On April 24, 1976, Saturday Night Live ran a sketch entitled “The Claudine Longet Invitational,” featuring Chevy Chase and Jane Curtin. For those who don’t know, Longet was a popular French actress and singer who fatally shot her boyfriend, Olympic skier Vladimir “Spider” Sabich, a month earlier in what she claimed was an accident.
The SNL sketch made light of the incident by having Longet accidentally shoot the contestants of a freestyle skiing competition while Chase and Curtin comment on it. “That looked almost like skeet shooting,” says Curtin at one point, to which Chase responds, “You must mean ski shooting.”
The Claudine Longet Ski Invitational 1976 SNL A classic. SNL classic 1976 —
Neither Longet nor her lawyers found the above sketch amusing and made their feelings clear to the show’s producers. This resulted in SNL announcer Don Pardo delivering the first-ever on-air apology in the history of the series during the following week’s broadcast. “It is desirable to correct any misunderstanding that a suggestion was made that, in fact, a crime had been committed,” the statement began.
“The satire was fictitious and its intent only humorous. This is a statement of apology if the material was misinterpreted.”
The Dark ‘SNL’ Sketch That Led to the Show’s First-Ever On-Air Apology
But even though SNL has stirred up its fair share of controversy, there weren’t a ton of apologies issued over the air after that. In fact, the only comparable apology occurred more than 40 years later, when Pete Davidson apologized for making a joke at former Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw’s expense. On the previous week’s show, Davidson compared Crenshaw—who wears an eyepatch—to a “hitman in a porno movie.” Davidson eventually revealed that he was forced to apologize.
As for Longet, she was found guilty of negligent homicide in 1977. According to her, she’d found a pistol in Sabich’s house and asked him how to use it just before it unexpectedly went off. However, a detective who’d spoken to her about it testified that Longet told him she’d pretended to fire the gun just prior to Sabich being shot. Longet received a 30-day jail sentence, which the judge allowed her to serve at a time of her own choosing.
The post 50 Years Ago, ‘SNL’ Aired a Sketch So Controversial It Forced the Show’s First-Ever On-Air Apology appeared first on VICE.
