Michael O'Donoghue

While researching Lenny Bruce, I was reminded of the comedy writer and performer Michael O'Donoghue.

In his comic writing he spoke of the technique of mixing the heroic with the mundane, a trick we’ve been using with YOMG. An O’Donoghue example of this is "Tarzan of the Cows," a comic book parody in which the infant Lord Greystoke survives a plane crash not in Africa, but in rural Wisconsin.

When National Lampoon magazine began in 1970 the 30-year-old O’Donoghue was one of its original contributors.

He had previously written a book called "The Incredible, Thrilling Adventures of the Rock" partially credited with inspiring the "pet rock" craze.

In the 1970s each issue of National Lampoon had a theme. In the ‘Fraud’ issue they advertised a Lenny Bruce flexi-disc – his most outrageous and scatological performance yet. It turned out to be a piece of cardboard with a photograph of grooves on. The cover advertises 'nude pictures of Caroline Kennedy from the moon'.

He also created "The Vietnamese Baby Book," a vividly anti-war parody of the familiar "baby book" diary, in which the unfortunate parents fill in items such as "baby's first shrapnel."

With fellow staffer Tony Hendra, O'Donoghue wrote and produced National Lampoon's first comedy album, "Radio Dinner" in 1972.

The following year O'Donoghue was assigned to produce the National Lampoon Radio Hour.

Although seen as his crowning achievement it was a financial disaster for publisher Matty Simmons. After only 13 shows he asked O’Donoghue to return to the magazine, where he was much missed, allowing John Belushi to take over the now half hour show as creative director An argument followed and O’Donoghue left the publication for good.

O’Donoghue and much of the National Lampoon’s Radio Hour cast and sensibility was poached by Lorne Michaels for Saturday Night Live. O'Donoghue was the show's head writer for his first two years there.

His SNL career summary mainly taken from Wikipedia.

On SNL, O'Donoghue appeared in the first show's opening sketch, as a speech therapist instructing John Belushi in such phrases as "I would like to feed your fingertips to the wolverines. We are out of badgers."

He later appeared in the persona of a Vegas-style "impressionist" who would pay great praise to showbiz mainstays such as talk-show host Mike Douglas and Tony Orlando and Dawn — and then speculate how they'd react if steel needles were plunged into their eyes. The shrieking fits that followed are believed by biographer Dennis Perrin to be inspired by O'Donoghue's real-life agonies from chronic migraine headaches.

"I was watching this movie and a funny thought occurred to me. I thought, what if someone took steel needles, say, mm, fifteen, eighteen inches long and plunged them, plunged them into Elvis Presley's ... eyes. What would his reaction be? We can only guess ... but I think it might go something like this..."

Later on, O'Donoghue cultivated the persona of the grim "Mr. Mike", a coldly decadent figure who favoured viewers with comically dark "Least-Loved Bedtime Stories" such as "The Little Engine that Died."

In 1979 he produced a television special Mr Mike’s Mondo Video, that was deemed too raunchy for the network and was ultimately released as a film.

O'Donoghue returned to SNL in 1981 when the new executive producer Dick Ebersol needed an old hand to help revive the faltering show. O'Donoghue's volatile personality and mood swings made this difficult: His first day on the show he started yelling and screaming at all the cast members, telling Mary Gross that she was as talented as a pair of old shoes, and forcing everyone to write on the walls with magic markers. The only one he liked was Eddie Murphy, because Murphy wasn't afraid of him.

Arguably the most memorable sketch O'Donoghue created during this short-lived tenure was a spoof of the old Superman "Bizarro" world (where up is down, death is good, happiness makes you sad, etc.) set in the Ronald Reagan administration. He used real details and plans from the administration in a showcase of what he considered the insanity of that presidency.

According to a question in the SNL edition of Trivial Pursuit, O'Donoghue was fired after writing the never-aired sketch "Silverman in the Bunker" (which compared the NBC network president to Adolf Hitler).

Among his many screenplays, he co-wrote, with Mitch Glazer, the Bill Murray film Scrooged. He insisted however that their original screenplay was much better than the finished movie.

O'Donoghue died on November 7, 1994 of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 52. At his wake his apartment was decorated with his CAT scans.

Bill Murray's eulogy "He hated the horrible things in life, and the horrible people in life. And he hated them so good."

Here is an article he wrote called ‘How to Write Good’.

In the time just before his death he wrote a column for Spin Magazine and this links to a small feature on him and some of those columns.

A personal memoir by Darius James.

A great tribute article to him.

Also visit the brilliant Mark’s Very Large National Lampoon Site.