Anne Beatts

Anne Beatts
Born	Anne Beatts 2/25/1947
Birthplace	Buffalo, New York, U.S.
Died	4/7/2021 West Hollywood, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Screenwriter, comedy writer
Employer	University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts
Known for	National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live, Square Pegs
Alma mater	McGill University

Anne Beatts (February 25, 1947 – April 7, 2021) was an American comedy writer and screenwriter who helped shape the voice of late-twentieth-century American humor through her work at the National Lampoon, NBC's Saturday Night Live, and CBS's Square Pegs. One of the first women to break into the male-dominated comedy magazine and television-writing rooms of the 1970s, Beatts brought a sharply observational, often satirical sensibility to print and broadcast formats alike.

Beatts was a member of the original writing staff of Saturday Night Live when it premiered in 1975, and she remained with the program for five seasons, sharing in three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy-Variety or Music Series, won by the show's writing staff in 1976, 1977, and 1978. She later created the cult high-school sitcom Square Pegs, which aired on CBS from 1982 to 1983 and helped launch the television career of Sarah Jessica Parker. In the later portion of her career, Beatts taught comedy writing at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, where she mentored a generation of younger writers.

Early life

Beatts was born on February 25, 1947, in Buffalo, New York. She spent her childhood in the northeastern United States and developed an early interest in writing and humor. In interviews, Beatts described growing up reading mainstream women's magazines and humor publications, an exposure that later informed her satirical approach to gender, advertising, and middle-class culture.

As a young woman she moved to Canada to attend university, settling in Montreal. There she became part of the city's countercultural and literary scenes during the late 1960s, an environment that brought her into contact with writers and editors who would later figure in her career, including future National Lampoon contributor Michel Choquette, with whom she was romantically involved.

Education

Beatts attended McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Her years in Montreal placed her in proximity to a thriving English-language comedy and writing milieu, and her time at McGill coincided with the late-1960s expansion of countercultural publishing in North America. After completing her studies she worked briefly in advertising in Canada before pivoting fully into humor writing.

Career

National Lampoon

Beatts joined the staff of the National Lampoon magazine in the early 1970s, becoming one of the first women to hold a senior writing and editorial position at the publication. The Lampoon, founded in 1970 as an offshoot of the Harvard Lampoon, had quickly become the dominant outlet for American print satire, and its largely male editorial culture made Beatts's presence unusual within the field.

At the Lampoon, Beatts co-edited, with Michel Choquette and later with others, several of the magazine's most widely circulated special projects. She co-edited the National Lampoon anthology Titters (1976), a collection billed as the first book of humor written entirely by women, with Deanne Stillman. The book set out to demonstrate that women could write the same form of confrontational, taboo-driven humor that the Lampoon had popularized. She also contributed to other Lampoon special issues and books during the mid-1970s, writing pieces that frequently parodied the conventions of women's magazines, advertising, and suburban domesticity. It was through her work at the Lampoon that Beatts came into close professional contact with writer Michael O'Donoghue, who would go on to become Saturday Night Live's first head writer, and with whom she formed a long-term personal and professional partnership.

Saturday Night Live

In 1975, producer Lorne Michaels hired Beatts as one of the original writers for NBC's Saturday Night, later renamed Saturday Night Live. She was one of only a small number of women on the founding writing staff, joining Rosie Shuster and Marilyn Suzanne Miller among a group that also included Michael O'Donoghue, Alan Zweibel, and Tom Schiller. Her tenure on the show lasted from 1975 to 1980, covering the first five seasons that established the program as a defining force in American sketch comedy.

During her time on Saturday Night Live, Beatts wrote or co-wrote a wide range of sketches and recurring characters. Among her most frequently cited contributions was her collaboration with Rosie Shuster on material for the recurring characters known as the Nerds, played by Bill Murray and Gilda Radner — characters that drew on Beatts's interest in adolescent social hierarchies and that would later inform her television work on Square Pegs. She also wrote for Radner, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Jane Curtin, and her sketches frequently incorporated satirical takes on advertising, gender roles, and consumer culture.

Beatts shared in the program's Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy-Variety or Music Series, won by the show's writing staff in 1976, 1977, and 1978. Her experience as one of the few women in the writers' room became a recurring subject of later interviews and retrospectives, in which she discussed both the camaraderie of the early Saturday Night Live staff and the difficulties women faced in establishing themselves within the program's writing culture.

Square Pegs

After leaving Saturday Night Live in 1980, Beatts created the sitcom Square Pegs, which premiered on CBS in September 1982. Set at the fictional Weemawee High School, the series followed two socially awkward freshmen, played by Sarah Jessica Parker and Amy Linker, as they attempted to navigate the cliques and status systems of an American high school. The show ran for a single season of nineteen episodes before CBS cancelled it in 1983.

Square Pegs drew on Beatts's longstanding interest in adolescent social dynamics, an interest she had already explored in her Saturday Night Live writing for the Nerds. The show was noted at the time for its detailed engagement with the music, fashion, and slang of contemporary youth culture, and it featured musical performances by acts including Devo and The Waitresses, the latter of whom recorded the show's theme song. The series helped launch the television career of Sarah Jessica Parker and provided early television roles for several other young performers.

Although Square Pegs was cancelled after a single season, it acquired a substantial cult following in subsequent years and is frequently cited in discussions of the development of the high-school sitcom and of teen-oriented programming on American network television. In a 2020 reassessment published in Vulture, the show was identified as an unacknowledged template for later high-school comedies and films, including those associated with the 1980s teen-movie boom most closely identified with John Hughes, with the piece arguing that Beatts's series anticipated and in some respects shaped the conventions of the high-school comedy genre as it developed across the following decade.

Later television and film work

Following Square Pegs, Beatts continued to work as a writer and producer on a range of television projects. She wrote and produced for series including A Different World, on which she served during the late 1980s, and contributed to other sitcoms and television specials throughout the 1980s and 1990s. She also wrote for the stage and contributed essays and humor pieces to magazines and anthologies.

Beatts's editorial work continued in parallel with her television career. In addition to Titters, she co-edited follow-up anthologies of women's humor and contributed to various Saturday Night Live and National Lampoon retrospective volumes published in the years after her departure from both organizations. Her writing on the experience of working in male-dominated comedy environments was widely cited in subsequent oral histories of the period.

Teaching

In the later part of her career, Beatts joined the faculty of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, where she taught courses on comedy writing for film and television. She also led writing workshops and seminars outside USC, including instructional programs aimed at developing new comedy writers. In 2010 she lectured at the Vancouver Film School's Writing for Film & Television program, one of several international teaching engagements she undertook during this period.

Her teaching emphasized structural craft, the history of American comedy, and the relationship between satire and social observation. Former students and colleagues credited her with mentoring a generation of younger comedy writers entering film and television.

Personal life

Beatts lived for much of her later life in West Hollywood, California. She was previously in a long-term relationship with comedy writer Michael O'Donoghue, a fellow member of the National Lampoon staff who became Saturday Night Live's first head writer and who appeared alongside John Belushi in the program's first-ever sketch; the two were domestic partners during the early to mid-1970s. Their relationship and professional collaboration formed part of the social fabric of the early Saturday Night Live writers' room, and Beatts discussed it in subsequent oral histories and retrospectives of the program.

Beatts died on April 7, 2021, at her home in West Hollywood, California, at the age of 74. Her death was confirmed by friends and former colleagues, and was reported in obituaries that emphasized her role in opening comedy writing to women in mainstream American print and television.

Recognition

Beatts shared in three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy-Variety or Music Series as a member of the Saturday Night Live writing staff, with the show's writers winning the award in 1976, 1977, and 1978. She was among the writers profiled by the Television Academy Foundation, which conducted an extensive interview with her about her career in comedy writing as part of its Archive of American Television series.

Her career was also the subject of profiles in cultural and journalistic outlets including The New Yorker, where Malcolm Gladwell examined the dynamics of the early Saturday Night Live writers' room and Beatts's place within it, and Vulture, which in 2020 published a long retrospective reassessment of her influence on the development of teen-oriented comedy. She was profiled by the She Made It project of the Paley Center for Media, an initiative documenting the contributions of women to American television and radio.

Following her death in April 2021, obituaries in major American newspapers including the Chicago Tribune highlighted her role as one of the first women to write for both the National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live, and as the creator of Square Pegs.

Legacy

Beatts's career bridged three distinct moments in the development of American comedy: the rise of the National Lampoon as a dominant force in print satire, the emergence of Saturday Night Live as the central institution of American sketch comedy, and the establishment of teen-oriented serialized comedy on network television. In each of these contexts she was among a small number of women working in writers' rooms and editorial offices that had historically excluded them, and her presence is frequently cited in subsequent histories of women's entry into mainstream American comedy.

Titters, the 1976 anthology she co-edited with Deanne Stillman, is regularly identified as a foundational text in the history of women's humor publishing in the United States. The book made the case that women could write within the same satirical, transgressive register that had defined the National Lampoon, and it established a model for later collections of women's comedy writing.

Square Pegs has had a substantial afterlife in critical writing about American television. Despite running for only one season, the series is frequently cited as an early and detailed network-television treatment of high-school social hierarchy, predating much of the 1980s teen film cycle most closely associated with John Hughes. The 2020 Vulture retrospective argued that Beatts's work on Square Pegs anticipated, and in some respects shaped, the conventions of the high-school comedy genre as it developed across the following decade.

Beatts's teaching at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts extended her influence into a younger generation of comedy writers, and her interviews with the Television Academy Foundation and other archives