Milton Berle, the late TV comedy legend, is depicted in a not-so-flattering light in the new movie Saturday Night. In the Jason Reitman-directed biopic, Berle (played by J.K. Simmons) is depicted stopping by the premiere episode of Saturday Night Live and exposing himself to Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) and his fiancée Jacqueline Carlin (Kaia Gerber). The scene isn’t exactly true to life — with there being no documentation that Berle was there that night or exposed himself to Chase and Carlin. However, it was inspired by Berle’s alleged tendency to flash people.
In the 2002 book Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, longtime SNL writer Alan Zweibel notably claimed Berle exposed himself backstage during his April 1979 appearance on the program. Berle allegedly opened up his bathrobe in response to Zweibel referring to a joke of his about Mr. Television’s penis size. In the process, Gilda Radner unwittingly walked into the room to the sight.
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During the research process for Saturday Night, Reitman interviewed as many people as possible about the early days of SNL, and apparently multiple parties relayed stories of Berle, who died in 2002, exposing himself to them. Reitman did not name the parties in question outside of Zweibel and a comic who shared a similar story after seeing the film, Jeff Ross.
“Milton used to pull his penis out in front of everybody,” Reitman told Entertainment Weekly. “I personally know multiple people that Milton’s pulled his d— out in front of. The day after our premiere, Jeff Ross calls me up and he goes, ‘Man, I love the movie. Oh yeah, Milton pulled his d— out in front of me. I didn’t get Me Too’d, I got Me 22ed. He was huge!’ And it happened to Alan Zweibel, and it happened to other people at SNL.”
It’s worth noting that Saturday Night isn’t intended to be a one-to-one depiction of the 90 minutes before SNL. There’s no record of Berle being in the SNL studio at the time before he hosted. However, he’s featured prominently in the film, which Reitman co-wrote with Gil Kenan, as an example of the previous TV comedy mainstays that the SNL crew clashed against.
“Milton Berle represents everything that television was,” Reitman told EW. “He’s the ghost of television past. He is vaudeville, he is radio, he is old variety shows, he is sexual harassment, he is all of these things. He will appear later on SNL and do the worst episode of all time. But for us on that night, he represents an idea, yet another barrier that these young people have to cross in order to get the show on air.”
