James Downey (born 1952 or 1953) 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, he 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 lit...
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James Downey (born 1952 or 1953) 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, he 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 that 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. His first stretch as writer for the show ran from 1976 to 1980, culminating in a...
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