It is inevitable that every day or so a former A-Lister will appear on a conservative website or news channel, saying that Hollywood is a leftist town that does not want to acknowledge anything remotely Republican. That is why their careers have been reduced to talking on cable news.
One can’t deny that Hollywood leans very far to the left in its politics. It is, after all, in California. And given the causes that so many of these actors, directors and executives support, there might be an inkling of truth in that. (The fact that Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger managed to rise to the highest office in the state might contradict this, but let’s save that discussion for another article.) That said I have always believed this has to be taken by a case by case basis. Jon Voight has been a major bastion of Republic politics for decades, and his career has never suffered that much. Indeed, the past decade he has done some of his finest work as Mickey Donovan on Ray Donovan, a show that literally takes place in the seedy sides of Hollywood.
Recently, I have heard some former cast members from Saturday Night Live talking on so many of those conservative websites. Considering that in the last twenty years in particular, SNL has managed to launch the career of dozens of successful comedians and comediennes – many of whom have been very outspoken in their Democratic politics – the argument that these two actors have fallen on the C-list because of their conservative views is one not without merit. The problem is, I happen to be very familiar with the work of both Victoria Jackson and Rob Schneider, and the reason neither is headlining big-budget movies or TV series has nothing to do with the causes they support. It is because that while they may have been part of one of the longest running shows in history, while they were on it they demonstrated absolutely no ability or dimension.
To understand why I believe this, one has to get a certain measure of context. And in order to do that, I have to describe the eras each were on the show – Jackson was on in the mid-1980s, Schneider the early nineties – and why as a critic, I believe their work was far below the standard of the talent of that era. I’ll start with Victoria Jackson.
For those of you whose memories do not stretch back this far (I myself was too young to watch the series at this era, but during my teenage years I extensively watched reruns of SNL on Comedy Central), something needs to be made clear: after the departure of the original Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time-Players until roughly the late 1990s, Saturday Night Live became more or less a dead zone for aspiring female comediennes. I don’t mean there weren’t a lot of very talent female comics on the show; I mean that almost none of them were utilized to their full ability. To take the most obvious example, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss was on the series from 1982-1985. By her own volition, she admits that she never felt the series was giving her material worthy of her. (It would not be a total loss for her, though. While she was on the show, she met another comic named Brad Hall, and they have been married to this day. She also was on the series the same time an equally frustrated staff writer named Larry David – who in his entire three year stretch only had one sketch put on the air. The rest, as they say, is history.)
When Saturday Night Live was undergoing its revival starting with the 1986 season, the series had some of the greatest talents that it ever did: from the master impressionists Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman to the wild abilities of Dennis Miller (another conservative comic whose has a decent career) This extended to two of the three female regulars: Nora Dunn, who was on from 1985 to 1990 (she departed over a controversy involving Andrew Dice Clay hosting) Jan Hooks, who was on from 1986-1991. Jackson was a contemporary of theirs, and stayed the longest, but that was not due her ability as a comic. To explain why, some background.
Dunn was a superb comic, whose voice and appearance resembled future star Ana Gasteyer, but was much less aggressive in so much of her tone. She could do impressions as good as the guys could – I remember her doing Leona Helmsley and Pat Schroeder among others and she had some memorable regulars. In a rarity for the series, she and Hooks would perform in a double act as two lounge singers who performed before crowded audience. Less trying to be hysterical and more a gentle mockery, it may have been one of the first times in the shows history that two female regulars had their own recurring characters.
Hooks was one of the most undervalued cast members in history, practically the equivalent of the female Hartman. Indeed, I remember seeing the two performing together in dozens, if not hundreds of sketches. Like Hartman and Carvey, she had the ability to disappear into the characters she impersonated – her portrayal of Tammy Faye Baker has gone down in history but she was just as good as Nancy Reagan, Diane Sawyer or even Barbara Walters. Like so many of the female cast members of SNL, Hooks may have been cast for her attractiveness, but she had the ability to use that with such versatility, playing sexy mothers as much as she did sexy teenagers. (In one of my favorite sketches of that era, Dan Quayle is trying to deal with being tapped as vice president when ‘Mrs. Reagan’ wanders into his bedroom. I’m not sure anyone other than Hooks could have pulled that off.)
Indeed, even though Hooks had left the series in early 1991 (she was cast on Designing Women to replace the departed Delta Baker) when Hartman began his impersonations of Bill Clinton, Hooks was brought back to play Hilary on at least half a dozen occasions. Full Disclosure: despite my admiration for the work of Amy Poehler and Kate McKinnon, both of them in my opinion paled to the work Hooks did. In her handful of sketches, I think we got a much closer look at who Hilary was, certainly at the time. I remember a May 1993 sketch where when trying to negotiate with Bob Dole for their health care plan, Hilary loses patience and twists his good arm behind his back. Like so much of the show’s work in the 1980s and 1990s, I thought it was far ballsier and funnier than so much of the show today.
Which brings me back to Victoria Jackson. I’m not saying that any other female comic wouldn’t have paled in comparison to the work that Hooks and Dunn were doing at the time. What I am saying is that Jackson never even registered as particularly funny or entertaining.
To be fair, that may not entirely have been her fault; as I mentioned, so many female comedians of the 1980s and 1990s were hired more for their looks then their obvious talent. (Joan Cusack was on the series for one season and the series could not use her abilities at all.) But Jackson almost from the start came across as strictly one note – the dumb blonde with the squeaky voice. I don’t remember a single sketch on the series when she wasn’t playing an idiot. During her entire seven year run on the show, she was cast as types rather than characters and she almost never got a chance to flex. (Hell, in one sketch she appeared along Woody Harrelson in a game show called: “How Dumb am I?”) Nor did she ever get a chance to do impersonations the way Hooks and Dunn did; with the exception of playing Tipper Gore in one sketch, I honestly don’t remember her playing anyone other than Victoria Jackson. If anything, the writers probably stuck with her far too long than so many of the other talented comedians on SNL at the time.
Now to be clear, none of the three female comics of that era had breakout careers after they left the show. But Dunn and Hooks did work fairly regularly in live-action series. (Hooks, sadly, would pass away from cancer when she was only fifty-seven) Jackson, by contrast, has almost entirely done voice work she left SNL. (Given the tones of her voice, it’s hard to blame her.) Her few roles would be mostly in teen dramas and failed cable series, neither of which would require her to act that much.
So yes, Victoria Jackson has not had the same kind of big Hollywood career that so many SNL veterans have had. But that has less to do with her politics and more to the fact that the writers at the time never gave her a chance to show her range – or that she may not have that much to begin with. The same can not be said for Rob Schneider, but to understand that story, we will need another article.
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