Friends of the LBJ Library | May, 11 2026 6:30PM - 7:30PM
Since NBC’s Saturday Night Live (SNL) debuted in 1975, with Chevy Chase playing a bumbling Gerald Ford, the show shaped our perceptions of politics and the presidency—and just plain made us laugh. On May 11, we welcomed SNL regulars Alec Baldwin and Darrell Hammond for a conversation. Baldwin held the record for hosting the show the most times, at 17, and played Donald Trump during Trump’s first term; Hammond was a cast member for 14 seasons and played Bill Clinton and Trump before Trump's presidency. We talked with them about their wide-ranging careers and what it was like to be on SNL—including parodying our presidents. This program was hosted by the Friends of the LBJ Library and the Harry Ransom Center, which recently acquired the archives of SNL’s legendary creator and executive producer, Lorne Michaels.
Video & Photos
About the Lorne Michaels Collection at the Harry Ransom Center
The archive of Canadian-American producer and writer Lorne Michaels is an extraordinary collection of his achievements in television and film over a span of more than five decades. Michaels is best known as the creator of NBC’s sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) but has also produced over sixty other television series and specials, ranging from NBC’s flagship late-night programs The Tonight Show and Late Night to situation comedies like 30 Rock to concert films, awards broadcasts, and holiday specials. His production credits also include several top-grossing comedy films, such as Mean Girls and Wayne’s World, and Broadway productions. Broadway Video Enterprises, the production company Michaels founded in 1979, develops and distributes television and films, and produces content for digital media, advertising, and promotions. SNL, its associated films, and Michaels’s many other comedy productions have had a far-reaching impact on American popular culture.
In addition to introducing iconic characters and catchphrases, the creative productions of Lorne Michaels are beloved for their satirical take on current events, irreverent engagement with changing cultural norms, and attunement to the absurdity of everyday existence. Michaels and SNL have received more Primetime Emmy Award nominations than any other individual and program in history, and Michaels’s many other honors, including membership in the Order of Canada and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, testify to the enduring importance of his work.
The Lorne Michaels collection is currently open for research.
For more information, please visit the Harry Ransom Center’s Lorne Michaels Collection.
About the Harry Ransom Center
The Ransom Center is an internationally renowned humanities research center at The University of Texas at Austin. Our extensive collections provide unique insight into the creative process of some of our finest writers and artists, deepening the understanding and appreciation of literature, photography, film, art, and the performing arts.
The collections include nearly 1 million books, more than 42 million manuscripts, 5 million photographs, and 100,000 works of art. Highlights include Robert De Niro's archive of scripts, notes, costumes, and props; the earliest known extant photograph made with the aid of the camera obscura; E. E. Cummings's wooden paint box; manuscript drafts by Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing; Jack Kerouac's notebook documenting his writing of On the Road; original works by Frida Kahlo, including her iconic self-portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird; the Gernsheim Collection, containing some of the world's finest examples of photographic art and science; some of Albert Einstein's unpublished notes and calculations for his work on general relativity; Gabriel García Márquez's manuscripts, correspondence, notebooks, and more (digitized for easy perusal); and one of only 20 complete copies of the Gutenberg Bible in the world.
