Most people know that Saturday Night Live was created by Lorne Michaels, but where exactly did Lorne Michaels come from? And how did a man whose primary goal was to destroy the conventions of mainstream comedy create the biggest show on American late night television and end up leading the way in mainstream comedy?

Canadian comedy producer Lorne Lipowitz was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1944. By the 1960s he was a pothead and a cokehead with a desire to shake up show business with the kind of humor that would actually make him laugh rather than the old-fashioned humor that permeated much of television in those days (although this is something that every drug user with show business ambitions said). After Lorne graduated from the University of Toronto, he directed some shows at coffee houses, often a location for poetry and sketches, many with satirical subjects. He would often collaborate with his schoolmate and lawyer friend Hart Pomerantz to bring these shows to life, and the duo actually managed to sell an idea to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) where the two did man-on-the-street segments on the radio program The Russ Edmonds Show, with Lorne usually playing the straight man while Hart played various characters. Those segments were popular enough that they were collected on an LP called The Comedy of Hart and Lorne, which was distributed across radio stations in Canada. It was after gaining this newfound fame that Pomerantz suggested that Lorne change his last name to Michaels (Lorne hated the name “Lipowitz” anyway).

They lasted a few months on Russ Edmonds before they got fired because they were told the segment “wasn’t working.” Leaving the two amateur comedians broke and jobless. They decided to go freelance and luckily comedian Phyllis Diller was open to accepting freelance jokes. Saul Turteltaub, producer of Phyllis Diller’s upcoming variety series The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show, hired Michaels and Pomerantz solely on the strength of one joke: “I was driving through the Catskill Mountains. I knew I was in a small town when I saw a sign that said ‘Sam’s Hospital … and Grill.'” Michaels and Pomerantz left Canada for Hollywood and joined the writing staff of The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show which premiered on NBC in 1968 and lasted 13 episodes. Luckily show business manager and talent agent Bernie Brillstein (who world later go on to executive produce comedies like ALF and Newsradio) saw something in Lorne Michaels and he took him on as a client, which led to Michaels and Pomerantz being hired as writers on the NBC variety show Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In in 1969.

As someone who loved the romance of working in show business, Michaels was excited for the opportunity to work on a huge network television show, and his Emmy-nominated work on Laugh-In opened a lot of doors for the young comedy writer and led to him writing for several other variety shows and working with famous people like Jim Nabors, Perry Como and Flip Wilson. It was also after achieving this level of success that CBC managed to lure Michaels and Pomerantz back to Canada by offering them creative control on their own TV specials. The duo created a few specials for CBC that were inspired by the fast-paced style of Laugh-In and they were successful, leading CBC to greenlight a Sunday night series called The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour, a comedy-variety series that aired from 1970 to 1971 and would later become the basis for Saturday Night Live. Through the editing process, Michaels discovered that he was much more interested in the production side of show business than the performance side, and he began to gravitate more towards being a comedy producer than an actual comedian.

Even though his show only lasted two seasons on the air, CBC wanted to keep Lorne Michaels in their employ as a talent consultant, but Michaels was once again lured back to Los Angeles when Brillstein offered him a spot on a summer replacement comedy show starring Jack Burns and Avery Schreiber called The Burns and Schreiber Comedy Hour, before working with Laugh-In cast member Lily Tomlin on her CBS comedy special Lily (1973), which Lorne Michaels produced. The special co-starred Richard Pryor and Alan Alda, and perfectionist Lorne Michaels focused a lot on how to make sure it was broadly appealing while still subversive enough to be interesting, and the hard work paid off because the special was a huge star maker for Tomlin and it was even nominated for an Emmy.

Lorne Michaels became a highly sought after producer in the television industry and NBC decided to give him the opportunity to helm a live weekly program every Saturday night that featured sketch comedy and musical guests. The live aspect was a thrilling proposition for the adventurous Lorne Michaels, and he also liked the idea of a network and a national audience seeing his show for the first time at the exact same time. That show would of course be Saturday Night Live.