Michael O'Donoghue

A co-founder of The National Lampoon and one of the first writers hired for the long-running, late night comedy show "Saturday Night Live" (NBC, 1975- ), Michael O'Donoghue's acerbic prose and incendiary sketch writing suggested that he kept one foot in the Borsht Belt and the other planted in the Grand Guignol, the macabre theatre of horrors that flourished in Paris in the first half of the 20th Century. O'Donoghue helped redirect the course of American humor from the slice-of-life shtick that had been the métier of the great Jewish comedians, to an aggressive, taboo-shattering attack that would inspire a generation of stand-up comics, TV satirists and shock-radio personalities. His sudden death in 1994 shocked and saddened his former "SNL" colleagues and the entertainment industry as a whole. His legacy was kept alive in the work of such social satirists as Howard Stern, Stephen Colbert and the creators of "The Simpsons" (Fox, 1989- ), and he remained a guiding spirit in the realm of contemporary comedy.