Jack Nicholson on the show

Jack Nicholson went onstage and said the following (which I'm sure was mostly written by someone else):

"When SNL started, the last helicopter had just flown out of Vietnam. Watergate was still fresh in everyone's minds, and New York was broke. Respect for authority was at an all-time low. That's what the world was like in 1975, and it's out of that, that SNL's satirical voice was born. I should have hosted then, but what are you gonna do? They squeezed by without me!"

This got me wondering...Nicholson was a big star in the 1970's, and certainly he was riding high after he won the Best Actor Academy Award for One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest. He is friends with SNL producer Lorne Michaels. So why has Jack never hosted the show? I think he would've been a perfect choice for a host, and especially during the 1970's!

My only guess is that he, like some other A-List movie stars at the time, thought appearing on a late-night TV sketch-comedy show was beneath them.