Comedy writer Beatts dies
Anne Beatts, a groundbreaking comedy writer with a taste for sweetness and the macabre who was on the original staff of “Saturday Night Live” and later created the cult sitcom “Square Pegs,” has died. She was 74.
Beatts died Wednesday at her home in West Hollywood, California, according to her close friend Rona Edwards. Edwards, a film producer and a fellow faculty member at Chapman University, did not immediately know the cause of death.
Starting in 1975 and running for five seasons, Beatts was among a team of gifted writers that included Rosie Shuster, Alan Zweibel, Marilyn Suzanne Miller and such cast members as Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase who helped make “Saturday Night Live” a cultural phenomenon. With Shuster, she would invent the beloved young nerds — the nasally, Marvin Hamlisch-adoring Lisa Loopner (played by Gilda Radner) and highpantsed goofball Todd Dilamuca (Bill Murray), and help coin such catchphrases as Lisa’s, “That’s so funny I forgot to laugh.”
Beatts would later draw upon her own acknowledged background as an outsider in high school for her own series “Square Pegs.”
“If you look looked at the nerds, she knew that world,” Zweibel told The Associated Press. “She and Rosie handled those characters with love. She knew that world. If you look at ‘Square Pegs,’ the title alone speaks volumes.”
Premiering in 1982, “Square Pegs” was then a rare sitcom centering on teenage girls and starring Sarah Jessica Parker in an early role as a first-year high school student trying to fit in. “Square Pegs” lasted just one season but was loved by critics and later praised for anticipating — and topping — the teen comedies John Hughes would soon become famous for.
“The show was also just plain cool, speaking to teens with a shared interest in their interests that made young people feel seen before the Hughes movies would have a similar effect,” New York magazine’s Jen Chaney wrote in 2020. “No other show on TV back then would have focused an entire episode on a Pac-man addiction or a New Wave-themed bat mitzvah that featured the actual band Devo performing ‘That’s Good.’”
On Thursday, Parker tweeted: “Struggling to find adequate and appropriate descriptive words to describe her singular self. I need time. Cause I’m coming up short. Gosh, she was really something. RIP Anne. Thank you. For memories very few 17/18 yr olds get to make.“
Beatts’ later credits included writing for “Murphy Brown” and “The Belles of Bleeker Street,” producing “A Different World” and helping to write the stage musical “Leader of the Pack.” She is survived by her daughter, Jaylene; sister Barbara Resucha; and nieces Jennifer and Kate Dreger.
Beatts was a native of Buffalo, New York, who eventually settled with her family further downstate in Somers. She grew up among readers and joke letters and spoke of honing her own wit if only to keep up.
After attending Mcgill University, she got an early break writing comedy for National Lampoon magazine, where numerous future “Saturday Night Live” performers and writers worked. She quit the magazine in the mid-1970s, out of frustration of being overlooked by the mostly male staff. But while there she began dating fellow writer Michael O’donoghue, who was hired by producer Lorne Michaels for what became “Saturday Night Live.” — Associated Press
Author John Naisbitt dies at age of 92
The American author John Naisbitt, whose 1982 bestselling book “Megatrends” was published in dozens of countries, has died. He was 92.
Naisbitt died peacefully at his second home near Lake Woerthersee in Austria, his wife, Doris Naisbitt, said on Saturday. His death on Thursday was earlier reported by the Austrian news agency APA.
Naisbitt was born on Jan. 15, 1929, in Salt Lake City and grew up in Glenwood, Utah. Early in his career, he was an executive at Kodak and IBM, and he was appointed assistant secretary of education at age 34 to President John Kennedy.
His book “Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives” was about understanding the present in order to predict the future. It sold more than 14 million copies in 57 countries.
Naisbitt published several other books, some of them dealing with the rise of China. He also founded the Naisbitt China Institute, a research institution studying the transformation of China and gave many lectures on future studies during his career. The Naisbitts lived in Vienna but had been traveling to China at least four times a year over the last couple decades.
“John was not only a man with great foresight, he was open and without prejudice, and not tied to any mainstream thinking,” said his wife, whom he married in 2000, after she was his German language publisher.
“He was not only a visionary man, he was a kind and gentle human being, with a sophisticated mind,” Doris Naisbitt said.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by five children and 12 grandchildren.