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The White House was terrified of Chevy Chase.

Gerald Ford had just walked an unlikely path to the presidency, first taking over for the disgraced Spiro Agnew and then for Richard “You can’t fire me, I quit!” Nixon. The new leader of the free world had the advantage of simply not being Nixon, but that didn’t last long, thanks to a new comedy show called Saturday Night (so new that it wasn't yet Saturday Night Live).

One of the surprise hit’s first recurring characters was Chase’s unkind imitation of Ford. Though Ford was a real-life college athlete, this cartoon version was a clumsy oaf, falling off ladders and tumbling down stairs. The caricature stuck to Ford like tar, and his team believed the best way to fight back was to prove that they were in on the joke.

Ron Nessen, who passed away this week at...

Since 1975 nearly a thousand hosts have graced the stage at Studio 8H at Rockefeller Center for “Saturday Night Live.”

Actors, comedians, musicians and even politicians have taken the stage to make America laugh on Saturday night for 50 seasons. Twenty five of these hosts have been inducted into the “Five Timers Club.” The club was first introduced during Tom Hanks’ 1990 monologue, featuring Steve Martin, Elliott Gould and Paul Simon.

During Martin Short’s December 2024 appearance, several Five Timers Club members popped up on the show to welcome him into the club, including Emma Stone, Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Kristen Wiig and more, to give him the ceremonial robe.

Alec Baldwin has hosted the show 17 times, the most in the series’ history, with Martin, Hanks, Buck Henry and John Goodman following close behind.

As the show celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, we have rounded up every person who has hosted the sketch show.

We’re celebrating 50 years of “Saturday Night Live“! All this week, we’re digging into the late-night comedy institution with new stories, including lists, essays, interviews, and more.

There’s an old adage that “context is everything” and while it may not apply to all situations, it certainly rings true when it comes to politics and comedy. Both arenas are designed around performers, sometimes made to look the fool and other times a noble voice of the people, but where one lands always depends on the moment in which a joke or plea is delivered.

This is a fact “Saturday Night Live” has understood well since its inception, with Chevy Chase debuting his impression of then-President Gerald Ford during the show’s first few weeks on air. Chase would appear a few times as Ford in the month after the show’s premiere, but it was during the Christmas episode the character really took form.

From Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump to Barack Obama, an appearance on Saturday Night Live has become an obligatory whistle-stop for presidential candidates over the past 20 years. Kamala Harris was the latest to join the parade last night, communing with her comedy doppelgänger Maya Rudolph to make one final push for votes in advance of Tuesday’s election.

Looking at one another in the mirror, Harris and “Harris” gave each other words of encouragement during the campaign’s final days. There was a shot at Trump, albeit one that required viewers to have seen the viral video in which the former president had trouble locating a garbage truck door handle. The real Harris winced at Rudolph’s impression: “I don’t really laugh like that, do I?”

“A little bit,” Kamala/Maya conceded.

Then the two shared some cutesy Kamala puns. “Now, Kamala, take my palmala. The American people want to stop the chaos,...

Since its beginning in 1975, Saturday Night Live has excelled at political impressions. They've been around for every Presidential election for decades, not to mention scores of political figures who have come and gone. Sometimes, you get an actor doing an okay impression, but other times, SNL crafts an impression so huge that it becomes a national sensation.

The best impressions are so famous that they can overwhelm the actual political figure being lampooned. Often, these politicians will pop up on SNL to confront their imposter and give them a stamp of approval. Not all of them are top-notch (their various takes on Donald Trump have been tricky), but these rank as the best SNL political impersonations over the last 50 years, and how you can always count on the show to nail some hilarious takes on famous political figures past and present.

Honorable mentions: Dan Aykroyd as Jimmy Carter, Jon Lovitz as Mike Dukakis,...

Saturday Night Live wasn’t Saturday Night Live, both literally and spiritually, when it premiered on Oct. 11, 1975. Weeks earlier, ABC had debuted a prime-time variety show called Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell. So Lorne Michaels’ late-night creation had to go by, simply, Saturday Night — the same title of the Jason Reitman film (out now) about the sketch-comedy institution’s very first telecast. But that inaugural season was different from what we think of as Saturday Night Live in ways that go much further and deeper than the name. In that first year,...

Nikki Haley made a surprise appearance in the Saturday Night Live cold open tonight, this time as a “concerned South Carolina voter” who asks questions of Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) at a CNN town hall.

The skit had Gayle King and Charles Barkley, hosts of CNN’s King Charles, moderating the town hall with the former president, with Johnson again playing Trump and with his propensity to sprinkle in political rhetoric with a pop culture stream of consciousness.

Haley, who has stepped up her attacks on Trump following the New Hampshire primary, drew loud applause from the SNL audience as she appeared in the town hall audience to ask him a question.

“Why won’t you debate Nikki Haley?” she asked Trump.

Johnson, as Trump, replied, “Oh my God! It’s her, the woman who was in charge of security on January 6th. It’s Pelosi.”

That was a...

• Additional research by Jim Miller (@jimmiller)

For 40 years, Saturday Night Live has dedicated itself to making celebrities look as ridiculous as possible—and we’re better people for it. From controversial politicians (Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin was a cultural phenomenon that took on a life of its own) to kooky journalists (“Baba Wawa,” anyone?) SNL has supplied its fair share of eerily accurate impersonations throughout the years. Sometimes we wonder if we’d be more informed if Dana Carvey actually did NBC Nightly News instead of Tom Brokaw. Just a thought.

Here, we’ve selected 30 celebrity impressions that represent the best of the best. A few cast members make multiple appearances—how could we pick just one Kristen Wiig impression?—and some of these characters even met their real-life counterparts at one point. (Watch President Bill Clinton meet Bill Clinton below.)

If you’re in a safe space...

• Additional research by Jim Miller (@jimmiller)

For 40 years, Saturday Night Live has dedicated itself to making celebrities look as ridiculous as possible—and we’re better people for it. From controversial politicians (Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin was a cultural phenomenon that took on a life of its own) to kooky journalists (“Baba Wawa,” anyone?) SNL has supplied its fair share of eerily accurate impersonations throughout the years. Sometimes we wonder if we’d be more informed if Dana Carvey actually did NBC Nightly News instead of Tom Brokaw. Just a thought.

Here, we’ve selected 30 celebrity impressions that represent the best of the best. A few cast members make multiple appearances—how could we pick just one Kristen Wiig impression?—and some of these characters even met their real-life counterparts at one point. (Watch President Bill Clinton meet Bill Clinton below.)

If you’re in a safe space...

On the eve of its 40th anniversary special (though the anniversary itself isn't until October), what is left to say about "Saturday Night Live"? There have been multiple books written about the show, several documentaries, countless essays — riding the never-ending roller-coaster between "Saturday Night Dead" and "Saturday Night Lives Again!" — best-ofs, worst-ofs, and every other kind of list you can think of. I don't know that anything I write over the next few pages will provide new insight into one of the most influential comedy shows ever made, but I wondered if you could tell the story of the show — through good times and bad, through revolutions and evolutions and retrenchments — by looking at its sketches. I wound up picking 21 in all: some among the show's most famous, some obscure but important. These aren't meant as a definitive breakdown of the best "SNL" ever had to offer, but as a...

• Additional research by Jim Miller (@jimmiller)

It takes a special formula to make an awesome Saturday Night Live host. The person in question must be funny, yes, but also incredibly magnetic and likable. The gig is a lot harder than people think, but some stars make it seem like a walk in the park.

Everyone from Britney Spears to Josh Hutcherson has hosted SNL, but what celebrities reign supreme as the ultimate masters? Well, take a break from watching VH1 Classic‘s “SNL Rewind: 2015- 1975 Mega Marathon,” and find out which 10 candidates make cut. (Of course, it includes human beer bottle and general sunshine king Justin Timberlake.)

Alec Baldwin

Alec Baldwin has hosted the show a whopping 16 times—the most ever—and became a member of the prestigious Five-Timers Club in 1994. Some of Baldwin’s best skits include “NPR’s Delicious Dish with Pete Schweddy” (1998), “Brenda the Waitress” (1990), and...

• Additional research by Jim Miller (@jimmiller)

It takes a special formula to make an awesome Saturday Night Live host. The person in question must be funny, yes, but also incredibly magnetic and likable. The gig is a lot harder than people think, but some stars make it seem like a walk in the park.

Everyone from Britney Spears to Josh Hutcherson has hosted SNL, but what celebrities reign supreme as the ultimate masters? Well, take a break from watching VH1 Classic‘s “SNL Rewind: 2015- 1975 Mega Marathon,” and find out which 10 candidates make cut. (Of course, it includes human beer bottle and general sunshine king Justin Timberlake.)

Alec Baldwin

Alec Baldwin has hosted the show a whopping 16 times—the most ever—and became a member of the prestigious Five-Timers Club in 1994. Some of Baldwin’s best skits include “NPR’s Delicious Dish with Pete Schweddy” (1998), “Brenda the Waitress” (1990), and...

Obama's new press secretary doesn't report directly to the president. Lloyd Grove talks to alumni of the office and longtime White House reporters about the limits on Jay Carney's clout.

When Jay Carney takes over from Robert Gibbs as President Obama's chief spokesman this month, it might become a case of "be careful what you wish for" for White House beat reporters.

Related story on The Daily Beast: Gabrielle Giffords' Shooting: The Impact on Obama's Presidency

Carney certainly has friends in the press room-but does he have clout in the West Wing?

Time magazine's former Washington bureau chief, 45, spent two decades as a journalist before joining the administration two years ago as Vice President Biden's communications director, and is expected to be far more responsive to the needs of his erstwhile colleagues than the sometimes flippant Gibbs. The 39-year-old Gibbs, a trusted Obama confidant since the latter's 2004 Senate race,...

He wrangled Joe Biden and tangled with John McCain. But how will the former reporter fare at the podium as Obama's new mouthpiece? Howard Kurtz reports.

To get a sense of the challenge facing Jay Carney as he steps behind the White House podium, consider this:

Related story on The Daily Beast: Will Carney's Voice Carry?

In the early months of the administration, a Washington Post editorial accused Joe Biden of having "foot-in-mouth disease." New York Times columnist Gail Collins called him "Washington's most compulsive talker." And who can forget when the vice president of the United States, pushing the new stimulus package, said that no matter what the administration did "there's still a 30 percent chance we're going to get it wrong" ?

Biden had become a punchline. But by the fall, Newsweek was running a cover story headlined, "Why Joe Is No Joke."

As Biden's communications director, Carney doesn't...

Open on Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in ‘Psycho,’ standing behind the counter of a seedy motel office. On the walls are stuffed birds, including an owl with spread wings.

Norman Bates: (pleasantly) Are you tired of slaving away in a dull, dead-end job? Fed up with mere paychecks that never stretch quite far enough? Hi, I’m Norman Bates, for the Norman Bates School of Motel Management, here to explain how you can be your own boss while earning big money in this rapidly expanding field. Best of all,...