By James David Patrick
Charles Grodin hosted Saturday Night Live on October 29, 1977, during the show’s third season. The Halloween-themed episode featured the usual assortment of seasonal sketches including Dan Aykroyd as Irwin Mainway on Consumer Probe where he defended his costume: “Johnny Human Torch… it’s a bag of greasy rags and a lighter.” The Coneheads distributed six-packs of beer to treat-or-treaters and Gilda Radner’s hyperactive Judy Miller made her first appearance. In many ways it was a traditional episode featuring the usual recurring characters… except for the host segments.
You can watch the entire episode, free of charge, via the Internet Archive.
Charles Grodin in the Saturday Night Live cold open from October 29, 1977.
In a “two minutes to air” cold open, John Belushi tells Gilda Radner how concerned he is about tonight’s host. “This Chuck Grodin guy is making me nervous. He’s barely here all week and he missed dress rehearsal…. He doesn’t know TV. He doesn’t smoke dope. He’s just not one of us.” Grodin shows up moments later with gifts for the entire cast. “It’s a New England tradition,” he says, re-emphasizing his “Charles Grodin”-outsider status. At the last minute, he wants to duck out to get a gift for the director. John becomes more agitated.
“Chuck, you can’t go to a shop. We’re doing a live show. There’s no time.”
“Live?”
“Yeah. Saturday Night Live.”
“You mean literally live?”
Grodin continues the gag during his opening monologue. “I didn’t know there’d be an audience here. How many of you knew this was live?” he asks. “I wish I had more time to rehearse, but how can you come to New York and not see at least a couple of Broadway shows?” The monologue doesn’t feature any actual jokes. He talks about not having ever seen Saturday Night Live (“It seems like a really cute show”) and gives facts about the Empire State Building as he rambles on as if completely unprepared.
In his first sketch appearance he and Gilda enter Samurai Dry Cleaning, staffed, of course, by John Belushi as the titular samurai that speaks in Japanese-sounding gibberish and overreacts to every request. Grodin turns to Gilda: “How do you understand what he’s saying?” After the samurai “boxes” the dry-cleaned items by slashing them with his sword and pulling up a perfectly tied box from beneath the counter, Grodin presses his deconstruction of live television. “You had to have a prop down there—it’s a great gag, but it had to be placed down there and brought up.”
The show turns Grodin’s unpreparedness and outsider naivety into the show’s central conceit—an entire episode built around the breaking of the fourth wall. After having a song cut early in the episode, he invades a Paul Simon musical number wearing an Art Garfunkel wig. After Simon departs, Grodin attempts a rendition of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” until Art also puts a stop to that. Grodin also repeatedly looks off-camera to consult with Lorne Michaels about singing “his song about life.” The show’s clever punchline comes during the final sketch of the evening when Grodin acts as a spokesman for a “Hire the Incompetent” initiative and realizes midway through that the writers have used his entire evening as host as the prime example for the benefits of hiring incompetents.
This Saturday Night Live episode represents Grodin’s unique talents as a comedian and performer. His delivery from the Bob Newhart school of deadpan shows how understatement is even louder in a sea of hyperbole. Charles Grodin didn’t deliver jokes with a simple set-up followed by a punchline—he played his characters straight, a bewildered everyman commenting on the crazy mixed-up world around him.
The Pittsburgh-born actor trained with Uta Hagen at the HB Studio in New York, played alongside Anthony Quinn on Broadway in Tchin-Tchin, and made his film debut in Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). Grodin worked alongside some of the greatest dramatic and comedic performers ever to grace the screen and stage but developed his own inimitable brand of understatement. He wasn’t in the business of grand gestures unless, of course, the character demanded a scene-chewing overreaction. Charles Grodin translated his acting gifts into representing the insecurities in all of us, both big and small.
His hosting duties on Saturday Night Live showcased why Hollywood didn’t really know what to do with him besides cast him as an uptight white-collar supporting stiff on the precipice of a mental breakdown. That’s not to say that Hollywood got it all wrong. His cerebral, muted style of comedy played best as a foil for louder, bigger co-stars like Robert De Niro, Chevy Chase, Miss Piggy, and a big shaggy St. Bernard. On those rare instances (mostly early in his career) that Grodin got to stand on his own as a leading man, he gave us something more. And we shouldn’t be surprised that he wasn’t always just a bewildered stiff—he was an actor capable of simultaneously playing off a movie’s inherent artifice, thereby digging into the insecurities of contemporary life and embracing the intelligence of his audience.
Charles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd in Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid (1972).
Unfortunately, many of these performances can be hard to see. His greatest film (and one of the best comedies ever made), Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid (1972), co-starring Cybill Shepherd, was last released on a now out-of-print 2002 DVD that currently sells for upwards of $200. He also wrote the screenplay for a stylish British thriller called 11 Harrowhouse (1974) in which he stars as a diamond merchant blackmailed into pulling off a heist. The character offers viewers the rare chance to see Grodin play a charismatic (albeit shy) leading man, alongside Candice Bergen, James Mason, Trevor Howard, and Sir John Gielgud.
Those films of the early 1970s offer a glimpse at the career he might have had if he’d accepted the lead role in Mike Nichols’ The Graduate (1967). He turned down the role because it paid too little. Producer Lawrence Turman urged Grodin to reconsider because Turman was convinced it would have made him a star. He probably wasn’t wrong—but at what cost? The film cemented Dustin Hoffman as an unlikely leading man with a prolific, award-laden career. Would the movie have best served Grodin, however? Grodin’s style, like his Saturday Night Live performance, is knowing, whereas Hoffman’s far more immersive and naturalistic. In contemporary parlance, we might call Grodin “meta,” derived from a Greek prefix meaning “its own category.” The term describes art about itself, art that breaks the fourth wall and calls attention to itself as a theatrical contrivance.
Instead becoming a Dustin Hoffman-type leading man, Grodin went on to perfect the scene-stealing supporting player in major Hollywood films like Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Catch-22 (1970), King Kong (1976), Heaven Can Wait (1978), Real Life (1979), and The Lonely Guy (1984).
He could tap into the essence of being human with grace, but also with a perfectly timed comment about the strangeness of it all—just as he did on Saturday Night Live when he stopped a Killer Bees sketch midstream to ask whether they were supposed to be real bees or people pretending to be bees. Bill Murray, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Garrett Morris then discussed their bee character motivations in detail as Grodin soaked up the wonder in all the chaos that he’d wrought.
Charles Grodin died Tuesday, May 18th, 2021 at the age of 85, a consummate professional actor, writer, and political commentator. Celebrate the life and career of Charles Grodin with the following selection of films available to rent through DVD Netflix.
Heaven Can Wait (Warren Beaty, Buck Henry, 1978)
The second adaptation of Harry Segall’s play of the same name retains a classic screwball sensibility in a fantasy about Joe Pendleton (Warren Beatty), a football star mistakenly brought to heaven by his guardian angel. Grodin plays the lover of Pendleton’s cheating wife Julia (Dyan Cannon). Grodin and Cannon provide the broad comic relief while Beatty and co-star Julie Christie settle into an earnestly charming, light-hearted drama.
The Great Muppet Caper (Jim Henson, 1981)
You might be a proper child of the 1980s if your first introduction to Charles Grodin came in the second theatrical outing for Jim Henson’s Muppets. Kermit, Fozzie and Gonzo are investigative reporters hot on the trail of a London jewel thief. I wouldn’t argue with anyone that said Charles Grodin gives his best performance as Nicky Holiday, scheming brother to Diana Rigg’s Lady Holiday, hopelessly in love with Miss Piggy.
Midnight Run (Martin Brest, 1988)
Martin Brest’s action-comedy best parallels Charles Grodin’s career and on-screen persona. This terminally underseen and underappreciated flick is a masterpiece of popcorn cinema.
Jack Walsh (Robert De Niro) is a bounty hunter transporting Grodin’s Jonathan “The Duke” Mardukas from New York to Los Angeles. An easy snatch-and-grab goes awry as the FBI and the mob have other plans for The Duke. Grodin’s neurotic white-collar accountant makes a perfect foil for tough guy De Niro, constantly questioning, constantly complicating their relationship with observation and small talk.
Taking Care of Business (Arthur Hiller, 1990)
Lovable schlub and convicted car thief (James Belushi) stages a prison riot so he can escape and see the Cubs play in the World Series. He happens across a Filofax belonging to an uptight advertising executive Spencer Barnes (Charles Grodin, obviously). With the promise of a reward, he aims to return the address book but ends up stealing Barnes’ identity, staying in the boss’s Malibu mansion, and participating in Spencer’s business dealings. It’s a routine variation on themes explored in earlier socio-economic identity swaps like Trading Places and Beverly Hills Cop, but the charismatic cast makes this familiar trip worth the ride.
While We’re Young (Noah Baumbach, 2014)
After Clifford (1994) and My Summer Story (1994), Grodin began a 12-year hiatus from film acting to be a stay-at-home dad. He returned in 2006’s The Ex (starring Zach Braff), a half-baked, overlong sitcom that wasted the talents of its excellent cast. In 2014, he appeared in Barry Levinson’s The Humbling and this, a dramedy about a Gen X couple (Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts) that befriends a Millennial couple (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried).
Baumbach’s film is observational about generational aesthetics and divides. Low-drama and largely conversational, While We’re Young provides an ideal platform for Grodin’s return to supporting form as Ben Stiller’s father. At once cynical and fatherly, it’s a beautiful coda to a long Hollywood career propping up leading players and shining brightly whenever he seized the opportunity.
James David Patrick is a Pittsburgh-based writer with a movie-watching problem. He has a degree in Film Studies from Emory University that gives him license to discuss Russian Shakespeare adaptations at cocktail parties. You’ll find him crate diving at local record shops. James blogs about movies, music and 80’s nostalgia at www.thirtyhertzrumble.com. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.