your piece, that's real payoff. That's real fun.”
R H Draney
Jul 19, 2012, 11:54:48 PM7/19/12
to
La N. filted:
I'd still like to see the series of sketches in which they played rival
politicians appearing in ads that grew more and more vicious as the campaign
continued...Franken was "Pete Tagliani", which Davis's character consistently
mispronounced as "Taglioni" as he first implied and eventually blatantly
asserted various forms of wrongdoing....
I remember trying to find this bit when Franken ran for Congress, and was
utterly unsuccessful, so I don't remember exactly how it ends, except that it
sticks in my mind that one or both candidates were hauled off in handcuffs....r
--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.
>
>In the early years of "Saturday Night Live," Mr. Davis and Mr. Franken also
>appeared as a comic duo. One routine was "The Brain Tumor Comedian," in
>which Mr. Franken, his head bandaged, tried to tell jokes but kept
>forgetting the punch line. Mr. Davis fought tears as he implored the
>audience to applaud.
With the full knowledge that YouTube will take it down as soon as it's posted,
>In the early years of "Saturday Night Live," Mr. Davis and Mr. Franken also
>appeared as a comic duo. One routine was "The Brain Tumor Comedian," in
>which Mr. Franken, his head bandaged, tried to tell jokes but kept
>forgetting the punch line. Mr. Davis fought tears as he implored the
>audience to applaud.
I'd still like to see the series of sketches in which they played rival
politicians appearing in ads that grew more and more vicious as the campaign
continued...Franken was "Pete Tagliani", which Davis's character consistently
mispronounced as "Taglioni" as he first implied and eventually blatantly
asserted various forms of wrongdoing....
I remember trying to find this bit when Franken ran for Congress, and was
utterly unsuccessful, so I don't remember exactly how it ends, except that it
sticks in my mind that one or both candidates were hauled off in handcuffs....r
--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.
Message has been deleted
KingDaevid
Jul 20, 2012, 4:53:22 AM7/20/12
to
On Thursday, July 19, 2012 8:54:48 PM UTC-7, R H Draney sez:
> With the full knowledge that YouTube will take it down as soon as it's posted,
> I'd still like to see the series of sketches in which they played rival
> politicians appearing in ads that grew more and more vicious as the campaign
> continued...Franken was "Pete Tagliani", which Davis's character consistently
> mispronounced as "Taglioni" as he first implied and eventually blatantly
> asserted various forms of wrongdoing....
>
> I remember trying to find this bit when Franken ran for Congress, and was
> utterly unsuccessful, so I don't remember exactly how it ends, except that it
> sticks in my mind that one or both candidates were hauled off in handcuffs....r
...actually, that's a running bit in the 1976 theatrical movie TUNNELVISION, and while Franken & Davis appeared in that movie - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEuUdNaU7zc - they neither appeared in those segments of it, nor were they credited with writing it (Michael Mislove and Neil Israel were). The rival politicians were named Pete Bagliani (played by Ron Prince) and Winfield Carmichael (played by Frank von Zerneck). In the last reel of TUNNELVISION, it's revealed that both Bagliani and Carmichael wind up in the same prison, from which Bagliani escapes after killing Carmichael...
> With the full knowledge that YouTube will take it down as soon as it's posted,
> I'd still like to see the series of sketches in which they played rival
> politicians appearing in ads that grew more and more vicious as the campaign
> continued...Franken was "Pete Tagliani", which Davis's character consistently
> mispronounced as "Taglioni" as he first implied and eventually blatantly
> asserted various forms of wrongdoing....
>
> I remember trying to find this bit when Franken ran for Congress, and was
> utterly unsuccessful, so I don't remember exactly how it ends, except that it
> sticks in my mind that one or both candidates were hauled off in handcuffs....r
kdm
http://killradio.org
B. Terry
Jul 20, 2012, 5:16:35 AM7/20/12
to
0 new messages