It's tough to do a thorough review of American pop culture over the past 50 years without acknowledging the contributions of NBC's Saturday Night Live (SNL), which is currently celebrating its 50th season. Whether the show helped drive or merely followed popular trends is open to debate, but from the self-centered pathos of "The Californians" to Dana Carvey's recent return to the show as the failing President Joe Biden, SNL has captured a half century of cultural evolution in real time without apology. I've been watching the show since its inception and it's incredible how well it sums up the colorful road we've traveled.
While it's impossible to cite any one sketch, episode, guest host or cast member as best, one of my very favorite recurring features has to be The Sweeney Sisters, featuring Nora Dunn and the late Jan Hooks. The Sweeney Sisters first appeared during Season 12 in the Fall of 1986 as guests on the Instant Coffee Show, featuring Kevin Nealon as host "Big" Bill Smith. I've never been very impressed by Nealon, whose performance here was nothing special, but Dunn and Hooks were fantastic as two manic lounge singers committed to giving everything they had to every performance. This appearance featured what would become the Sweeney Sisters' trademark — a peppy medley of pop standards punctuated by self-absorbed banter with the audience and one another, centered around a particular theme.
Unfortunately, it was this template that makes it all but impossible to find the Sweeney Sisters on YouTube or anywhere else. Since each of their sketches typically featured at least half a dozen or more well-known songs, broadcast rights are prohibitively expensive, and NBC is notorious for quickly removing any unauthorized clips. Of the ten appearances The Sweeney Sisters made on SNL, I'm unable to find a single clip on YouTube. In fact, their only YouTube clip appears to be their performance opening the 40th annual Emmy Awards show in 1988, which is a delight well worth watching:
Fortunately, I've been able to find clips of all ten Sweeney Sisters SNL appearances over the years, several of which I digitized from VHS recordings I'd made when they first appeared on the air. Among these are two terrific holiday-themed sketches. The first, which aired on December 20, 1986, stars William Shatner who's just proposed to Liz Sweeney and brings her to a holiday house party hosted by her sister, Candy. With a little prompting by two of the guests (A. Whitney Brown and Phil Hartman) the two perform a medley of holiday tunes along with their standard centerpiece "The Trolley Song." It's their most wired and best performance, and I've included a short clip in my Intro to this year's mix at the 1:00 mark.
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| The Sweeney Sisters Christmas Party, Air Date 12/20/86 |
The second holiday sketch aired on December 17, 1988. This one finds the sisters in the slammer on Christmas Eve after they were picked up as prostitutes while waiting for their pianist outside the Lucky Leprechaun lounge. While in jail they become friendly with an actual prostitute, played by guest host Melanie Griffith. After their release, they decide to return to the lock-up to do a medley of their favorite prison songs for Griffith and the other jailbirds. This one's not as good as the Christmas party sketch with Shatner, but it's a solid performance all around.
The other eight Sweeney Sisters sketches are a mixed bag, but they boast an impressive array of guest stars, including Paul Simon, Robin Williams, Robert Mitchum, Charlton Heston and Mary Tyler Moore, who plays the third Sweeney sister, Audrey, who joins the act for their performance in the lobby of the Holiday Inn in Wheaton, Illinois. Hopefully, the entire collection will become more widely available in the future.
Read an SNL Transcript of the Sweeney Sister Christmas Medley Sketch
See a Brief Excerpt from the Sketch via Another Social Media Source
Review a List of Sweeney Sisters Sketches and Air Dates
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