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Away from sports: SNL, ‘Friday Night Videos’ and Uncle Elmer

Dick Ebersol stopped producing NBC’s late-night wrestling show “Saturday Night’s Main Event” to take over NBC Sports in 1989. Toward the end of his tenure as the show’s producer, he attended a goodbye party with several World Wrestling Federation executives and wrestlers in attendance.

Ebersol had a distinguished career in entertainment TV, helping create and produce “Saturday Night Live” with cast members like Eddie Murphy and Billy Crystal, as well as working with the WWF on “Saturday Night’s Main Event” and launching “Friday Night Videos.”
Photos by: PATRICK E. MCCARTHY (3)
As Ebersol prepared to address the group, Andre the Giant sneaked up behind him. Before Ebersol could utter a word, the 7-foot-4-inch wrestler scooped him up and dumped him head-first into a goodbye cake.

Ebersol loved every second of it. The creator of mainstream shows like “Saturday Night Live” and “Friday Night Videos,” Ebersol in 1985 entered into a place where he could be a storyteller in a world filled with rich characters and storylines that would take weeks or months to develop. Because so few of the shows were live, Ebersol was able to edit them in such a way to

 
enhance those storylines.

“All of a sudden, he was in this world of giants,” said Vince McMahon, whose wrestling company has since changed its name to WWE. “He was meeting Andre the Giant at 7 feet, 4 inches tall and 500 pounds. He was literally meeting midgets. … He loved my world and all of these crazy individuals in it.”

The show, which aired once a month on NBC in the “Saturday Night Live” time slot, proved to be a ratings hit. The late-night show helped popularize wrestling in the mid-1980s to the point where 1987’s Wrestlemania III drew the largest crowd to an indoor sporting event, when 93,173 crammed into the Pontiac Silverdome — a record that would last more than 20 years.

But it was the characters like Hulk Hogan and “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase that Ebersol remembers best. He and McMahon both guffaw when they talk about Uncle Elmer’s wedding, which was featured on an October 1985 telecast of “Saturday Night’s Main Event.”

Uncle Elmer was a wrestler who had a hillbilly shtick. He wrestled in overalls and danced a jig in the ring. One show, he was supposed to marry his girlfriend, Joyce, in the ring — a wedding that was to be a featured part of the show. Problems arose when Elmer and Joyce got into a backstage argument and Joyce left the arena.

Stuck with a groom and no bride, they found a stand-in to take Joyce’s place, McMahon said.

“Dick said, ‘Lets get someone off the street,’ which we did,” McMahon said with a laugh. “Elmer — quote — married that woman that night.”

“Dick is just a wonderful man, a great communicator and someone who is so engaging. We hit it off right away and had so much fun. In life, when you can find something and someone you can have fun with … we had so much fun during ‘Saturday Night’s Main Event.’ That was a period of time in his life that he wasn’t necessarily tied down to having to do something very serious. He could play. This is an extraordinary playground. He’s just a wonderful man. You don’t forget people like that.”

— Vince McMahon,
WWE’s majority owner, chairman and CEO

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