Iowan Gary Kroeger shared the stage with legends as Saturday Night Live celebrated 50 years of comedy Sunday night.
Kroeger, a Waterloo resident, was an SNL cast member from 1982 — 1985. His tenure overlapped with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Brad Hall and Eddie Murphy. Reflecting on the early days of his comedy career on Talk of Iowa, Kroeger said he felt whimsical remembering his life as a starving actor.
“We wanted people to think about social issues, political issues, but we also wanted to be fall down funny.”
On Sunday night, Kroeger was surrounded by all the big names in the entertainment industry celebrating the show.
“It was overkill. It was too much, because I'm walking up the stairs, I passed Chris Pine, and then there's Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson,” he said. “There's Oprah Winfrey over here, Whoopi Goldberg there. Alec Baldwin is coming up to Tom Hanks at the same time. Kevin Costner's over here. I go into the men's room. And there's Keith Richards coming out, it’s Woody Harrelson. It was just too much, my Iowa modesty was just... couldn't believe that I was part of this and that anybody would even say hello.”
He was even on the cover of the New York Times, photographed in between Lorne Michaels and Paul McCartney.
Kroeger shared another interaction he had with The Beatles during his time on the show. After having a sketch shot down by Ringo Starr, the drummer gave Kroeger what ended up being a treasured souvenir.
Starr asked Kroeger if he had a place to put his cigarette ashes. Lacking a tray, Kroeger offered his coffee cup.
"He put his cigarette ashes in my coffee cup, and I've kept them to this day, 41 years," he said. "Under plastic in my office are Ringo's ashes."
In one of Kroeger’s most iconic SNL performances, he plays Ira Needleman, a dentist trying out video dating. At the 50th reunion, comedian Keegan-Michael Key told Kroeger that seeing that sketch was inspirational to him as a kid.
“He approached me and he said, ‘I've got to tell you, I was 11 years old, and I saw that Ira Needleman sketch. And I thought, wow, this is how far, this is how risqué comedy can get,’” Kroeger recalled. “... It made my day. It made my trip. It might have made my life at this point, to think that something I did influenced a young person who went on to have this stellar career, and I'm part of it. That's the magnitude of being in the business that I was in that still surprises me.”
To hear this conversation listen to Talk of Iowa, hosted by Charity Nebbe. Caitlin Troutman produced this episode.
