Bob Tischler, member of the Saturday Night Live The writing and production team that helped revive the show in the 1980s has died at the age of 78.
His son Zeke told The New York Times that Tischler died of pancreatic cancer on July 13 at his home in Bodega Bay, California.
Tischler was born on June 12, 1946, in Englewood, New Jersey, and attended Ithaca and Franconia Colleges. He worked as a sound engineer for radio and television and later produced the National Lampoon Radio Hour and several albums from the comedy magazine such as Radio Dinner in 1972, Gold Türkiye in 1975 and This is not funny, this is sick in 1977.
Then he worked on his friend and SNL The first Blues Brothers album by actor John Belushi is called Briefcase full of blues, which reached the top of the Billboard album charts.
Tischler produced four more albums for the Blues Brothers, a musical duo consisting of Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. He also produced the soundtrack for their 1980 film of the same name, which reached number 13 on the Billboard charts.
From November 1980 to April 1981 SNL reached what critics call its peak after creator Lorne Michaels handed over the producer role for season 6 to Jean Doumanian. Dick Ebersol was hired as Doumanian’s successor, he appointed Tischler at the insistence of the then SNL Head writer Michael O’Donoghue.
Tischler was promoted to head writer in 1981 when O’Donoghue was fired after writing a sketch comparing the late NBC president Fred Silverman to Adolf Hitler. Tischler remained head writer until he left the show in 1985.
Tischler was “exactly the leader the writing team needed,” Ebersol recalls in his 2022 autobiography From Saturday night to Sunday night: My forty years of laughter, tears and touchdowns on television, She describes him as “steady, calm and respected.”
Carpenter is considered a revitalizer SNLand wrote for actors who later became stars, such as Eddie Murphy, whom Tischler strongly supported, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Joe Piscipo and Jim Belushi.
“We had this thing for Eddie because Eddie made what we wrote better every time,” Tischler said in Live from New York.
The 1984 season also saw the return of incredibly popular artists such as Christopher Guest, Martin Short and Billy Crystal.
After leaving SNL, Tischler wrote for shows such as Empty Nest, Something so rightAnd Life and I.
He leaves behind his wife Judith, his son Zeke and his brother Jim.
