RIP Tom Davis, Al Franken's SNL Partner

Tom Davis, the nine-time nominated and two-time Emmy award-winning writing partner of Sen. Al Franken, has died.

Tom Davis, a writer who with Al Franken helped develop some of the most popular skits in the early years of "Saturday Night Live," died on Thursday at age 59.

His wife, Mimi Raleigh, said he died of throat and neck cancer at his home in the Hudson Valley, north of New York City. He was diagnosed in 2009.

The New York Times:

In 1975, Mr. Davis, brilliant at improvisational comedy, and Mr. Franken, a whiz at plotting funny sequences, became two of the first writers on a new show called “Saturday Night Live,” which has lasted 37 years. (The two should actually be called one of the show’s first writers: they accepted a single salary of $350 a week. Each, singly, was called “the guys.”)

Mr. Davis never lost the quirky, original voice that helped shape the show, and in his last months he referred to death as “deanimation.” He deanimated on Thursday at his home in Hudson, N.Y., at age 59. The cause was throat and neck cancer, his wife, Mimi Raleigh, said.

With Mr. Franken and others, Mr. Davis helped create the clan of extraterrestrials known as the Coneheads, who attributed their peculiarities to having come from France.[...]

He and Mr. Franken were so close that Mr. Franken named his daughter Thomasin Davis. But the two broke up as a team in 1990 as Mr. Franken tired of his friend’s drug abuse. They reconciled a decade later, and Mr. Davis obliged his friend by publishing his all-too-candid autobiography [Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL from Someone Who Was There] only after Senator Franken was elected. In his book, Mr. Davis wrote, “I love Al as I do my brother, whom I also don’t see very much.”

In addition to his wife and his brother, Robert, Mr. Davis is survived by his mother, Jean Davis.

Sen. Al Franken and SNL producer, Lorne Michaels share their thoughts on Davis' passing:

Franken, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2008 to represent Minnesota after a long career in show business, remembered Davis as "a great friend, a good man, and so funny" and he called his death "a sad day for all of us who loved Tom."

In a statement, Franken said he had spoken with Davis' mother on Thursday "and she recalled fondly all the laughter that would come from the basement when Tom and I first got started in comedy."

Lorne Michaels, the creator of "Saturday Night Live," credited Davis with helping to get the long-running show off the ground.

"He was there from the beginning," Michaels said in a statement. "No one saw things the way that Tom did. He was funny, he was original and he was always there to help, no matter the hour. And I always trusted his laugh. I can still kinda hear it."

Jim Downey, a longtime writer for "Saturday Night Live" who began working with Davis in 1976, called him "a loyal friend, a generous and supportive collaborator, and utterly unthreatened by the success of talent of those around him."

"His old pals have known for some time that this day was coming, but still it's hard to accept that he's now no longer out there, somewhere, thinking those crazy thoughts that no one else would think."