Things to know about pioneering “Saturday Night Live” writer Tom Davis, who passed away Thursday and is perhaps still best known as the former comedy partner of U.S. senator Al Franken (D-Minn.):
* Davis wrote on the first, 1975 episode of “Saturday Night Live” and continued contributing to the show on and off at least until 2003. He was an enormous influence on SNL and, consequently, modern sketch comedy.
* Davis created with Dan Aykroyd the “Coneheads” sketches and, much later, the “Coneheads” movie.
* Davis co-wrote with Franken “Theodoric of York: Medieval Barber.”
* Davis co-wrote the “Nick The Lounge Singer” sketches for Bill Murray and the “Continental” sketches for Christopher Walken.
* Davis co-wrote Aykroyd’s infamous Julia Child sketch.
* Davis co-wrote the sketches featuring Aykroyd as oily Irwin Mainway, whose company manufactured and marketed such “children’s toys” as Bag O’ Glass.
* Davis and Franken wrote the sketch adapting Woodward & Bernstein’s “The Final Days,” which depicted the strange end of Richard Nixon’s presidential administration.
* Davis collaborated with Aykroyd on one of the many “Ghostbusters III” scripts.
* Davis and Franken appeared frequently as a bizarre but brilliant stand-up comedy duo in SNL’s early days. When Aykroyd and John Belushi departed the show for Hollywood at the end of season four, Davis and Franken became de facto members of the regular cast.
* Davis played Energy in "The Pepsi Syndrome."
* Like Franken, Davis loved to take drugs and attend Grateful Dead concerts. Once Franken secured his first term in the Senate, Davis published his 2009 autobiography “Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL from Someone Who Was There”
Find the New York Times obituary for Davis here.
