Jim Downey (comedian)
| James Downey | |
|---|---|
| Born | James Woodward Downey October 6, 1952 |
| Occupation | writer for Saturday Night Live (SNL), actor |
| Genre | comedy |
| Notable works | SNL political satire |
James Woodward "Jim" Downey (born 1952) is an American comedy writer and occasional actor. Downey is best known as a long-time writer for Saturday Night Live.
Downey attended Harvard University, graduating in 1974 with a degree in Russian.
While at Harvard, Downey wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, at a time when (as Steve O'Donnell said in 1987) "the proliferation of cable and the proliferation of comedy [led] the sensibilities of the Lampoon [to become] a little closer to the sensibilities of the mass media." Downey, a member of that first generation of Lampoon writers to make a career in television, has been credited with playing a role in the shift. In 1976, 100 Years of Harvard Lampoon Parodies was published in magazine format, edited by Downey and Eric Rayman. In 1976, Downey became a writer for Saturday Night Live. He worked on 27 of the show's first 32 seasons, one of the longest tenures in the show's history. He arrived at Saturday Night Live the same week as Bill Murray with whom he ended up sharing an office overlooking 50th Street, but he mostly began writing at SNL with Al Franken, Tom Davis, and Dan Aykroyd. His first stretch as writer for the show ran from 1976 to 1980, culminating in a brief stint as a featured cast member. By the 1979-1980 season, Lorne Michaels had lost both Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi to feature film careers, causing him to look to writers like Downey, Tom Schiller, Dan Aykroyd's brother Peter, Al Franken, Alan Zweibel, and Tom Davis to fill spots as cast members (along with SNL bandleader Paul Shaffer and newcomer Harry Shearer). When Michaels left the show in 1980, so did Downey, along with practically everyone else.
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