![]() #The last bastion 1984 tv#Hall and his dry onscreen delivery were in the right business at the right time, and cable TV opened up the amount of programs that could use a wit like his, proven in the field of late night. A month before the show’s March 1982 cancellation, Hall had already landed another gig writing for Letterman’s late-night show, and he earned an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson six months later. The same year, Hall joined the cast of Fridays – ABC’s answer to SNL – as the show’s first and only new cast addition in 1981. ![]() ![]() He eventually settled in New York City in 1979, where he regularly performed at The Comic Strip, The Improv, and Catch a Rising Star and first caught the attention of David Letterman, who invited him to become a writer and regular performer on his then-daytime The David Letterman Show, where he earned an Emmy for writing in 1981. Speaking in a 1983 People interview, Hall remembers his college campus as “the last bastion of hippiedom, with lots of people named ‘Sunshine’ … I used to watch the street performers harangue the crowds and involve them.” Inspired in particular by the “insult magic” of Harry Anderson, Hall left his job at a local newspaper and became a street performer himself, starting with local open mics and eventually touring cross-country performing impromptu shows at college campuses (one such show involved him getting people to act out fake student films). After briefly attending Western Carolina University not far from his hometown, he transferred in 1975 to study journalism at Western Washington State college. But what neither old nor young Americans know is that for the past twenty years, Hall’s remained a big star in the UK and Australia, where he’s a regular on the panel show/stand-up scene, often as his Confederate flag-wearing alter-ego jailbird singer Otis Lee Crenshaw, a merciless yet loving take on American culture and Hall’s own experiences as a pavement-pounding, road trip-bound, hat-passing US street comedian.Īn only child, Hall was born in Alexandria, Virginia and raised in rural North Carolina. While Rich Hall’s biggest claim to fame to younger Americans is being the inspiring force behind the grumpy bartender Moe Szyslak on The Simpsons, for those old enough to remember watching Fridays, Not Necessarily the News, and Dick Ebersol’s era of Saturday Night Live, Hall was a prolific young street performer-turned-writer/performer who skyrocketed the term “sniglet” to fame throughout the eighties and starred in one of the very first shows on The Comedy Channel, now Comedy Central. In our column Saturday Night’s Children, we present the history, talent, and best sketches of one SNL cast member each week for your viewing, learning, and laughing pleasure. Saturday Night Live has been home to over a hundred cast members throughout the past 37 years. ![]()
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