Anne Beatts died. A pioneer in the world of comedy writing, BeatTs is probably best known for her five-year run as a writer in the early days of the year Saturday night live, where, as one of the few women on the show’s writing team, she helped compile any class numbersic characters and sketches. After you left series, Beatts he continued to create his own televisions, especially the cult high school sitcom Square squares, helping to launch the career of a young Sarah Jessica Parker in this process. Conformable variety, Beatts the death was confirmed today by her longtime friend Rona Edwards. Beatts was 74 years old.
Beatts first gained prominence as a comedy writer, with her term as editor at National Lampoon, one of several tributaries of comedy that fed into the original writers SNL. (She was famous for co-writing a fake advertisement that brought a Volkswagen lawsuit to the magazine.) At the entrance to the series, Beatts often paired with fellow writer Rosie Shuster, where they were frequently tasked with development material for the female members of the show’s staff, especially Gilda Radner. (Like many of the first SNL writers, Beatts served as a writer on Radner’s 1980 solo show Gilda Live.) Beatts wrote for SNL for the entire original term of the Lorne Michaels series, creating characters such as Todd and Lisa Lupner (aka The Nerds), the deeply unsettling “Uncle Roy” of Buck Henry and Fred Garvin, a male prostitute.
In the 1980s, Beatts started on her own, creating Square squares for CBS. Announced for telling the same types of teen stories that John Hughes would spend the next decade extracting hits, the one-season show featured a cast of future stars (especially Parker), a powerful new soundtrack and at least a few cameo shows by old Beatts friends –especially Bill Murray in a one-episode star role. (Father Guido Sarducci also appeared.) Unfortunately, reports of malfunction on the set of the show itsent to the studio pulling the plug on a promising start, ending the series after a single season.
After Square squares ended, Beatts continued to write with some regularity, making an episode of Murphy Brown into the The 90’s and writing for the short-lived comedian Stephanie Miller he gave a talk show in late 1995. He also served for many years as a professor of writing, serving as an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, and at Chapman University.