The charming story of Miskel Spillman, the 80-year-old grandmother who once hosted ‘SNL’

Miskel Spillman is seen on stage at "Saturday Night Live" on Dec. 17, 1977, following her debut as host. Spillman, a then-80-year-old grandmother from New Orleans, won a contest that put her on one of television's biggest stages. She's pictured with Garrett Morris, Gilda Radner and granddaughter, Janine Baker. (NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

An unemployed Oregonian, a divorced mother of three, a freshman college student, the governor of South Dakota and an 80-year-old grandmother from New Orleans all wanted the same thing: to host “Saturday Night Live.”

On Nov. 19, 1977, the five finalists of the show’s first — and, ultimately, only — Anyone Can Host contest took the stage in Studio 8H alongside the evening’s host, actor and screenwriter Buck Henry, and introduced themselves to America. They were vying for a chance to guest host the Christmas episode two weeks later.

Henry joked that two-thirds of the 150,000 entries the show had received had to be burned “for obscenity and weirdness.” In the end, the public voted via snail mail for a person who embodied perhaps the exact opposite of both — Miskel Spillman, an elderly widow whose first plane ride ever brought her to New York City to stand beside her fellow finalists.

As “SNL” turns 50, the tale of the show’s most unlikely presenter and the only non-public figure to ever take on the task is incontrovertible proof that – despite the contest’s name – not just anybody can host the Saturday night show.

A ‘cheap thrill’

Spillman’s contest entry was a punchy pitch that abided by the 25-word count limit in the rules: “I’m 80 years old. I need one more cheap thrill since my doctor told me I only have another 25 years left.”

She told the Associated Press at the time that her message was inspired by her frequent declaration that she would live until 105. (According to online records, she died roughly ten years shy of her goal.)

Spillman seemingly didn’t mind poking fun at her age, hitting the comedic beat again in the November episode that featured the finalists. Each contestant had a moment to introduce themselves in the cold open, and she kept hers simple: “I’m Miskel Spillman. I’m old.”

The in-studio audience howled.

Later, she showed some softer edges. “I love everyone in the cast,” she told Henry when asked why she entered the contest. “I watch it every Saturday night, and I thought, as I am 80 years old, I want a lot of old, old people all over the world to watch it and get the thrill that I have every Saturday night watching it.”

Perhaps realizing he was speaking to the favourite, Buck punctuated her pitch: “You heard it from Mrs. Spillman: She wants to thrill those 80-year-olds.”

It’s clear she was excited, too. But Spillman’s family was split on her decision to pursue a brief national television career.

Her son, Otis, told the Associated Press that he was worried hosting “would be too much for her,” according to an article published in the Lake Charle American Press that year.

Her daughter, Mary Jane, disagreed. “She’s in good health and good spirits. And she has more nerve than I have.”

Spillman received support from the public in droves, garnering a roughly 15,000-vote lead over the second place finalist, according to an article featured in the Las Vegas Sun before her debut. Voting viewers saw her as a breath of fresh air, an octogenarian inspiration and even a bridge-builder.

Mailed in votes included in a scrapbook made for Spillman, later sold via online auction and shared on Reddit, show that the staff of a senior services department in Atlanta collected 56 votes from employees and clients and sent them to “SNL” along with a letter of endorsement.

“Since we are an agency funded to serve older persons, we feel very strongly that she should host the Christmas Program and we give her our full support,” they wrote.

A woman from Arizona wrote: “I am meeting more and more 50 or older people who no longer frown on long hair, marajuana (sic) and peace. It’s heart warming.”

Spillman’s victory was no surprise to the other contestants, according to Connie Crawford, the Vassar freshman who was one of the five finalists.

“We all knew she was going to win,” Crawford, now a professor of acting and directing at Brown University, recalled to CNN. “How could she not? She was so sweet, she was so endearing and there was no way anyone else was going to win.”

Crawford said she’s never watched the episode in which she made brief appearances. She wants to keep the memory untarnished and remember instead “the way it felt.” Among her treasured memories of the experience is meeting Spillman.

“She was just a shining gem to everybody because she was clearly having fun, a great sport, smiling,” she said. “Obviously, she was old, and people were kind of taking care of her. But you could just tell people loved having her there.”

‘They couldn’t have been nicer’

Spillman, one of only two hosts in the show’s history who was born in the 1800s, presided over the eighth episode of “SNL’s” third season. She was paid the same as other hosts at the time – $3,000 – and put up in the Marriott Essex House overlooking Central Park, according to articles published at the time.

Her episode took place amid a true golden moment as far as casts go — John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman and Garrett Morris.

In one sketch, Spillman played Sharon, the elderly girlfriend of Jeff, a college student played by Belushi, who takes her home to meet his parents. Their age gap is not mentioned. The laughs hinge on the couple trying to convince Jeff’s parents to let them stay in the same bedroom. It was the ’70s.

Spillman was accompanied to New York City by her 23-year-old granddaughter, Janine Baker, who joined her on the iconic stage at the end of the episode, when Spillman celebrated the experience.

“I want to thank everyone in the world for voting for me. I’ve had the most wonderful time I’ve ever had in my life,” she said.

CNN’s attempts to locate direct survivors of Spillman were unsuccessful.

Spillman further reflected on her experience in a 1984 conversation with newspaper columnist Bob Greene, who interviewed her after she was one of only a handful of readers who responded to a trivia question he posed in an article. The question was: “Who is Miskel Spillman?”

She told Greene that hosting was the most “thrilling” thing that ever happened to her.

“It wasn’t just the idea of being on TV in front of the whole country. It was the way that the cast treated me. They couldn’t have been nicer,” Spillman, then 87, told him, according to an article published in the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph on October 25, 1984.

Murray and Radner were especially kind, she said. One night during rehearsals, they invited Spillman and her granddaughter to go to dinner and took them to a restaurant where they “talked and ate and drank the night away,” Spillman recalled.

People kept coming over to get autographs from their famous dining companions, “and Bill and Gilda would introduce me to every person,” Spillman said.

“We sat there and talked until 4 o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t believe it,” she said.

Murray couldn’t be reached for comment by CNN.

Spillman added that she and Radner had continued to exchange letters, saying “Isn’t that something, that after all this time she’d still want to write to me?”

She still watched the show but admitted that she didn’t like it as much.

“I suppose a lot of people feel that way,” the column quoted her. “But sometimes it amazes me. I’ll be sitting there watching ‘Saturday Night Live’ and I’ll think to myself: My goodness, I was once the host of that show.”

After Spillman hosted, Greene wrote, “she became an instant national celebrity. But, the nature of fame being what it is, seven years later most people have forgotten her.”

However true that was in the pre-Internet era, the episode was notable for a reason unrelated to Spillman. Elvis Costello was the musical guest that week, and it would turn out to be his last appearance for more than a decade because he was banned for changing his song choice during the live show.

There was no way for Spillman to know that nearly 47 years later, she’d be part of a celebrity-packed television legacy like no other. At the time, she told Greene, she was simply “tickled to see my name in your column.”

“Most people don’t remember me,” she said.

What we know now is that there’s no such thing as forgotten once you’ve gone live from New York on Saturday night.