It was, Mooney says, the easiest bit he ever wrote. All he had done was spell out what had been going on beneath the surface of his “job interview” with Lorne Michaels and the NBC execs.

Just as Michaels had hoped, Richard’s appearance lifted “Saturday Night” out of the programming ghetto and established it as a cultural phenomenon. Two weeks later, Chevy Chase made the cover of New York magazine, which dubbed him “the funniest man in America” and quoted an unnamed network executive championing him as “the first real potential successor to Johnny Carson,” and predicting he’d be guest-hosting Tonight within six months.

Carson, understandably, offered a less-than-glowing assessment of Chevy’s skills. “He couldn’t ad-lib a fart after a baked-bean dinner.”