Anne Beatts passed away. Beat, a pioneer in the world of comedy writingts is probably best known for her five-year writing career in the early days of Saturday Night Live, where, as one of the few women on the show’s writing staff, she helped create a number of classessic characters and sketches. After you leave it series, Beatts went on to make her own TV, in particular the sitcom of the high school cult Square pegs, helping a young Sarah Jessica Parker’s career in the process. According to Variety, Beatts’ the death was confirmed today by her longtime friend Rona Edwards. Beatts was 74.
Beatts first gained fame as a comedy writer with her tenure as an editor at the National Lampoon, one of the many comic tributaries that fed the writers of the original SNL(She was known for collaborating on a fake ad that landed the magazine in a lawsuit from Volkswagen When joining the series, Beatts often collaborating with fellow writer Rosie Shuster, where she often tasked to develop material for the female members of the show’s staff, especially Gilda Radner. (Like many of the early ones SNL writers, Beatts worked as a writer for Radner’s one-man show in 1980 Gilda LiveBeatts prescribed SNL for all of the original Lorne Michaels tenure in the series, featuring characters like Todd and Lisa Lupner (aka The Nerds), Buck Henry’s deeply disturbing “Uncle Roy” and Fred Garvin, male prostitute.
In the 1980s, Beatts started out on her own and created Square pegs for CBS. Announced for telling the same types of teen-centric stories that John Hughes would spend the next decade searching for hits, the one-season show featured a cast of future stars (most notably Parker), a new wave-heavy soundtrack, and on. at least a few cameo appearances from Beatts’ old friends-most notably Bill Murray in a one-episode guest role. (Father Guido Sarducci also appeared.) Unfortunately reports of dysfunction on the set of the show led to the studio to pull the plug on a promising start, ending the series after one season.
After Square pegs ended, Beatts continued to write regularly, writing an episode of Murphy Brown in the ’90s, and the writing for comedian Stephanie Miller is short lived late-night talk show in 1995. She also served many years as a writing teacher, and served as an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, and at Chapman University.