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See Young Garrett Morris During His Saturday Night Live Years
A Julliard-trained singer, Morris was the oldest member of SNL's first cast.
Garrett Morris grew up singing, and trained at the Juilliard School of Music. Prior to Saturday Night Live's debut on October 11, 1975, Morris had already performed on Broadway and with artists like the Harry Belafonte Folk Singers (he has a brief solo in this 1961 performance on The Ed Sullivan Show).
He first attracted SNL creator Lorne Michaels' attention through a play he had written, Morris said in an episode of Dana Carvey and David Spade's Fly on the Wall podcast. Like Chevy Chase, Morris was initially hired as a writer. But, per The New York Times, Michaels made Morris a cast member after seeing his performance in the 1975 movie Cooley High.
In addition to being SNL's first Black cast member, Morris was also the oldest member of the original cast.
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"When I was inside in that life, I was 39 years old, and the rest [of the cast], they had just come out of high school and college," Morris told People in 2024 (it's a bit of hyperbole — the youngest cast members, Dan Aykroyd and Laraine Newman, were twenty-three at the start of the show). Despite feeling a bit out of step due to his age, race, and background as a dramatic performer, Morris was a vital part of the show's first five seasons.
How long was Garrett Morris on Saturday Night Live?
1975 to 1980.
Morris was on SNL from its inception in 1975 through the end of Season 5 in 1980, when most of the original cast left.
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Garrett Morris's SNL characters and impressions
Morris created characters like fictional baseball player Chico Escuela, Cliff from Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd's Festrunk Brothers sketches, and Merkon, leader of the Coneheads.
His most famous bit may have been "News for the Hard of Hearing," a recurring segment on "Weekend Update" during which Morris would shout the news at the top of his lungs, repeating whatever anchor Chevy Chase had just said.
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In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Morris reflected on what the show — which wasn't afraid to tackle the controversies of the day — meant when it premiered.
"That was a very radical idea in ’75. Let’s face it, with racism as it was at that time, you wouldn’t have thought a show like that would do what it did," Morris said. "Not just racism, but the kind of right/left politics that were going on."
"It was a show in which everybody was made to understand that anybody can be the butt of the joke, even him," Morris said.
