Writer and comedian Don Novello was born in Ashtabula, Ohio in 1943. He moved to Chicago in the late sixties to be an advertising copywriter but the seeds for his comedy career were planted when he discovered the outfit that would become the look for his most famous character Father Guido Sarducci at a Catholic Church thrift shop. Consisting of a coat, a cape, a floppy hat and a clerical collar, Novello eventually added the cigarette, the sunglasses, the thick mustache and the thick Italian accent and he introduced the chain-smoking priest character on stage at San Francisco nightclubs, often saying slightly off-kilter things in a serious deadpan style.

These club appearances led to his appearance on a local TV station and his eventual discovery by comedian David Steinberg who would end up introducing Novello to Tom and Dick Smothers, who hired Novello as a writer in the 1970s. Novello even appeared in character as Father Guido Sarducci on The Smothers Brothers Show in 1975, as well as appearing as the character earlier that decade on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.

During that decade, Novello created another character when he began writing to various politicians and public figures under the pen name of Lazlo Toth (after the deranged Hungarian vandal Laszlo Toth who believed himself to be Jesus Christ and who damaged a statue of Mary at the Vatican City in 1972). Novello wrote faux serious questions in character as Lazlo and sometimes got serious responses. The best of these exchanges were compiled by Novello in a book called The Lazlo Letters.

That book caught the eye of Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, who hired Novello as a writer during SNL‘s third season. Novello remained on the writing staff until the fifth season while frequently appearing on screen as Father Guido Sarducci during Weekend Update and eventually becoming a cast member and a popular part of SNL‘s late ’70s-early ’80s era. He often referenced the Pope in these appearances as he did things like demonstrate to the audience how to pay for their sins, or hold a pope-themed contest. My favorite of his SNL appearances was when he interviewed Paul McCartney outside his hotel in London (to the total surprise of Paul and Linda McCartney who were not expecting him to show up).

Novello would occasionally return to SNL during the eighties and he even hosted the show in character as Father Guido Sarducci in 1984, marking the first time SNL was hosted by a fictional character (Pee-wee Herman hosted the show a year later). Father Guido Sarducci also became SNL‘s most frequent recurring character at this point.

In addition to SNL, Don Novello wrote for the Emmy-winning 1976 variety series Van Dyke and Company and was briefly a producer on SCTV in 1982, but Novello’s appearances on screen are what really lived on through the decades. Novello has appeared as Guido Sarducci in It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, Blossom, Married… with Children and Amblin Entertainment’s Casper (1995) where he is called in to attempt an exorcism at the New England house that Casper the Friendly Ghost haunts (right before fellow SNL cast member Dan Aykroyd also makes a cameo in his Ghostbusters gear). Guido Sarducci has also appeared with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, he appeared in an episode of the PBS anthology series Great Performances performing in La Pastorela: The Shepherd’s Tale, and he appeared with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report in 2010 and on The Late Show in 2025, discussing the papal conclaves that were occuring in the Vatican City during those years.

When he wasn’t playing his famous priest character Novello also had roles in films like New York Stories (1989) appearing in the segment directed by Francis Ford Coppola called “Life Without Zoe” (Roger Ebert singled out Novello as the one who gave the most engaging performance in that entire film). Novello worked with Coppola again when he was cast in The Godfather Part III (1990) as the Corleone family’s press secretary Dominic Abbandando. He also entered the world of animation a couple of times when he voiced Leonardo da Vinci in Kids’ WB’s educational sketch comedy show Histeria! (1998-2000), while Disney fans know him best as the voice of demolitions expert Vinny Santorini in Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001). Novello voiced Vinny in the same silly but deadpan style of Guido Sarducci and he was resultantly one of the comedic highlights of that film despite its box office failure (although the animated sci-fi film built up a well-deserved cult fan base).

Don Novello’s career wouldn’t have taken off the way it did if he did not have the tendency he seems to always have to treat the world like a stage for his own one-man show. Which is not exactly atypical behavior for a comedian but he takes it to the next level when he brings his sense of humor to the real world like when he pretended to be Lazlo Toth, which, as I said, literally led him to getting hired on SNL. Those kinds of stunts make him a pioneer on a lane later well traversed by more adventurous comedians like Tom Green, Sacha Baron Cohen and Eric Andre. He even famously got arrested at the Vatican in 1981 while dressed as Father Guido Sarducci, at first getting in trouble for taking pictures for a magazine article in an area where photography was prohibited and later being charged with impersonating a priest (which is an allegation that’s hard for him to beat). Those charges got dropped, but it did unintentionally become his funniest joke.