Dan Aykroyd

Saturday Night Live[edit]

Aykroyd gained fame on the American late-night comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL). He was originally hired, and paid $278 a week (equivalent to $1,603 in 2024), as a writer for the show, but became a part of the cast before the series premiered. The original cast was referred to on the show as "The Not Ready For Prime Time Players". Aykroyd was the youngest member of the cast, and appeared on the show for its first four seasons, from 1975 to 1979. He brought a sensibility to the show which combined youth, unusual interests, talent as an impersonator, and a manic intensity. Guest host Eric Idle of Monty Python said that Aykroyd's ability to write and act out characters made him the only member of the SNL cast capable of being a Python.^[15]


He was known for his impersonations of celebrities such as Jimmy Carter, Vincent Price, Richard Nixon, Rod Serling, Tom Snyder, and Julia Child. He was also known for his recurring roles, such as Beldar, father of the Coneheads family; with Steve Martin, Yortuk Festrunk, one of the "Two Wild and Crazy Guys" brothers from Bratislava, Slovakia; sleazy late-night cable TV host E. Buzz Miller and his cousin, corrupt maker of children's toys and costumes Irwin Mainway (who extolled the virtues and defended the safety of the "Bag-o-Glass" toy); Fred Garvin – male prostitute; and high-bred but low-brow critic Leonard Pinth-Garnell. Aykroyd and Jane Curtin parodied the Point/Counterpoint segment on the CBS news show 60 Minutes, which featured the liberal Shana Alexander and the conservative segregationist James Kilpatrick, by portraying the two as hating one another; Aykroyd's first words in response to Curtin's point were, "Jane, you ignorant slut!".^[16]


Aykroyd's eccentric talent was recognized by others in the highly competitive SNL environment; when he first presented his "Super Bass-O-Matic '76" sketch, a fake TV commercial in which a garish, hyper-pitchman (based on Ron Popeil) touts a food blender that turns an entire bass into liquid pulp, the other writers and cast members considered the sketch "so exhilaratingly strange that many remember sitting and listening, open-mouthed ... Nobody felt jealous of it because they couldn't imagine writing anything remotely like it."^[17] Aykroyd later said that the inspiration for the sketch was seeing his aunt Helene Gougeon (a culinary writer and food columnist in Montreal) put a bass into a blender in order to make a bouillabaisse when he was 12 years old.^[18][19]


While Aykroyd was a close friend and partner with fellow cast member John Belushi and shared some of the same sensibilities, Aykroyd was more reserved and less self-destructive. Aykroyd later recalled that, unlike Belushi and others of his peers, he was uninterested in recreational drug use.^[20]


In 1977, he received an Emmy Award for writing on SNL; he later received two more nominations for writing and one for acting. In Rolling Stone's February 2015 appraisal of all 141 SNL cast members to date, Aykroyd was ranked fifth (behind Belushi, Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey, and Mike Myers). "Of all the original [SNL] greats, Aykroyd is the least imitated", they wrote, "because nobody else can do what he did."^[21]


In later decades, Aykroyd made occasional guest appearances and unannounced cameos on SNL, often impersonating the American politician Bob Dole. He also brought back past characters including Irwin Mainway and Leonard Pinth-Garnell. In 1995, he appeared on the show to introduce a performance by Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip.^[22] Aykroyd, who is a fan of the band, had personally lobbied Lorne Michaels to book them as musical guests.^[23]


During some guest appearances, he resurrected the Blues Brothers musical act with frequent host John Goodman in place of Belushi, who was by then deceased. He became the second member of the original cast to host SNL in May 2003, when he appeared in the season finale. During his monologue, he performed a musical number with James Belushi similar to the Blues Brothers, but neither Aykroyd nor Belushi donned the black suit and sunglasses. On March 24, 2007, Aykroyd appeared as a crying fan of American Idol finalist Sanjaya Malakar (played by Andy Samberg) during "Weekend Update". On February 14, 2009, he appeared as U.S. House Minority leader John Boehner. Aykroyd also made a surprise guest appearance, along with many other SNL alumni, on the show of March 9, 2013.^[24]