With news this morning that single-season Saturday Night Live cast member Jenny Slate may be out of a job in the fall, Movieline is taking the time to relish those who made a lasting impact with a one-year gig on Lorne Michaels' mothership. Here are ten SNL performers -- some successful and some forgotten -- who had only one season to shine.
10. Morwenna Banks
There have been cast members who served shorter tenures (Laurie Metcalf, for example, was only a cast member during the final episode of the '80-'81 season), but Morwenna Banks represents the woebegone featured players who are forever enshrouded in intrigue. As a cast member for four episodes in 1995, British-born Banks was the most impermanent addition during SNL's most tumultuous season -- in fact, Don Pardo's anguished pronunciation of "Morweena" may have been more memorable than anything Banks actually got to do. In recent years she has developed her talents as a voice actress and released a series of web videos for BBC Comedy where she impersonates the likes of Lady Gaga, Susan Boyle, and Noel Gallagher.
9. Michael McKean
No one was a stranger part of the joyless bacchanal that was SNL's '94-'95 season than Michael McKean, one of comedy's most established veterans (with Laverne & Shirley and This is Spinal Tap in his extensive list of credits). He remains the only person to serve as an SNL musical guest and host before beginning a tenure as a cast member, but he'd go on to rebound as a fixture in Christopher Guest's coterie and as a Celebrity Jeopardy! grand champion.
8. Casey Wilson
Female cast members are notorious for their one-season runs, but '08-'09 cast member Casey Wilson was one of the first cast members to receive her walking papers in the era of Funny Or Die. And we're more enlightened thanks to it!
7. Joan Cusack
Two-time Academy Award nominee Joan Cusack joined SNL's cast during Lorne Michaels' return season in 1985, and she even worked up a couple signature characters including "Salena," an awkward girlfriend to Jon Lovitz's "Biff," and Brooke Shields. Though her run on the show ended in 1986, it took Cusack almost no time at all to land a significant role in one of the decade's defining comedies, Broadcast News.
6. Gilbert Gottfried
The beloved comedian barely earned screen time during his '80-'81 stint, and he rarely employed the loud, wheezy voice that became his trademark. He once claimed that his lowest point was when he was forced to play a corpse in a sketch, and I assume he used the resentment from this season to fuel his masterful vocal performance as Iago in Aladdin.
5. Sarah Silverman
Raunchy comedienne Sarah Silverman was a long way off from Emmy nominations and feature films like Jesus is Magic when she joined SNL as a featured player in 1994. According to legend, only one of the sketches she wrote made it to dress rehearsal, and none actually aired. Silverman also claims she was fired that season via fax, one of the harshest and coldest stories ever to emerge from Studio 8H's confines.
4. Charles Rocket
Rocket was a newcomer during SNL's disastrous '80-'81 season, the one where Lorne Michaels had departed and inexperienced producer Jean Doumanian grabbed the reins. On the season's last episode, Rocket brought a year's worth of tension to a head during the closing credits by purposely inserting the F-word into his final line. "I'd like to know who the f*ck did it," Rocket said, still in character as the shooting victim in a Dallas parody. The malicious move earned him a quick kick to the curb. Unfortunately, Rocket's post-show life is the most tragic in SNL history -- in 2005, the actor took his own life.
3. Janeane Garofalo
It's hard to write a list of greatest one-season wonders without repeatedly referencing the '94-'95 season, but Garofalo's impact during that mythical year cannot be understated. After being fed up with what she claimed was a sexist and untenable working environment, Garofalo went to the press with her anger without notifying Lorne Michaels. Longtime head writer Fred Wolf didn't do much to refute Garofalo's claims with his quotes in Live from New York, an oral history of SNL, when he said that he believed men were genetically funnier. Garofalo left the series even before the season ended.
2. Martin Short
Martin Short is one of the few who made an indelible impression on pop culture in the span of a single SNL season. If his SCTV-originated character Ed Grimley's lasting mark isn't evidence enough, his uproarious impersonations of Katharine Hepburn and Jerry Lewis -- as well as his Weekend Update fixture Nathan Thurm -- substantiate his season of hits.
1. Anthony Michael Hall
No single-season SNL veteran's tenure is more puzzling than Anthony Michael Hall's. After winning the nation's hearts in a string of John Hughes comedies, the 17-year-old actor joined the series in 1985 as its youngest cast member ever (a record that stands today). He may have enjoyed a signature character in "Craig Sundberg, Idiot Savant," but Hall's SNL legacy remains that he was cast without a lick of sketch comedy experience.