Saturday Night Live Producer Dick Ebersol, writers Bob Tischler and Michael O’Donoghue and improvisation expert Del Close. (Mel Finkelstein/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
Bob Tischler, the writer and producer known for his work on Saturday Night Live, has died. He was 78.
The former SNL head writer, who is largely credited with helping revive the NBC sketch comedy show after its infamously panned 1980-81 season, died on July 13 at his home in Bodega Bay, California.
His son Zeke told The New York Times that the cause of death was pancreatic cancer.
Born June 12, 1946 in Englewood, New Jersey, Tischler attended Ithaca and Franconia Colleges in the 1960s before working as a sound engineer in radio and television.
After working together on a radio ad, Christopher Guest recommended him to National Lampoon, for which he produced the albums Radio Dinner (1972), Gold Turkey (1975) and That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick (1977), as well as The National Lampoon Radio Hour in 1973.
John Belushi also tapped Tischler to producer his and Dan Aykroyd‘s first Blues Brothers album, 1978’s Briefcase Full of Blues, which topped the Billboard album chart. He went on to produce their album Made in America (1980), as well as the soundtrack to the 1980 Blues Brothers movie.
After SNL creator Lorne Michaels handed the reins to Jean Doumanian for Season 6, the show suffered until Dick Ebersol replaced her and brought on Tischler as a supervising producer. The next year, Tischler was promoted to head writer, his position until he departed in 1985.
In his 2022 autobiography From Saturday Night to Sunday Night: My Forty Years of Laughter, Tears, and Touchdowns in TV, Ebersol wrote that Tischler “wanted the show to succeed,” adding, “but more than that, he was exactly the leader the writers’ room needed — steady, calm and respected.”
Tischler’s work with cast member Eddie Murphy helped revive the show, also writing for Guest, Billy Crystal, Martin Short and more. “We had this thing for Eddie, because Eddie would take what we wrote and make it better every single time,” Tischler was quoted saying in James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales‘ 2002 book Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live.
Tischler also wrote for such shows as Empty Nest, Something So Right and Boy Meets World.