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Will she or won't she? Against all logic, rumours persist that Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, will turn up to imitate Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update Thursday (tonight, NBC and Global at 9:30).
It's unlikely that Palin's schedule (or handlers) would permit a live and risky appearance on the long-running sketch-comedy show. But it would be a publicity coup for both the show and the candidate.
SNL has been dining out on Fey's spot-on impersonations of the syntax-challenged Alaskan governor. And the ratings have spoken: Through the first three weeks of this season, with former cast member Tina Fey playing Palin in the show's opening sketch, SNL's viewing audience has jumped more than 50 per cent from the same period last year.
So viewers are anticipating Fey will return on tonight's rare weekday appearance of the show to parody Palin's latest trials on the campaign trail.
Videos
Hollywood's leading ladies on Palin
At Elle Magazine's 15th annual fete for women filmmakers, all the talk was about Tina Fey's portrayal of the Republican vice-presidential nominee
Fey is not alone in mimicking Alaska's most famous hockey mom. Playing Palin is turning into a growth industry. The Internet has been flooded with dozens of amateur videos featuring Palin impersonators – most are far less charitable than Fey's version. It's a safe bet none of this would be happening had John McCain chosen Mitt Romney as his running mate.
And political impersonations are hardly new. Comedians have known for generations that parodying presidents and other major political figures is good for record sales and TV ratings. Among the more memorable examples over the years:
Vaughan Meader (John F. Kennedy)
A broad Beantown accent and vague physical resemblance to JFK made Meader famous in the early sixties. His overnight success came with the 1962 comedy album The First Family, which sold nearly eight million copies in the U.S. As legend has it, comedian Lenny Bruce was onstage in New York on the day of Kennedy's assassination in 1963. Lenny's response to the crowd: “Vaughan Meader is screwed.”
David Frye (Richard Nixon)
The sombre comic had worked the nightclub circuit for a decade before hitting upon his ability to deliver an eerily accurate impression of Richard M. Nixon; it helped greatly that he actually resembled Nixon. Frye cranked out two albums – I Am the President and Radio Free Nixon – and was a gadfly presence on every variety and talk show in the late sixties and early seventies. But he was rarely heard from after Watergate.
Dan Aykroyd (Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter)
The most game, and politically astute, of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players, Ottawa-born Aykroyd was a broad and jowly Nixon in the earliest days of Saturday Night Live, often appearing in sketches with the late John Belushi, who was very believable as Henry Kissinger. Aykroyd later toned it down to play peanut farmer-turned-president Jimmy Carter. The fact Aykroyd kept his mustache in both portrayals never seemed to be an issue. His Nixon was better than his Carter.
Dana Carvey (George Bush)
The talented Carvey assumed the right nasal tone and rigid Republican demeanour to play Bush the elder on SNL in the early nineties. He used minimal makeup and wore the same wire-rimmed glasses. Every sketch featuring his Bush had the catchphrase, “Not gonna do it,” a line from an actual Bush speech that Carvey would repeat like a mantra. During the 1992 season, Carvey demonstrated he could deliver an uncanny impression of novelty presidential candidate Ross Perot, complete with oversized prosthetic ears. That featured another catchphrase, “Can I finish?” – taken from pugnacious Perot's interview with Larry King – which Carvey would repeat, over and over.
Scott Thompson (the Queen)
In rouge and regal garb, Scott Thompson was the Queen. You could put his face on the $20 bill and no one would notice the difference. Thompson returned to the Queen role frequently during the nine-year run of The Kids in the Hall. He even played her against another of his signature characters, the outrageous barfly Buddy Cole, in the fourth-season episode titled Chalet 2000. Her Highness, weary of the royal life and incessant press coverage, nips off to a cabin in Northern Canada to hang out with her old pal Buddy. While in the Great White North, she has an affair with Buddy's adopted son, a beaver, played by Bruce McCulloch.
Phil Hartman (Bill Clinton)
A native of Brantford, Ont., Hartman played ex-president Ronald Reagan a few times on SNL, but he was better known for playing the good ol' boy from Little Rock, Ark. The only makeup requirement was the silver hair; Hartman did the rest. He had Bill Clinton's voice and the mannerisms down cold in his SNL skits, and usually played the sitting president as a randy redneck. One of the best Hartman-as-Clinton sketches was a COPS parody in which officers responding to a domestic call are amazed to find the combatants are a bloodied Bill – in a white undershirt – and an unscathed Hillary (Jan Hooks).
Roger Abbott (Jean Chrétien)
A founding member of the Royal Canadian Air Farce, Abbott always appeared to be enjoying himself when playing Jean Chrétien. His portrayals of the former prime minister were exercises in fractured bilingualism: His French was terrible and his English was worse. The real Jean Chrétien was a pretty good sport about it and even appeared on the show. Honourable mention goes to Air Farce regular Don Ferguson for playing political figures such as Joe Clark, Lucien Bouchard, Stockwell Day, Paul Martin and a charged-up Preston Manning, who was prone to screaming “Refoooorm” just for the fun of it.
Darrell Hammond (Bill Clinton, John McCain, others)
The chameleonic Hammond joined SNL in 1995 and is still finding new political personas to inhabit; his current version of John McCain has scored high marks with fans of the show. Hammond preceded Phil Hartman in playing Clinton and did a commendable job in the role, particularly in the days of Monica Lewinsky. His rendition of “I did not … have sex … with that woman …” was more sincere than Clinton's delivery. Among dozens of celebrity impressions, Hammond has played Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and even Jesse Jackson. From the current administration, he has been a passable George W. Bush and a scarily lifelike Dick Cheney, right down to the Vice-President's grimace. It's a fact: When SNL announcer Don Pardo is unavailable, Hammond fills in.
