Anne Beatts, a vibrent comedy writer passes away at the age of 74
Anne Beatts, a comedy writer who was on the original staff of “Saturday Night Live” and later created the cult sitcom “Square Pegs,” left for her heavenly abode at the age of 74.
The writer passed away on Wednesday, Laraine Newman, an original cast member of SNL, wrote in a tweet on Thursday. “Our Anne — an OG SNL writer passed away yesterday,” Newman wrote.
Ms. Beatts had written for National Lampoon and the Village Voice before being hired for “Saturday Night Live” along with her boyfriend at the time, Michael O’Donoghue.
When she was with Marilyn Suzanne Miller and Rosie Shuster, she was one of three women in the show’s original writer’s room, a space that made her feel “like Wendy on the island of Lost Boys,” as she later put it.
“I’m heartbroken about losing Anne,” dean of Dodge College Stephen Galloway (who is also a former executive editor of THR) wrote in a letter sent to faculty and staff on Thursday. “It’s hard to believe that the vibrant, passionate, funny woman I just spoke to a few days ago is no longer with us. She was a pioneer in so many ways — as the first female editor of the Harvard Lampoon and one of the first women writers on Saturday Night Live. But she wasn’t just the Queen of Comedy; she was also an extraordinary mentor to many of our students. She’ll live on through them.”
Early life and struggle
Beatts was a native of Buffalo, New York, who eventually settled with her family further downstate in Somers. She studied English at McGill University in Montreal, where she wrote for the school newspaper and worked as an advertising copywriter in Toronto before moving to New York City.
She also wrote for magazines and newspapers, contributing the humor column “Beatts Me!” to the Los Angeles Times between 1997 and 1998, as well as for books: She co-edited 1977’s Saturday Night Live, 1976’s Titters: The First Collection of Humor by Women and 1984’s Titters 101.
In an email to The Associated Press, “Saturday Night Live” cast member Laraine Newman wrote that Beatts “brought the toughness of National Lampoon along with her when she wrote on our show. But she didn’t learn it at Lampoon. She already had it. Such a contradiction too because she was a very sweet person.”
Beatts has seen a lot of hard times in her life but she survived by her daughter, Jaylene Beatts; her sister, Barbara; brother, Murray; and nieces Kate and Jennifer.
