Barry and Saturday Night Live

[a***@ualr.edu]

Hi Y'all,

I was watching the new Gilda Radner movie and it seems like I remember Barry was supposed to appear on the show once and backed out at the last minute. Is that right? If so, does anyone know what happened?

The Gilda movie is really sweet, but terribly sad btw.

Angela

[marvin]

Angela, a Saturday Night Live cameraman appeared as Barry Manilow with Billy Crystal as Fernando Lamas ("You look mahvellous" was his famous catch phrase) in the SNL Sketch "Fernanndo's Hideaway" during 1984 (not sure of the date)that was very memorable and funny.
I do not know if Barry really backed out of SNL our not, as Crystal wanted to improvise with the cameraman and asked him to become Barry Manilow, even though the cameraman looked nothing like Barry, so it is possible that the booking of Barry on SNL was fictional just so Billy Crystal can do the sketch.
Barry did appear on a Saturday night prime time show hosted by Howard Cosell called "Saturday Night Live", (1975?) but this is not the same SNL late night show that is known for comedy and political satire. Thanks, Marvin

[s***@gmail.com]

There was an article in Rolling Stone mag in 2017 about SNL. They asked former cast members to recall their favorite sketches and Billy Crystal cited the Manilow one...he said Barry canceled at about a quarter to eleven the night of the show...so yes, the anecdote is true.

[Carmen]

It was even mentioned on the front page of the Life section of USA Today in an area at the top middle of the page, to the right of the USA Today Life section header, called “Today’s Tip-Off”, as I remember, where certain stories were, like, “offset” from the others (which I don’t think they do anymore since they redesigned the paper a few years ago), a day or 2 before it was to air, that Barry was supposed to be on SNL that weekend.

[Kristen Cladek]

Post by s***@gmail.com
There was an article in Rolling Stone mag in 2017 about SNL. They asked former cast members to recall their favorite sketches and Billy Crystal cited the Manilow one...he said Barry canceled at about a quarter to eleven the night of the show...so yes, the anecdote is true.

I beleive this is it: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-lists/my-favorite-saturday-night-live-sketch-119386/fernando-talk-with-barry-manilow-and-baseball-122904/

-Kristen