TALES FROM THE SCRIPT: THE BEHIND-THE-CAMERA ADVENTURES OF A TV COMEDY WRITER (9 page)

He screamed at me in front of everyone, “You put the originals
in the carbon paper bin and you put the carbons in the original bin.”
i said to him, “i’m sorry, but if that ever happens again, here’s
what you should do: take these pages and move them to the other
bin and take the pages that are already there and put them in the bin
you took these from. That should solve your problem.”
From then on, if they asked for three Lee Marvin jokes, i wrote
three
Lee Marvin jokes. if they wanted two joke wall jokes, i typed
two
joke wall jokes. no more no less. i generally finished my assignment by about 11:30 and took the rest of the day for nap time and
other personal projects.
Either that or i played with my toys. My writing partner, Rowby
Greeber, had fun writing letters to various people inviting them to appear on
Laugh-In
. He invited the Pope, who declined. Queen Elizabeth ii also regretted that she couldn’t fit it into her schedule, but he
got nice letters of apology, which he saved and framed.
He also wrote to Mattel, the manufacturers of Hot Wheels, suggesting that they send some of their products that we might use as
material for jokes on the show. in response, he received many of their

My
Laugh-In
writing partner, Rowby Greeber, and I reading
over the jokes we got into this week’s script. You know they’re
our jokes because we’re laughing at them.

latest products. We had cars and tracks running throughout our motel suite, from the bedroom, through the living, and back again. They
helped fill my free time on the show.

On
The Jim Nabors Hour
, a typical script was about ¾ of an inch
thick. On
Laugh-In
, since the gags were each put on a separate page
for taping purposes, the average script was about two inches thick.
On the evening before the taping, the producer and the two Script
Supervisors finalized the script. They worked until the early morning
hours going over the script page by page, cutting, adding, and rewriting jokes. The various writing teams took turns helping out with that
process. i had to work late once every four or five weeks.

i worked one of those late night sessions with another writer who
was an ass-kisser. He was devoted to getting the producer to like him
and his work. At that particular session, we were going through the
pages when the producer said, “i don’t like page 106. Let’s take it out.”

This derriere-busser chimed in with, “Good idea. Let’s go right
from page 105 to 107.”
Brilliant.
The following year, he was made a Script Supervisor.
Paul Keyes was the producer of
Laugh-In
the year when Rowan
and Martin had a feud with George Schlatter and had him effectively
banished from the show. Paul liked to smoke big, expensive cigars. it
gave the impression that he was really in charge. At that particular latenight writing session, he handed out cigars to all of the writers there.
We all lit up and puffed away, as we reviewed the pages of the
script. One writer refused; he didn’t care for tobacco smoke. it didn’t
matter. With six others smoking stogies, he had nothing else in the
room to inhale but second-hand cigar smoke.
Finally, during a short break, the non-smoker said, “Did somebody fart?”
The rest nodded their heads and said no.
He said, pleadingly, “Would somebody?”
Once the script was finalized, the writers were out of the process.
We weren’t invited to the taping of the shows. We weren’t banned; we
just weren’t needed nor were we particularly welcomed. if we wanted
to be there, that was okay, however, we were to just sit there like spectators, not participants.
i worked on
Laugh-In
for a full season and rarely met any of the
cast members. Rowan and Martin occasionally showed up at writers’
meeting to offer some input, but none of the others.
One writer dated one of the girls who was on the show. She was a
gorgeous young lady, but apparently not too bright. Over dinner, that
writer said to her, “You look a little pensive.”
She said, “no. i’m just thinking.”
That was their last date.
Laugh-In
was a fun season for me because i enjoyed the zany writers i worked with. However, the show itself was not pleasant for me.
i didn’t feel like i was doing my best writing, nor was i allowed to. i
wasted too much paper and put them in the wrong bins.
Besides, the feud hurt the morale of the staff and the quality of the
show. When Dan Rowan, Dick Martin, and Paul Keyes, for whatever
reasons—and they may have been justified, for all i know—forced
George Schlatter off the set, the stage, and the show, much of the life
went out of
Laugh-In
.
A lot of the enthusiasm went out of me. i wanted out, but i had
a two-year contract with the show. if they decided to pick up my option, i would be there for another year.
However, George Schlatter was going to produce a variety show
starring Bill Cosby the following season. He again offered me a contract and it was for the position of Script Supervisor on the show.
it was for a hefty increase over what i was making at
Laugh-In.
My
agent’s advice that i’d make it up along the way turned out to be right,
as it usually was. i told him to snap it up.
He did, and then he had to ask
Laugh-In
to release me from my
contract. That was not an unusual happening in television; shows
generally released writers who got a more promising offer. However,
Dick, Dan, and Paul Keyes refused.
i was stunned. That was a great opportunity for me and they were
holding me back because of their feud with George. i felt they were
petty; they were using me to get revenge.
i told my agent to ask again and explain things better.
They still refused.
“We’ll offer you a firm, two-year contract,” Paul Keyes said.
i said, “i don’t want to be here now. Why would i want to be here
two years from now?” i also said, “How can you offer me a firm two years
when you don’t even know if the show will be renewed next season?”
Keyes said, “it doesn’t matter.
nBC has guaranteed Rowan
and Martin that they’ll be picked up for a new show even if this one
doesn’t come back. You’ll be with that show.”
i said, “no, i won’t.”
i turned down the two-year offer, but i still had to fulfill my contract with them. Another writer on the show had been offered a job
with Cosby, but he accepted the two-year deal with
Laugh-In
instead
.
i had to show up for work on
Laugh-In
. i started the previous
season with a chip on my shoulder, and by that time, i showed up
wearing battle gear. i didn’t want to be there, and they knew i didn’t
want to be there. it was not a very pleasant situation for me.
During our third week of pre-production, Paul Keyes called all
the writers to a meeting in his office. We were going to audition a new
cast member for the upcoming season—a ventriloquist. He and his
dummy did part of their act. They adlibbed, they were very entertaining, and we were all impressed.
i had a terrific headache, though. i asked Paul’s receptionist if she
had any aspirin. She didn’t.
After the audition, we took a brief break before we got on with the
writers’ meeting. i just laid my head on the table.
When Paul Keyes returned after a restroom break, he said to me,
“Did you ever see two characters work so well together before?”
i said, “Yeah, Ernest Borgnine and Ethel Merman.”
i was doing a joke because they had a very brief but stormy marriage a few years before. incidentally, i had stolen the joke from my
former writing partner, Arnie Kogen.
Paul Keyes exploded. He called me a few choice names before
the meeting continued.
The next morning, my agent called and said, “i don’t know what
the hell you did, but you’ve been released from your contract. You’ve
been fired. Congratulations.”
Later that day, i signed with George Schlatter and the Cosby show.
As a postscript,
Laugh-In
was cancelled after that season. As i understood it, Rowan and Martin were paid off by nBC instead of being
given another show. The other writer—the one who was enticed to
stay with the offer of a firm, two-year commitment—never got the
second year of his
firm
, two-year contract.

George Schlatter not only hired me as a writer on the Cosby show,
but he hired me as Script Supervisor. in theory, that meant i was the
head writer. in reality, it meant absolutely nothing. George Schlatter
was the real head-writer. He decided what went into the show, how it
should be rewritten, and how it should be polished. So, i was just one
of the writers on the show—the one with the most desirable office
and with the Script Supervisor title in the closing credits. That looked
good on my resume and i hoped that it might help me get a real headwriter job further down the line.

Even with my exalted title, working for Bill Cosby caused me
some trepidation. My background and training was as a gag-writer,
a joke man, a one-liner guy. Bill Cosby didn’t do one-liners, and i really had no training in sketch writing. The veterans on
The Jim Nabors
Hour
did most of the longer sketches, and
Laugh-In
didn’t do anything longer than three pages. There was good reason for me to be
apprehensive.

Bill Cosby, though, put my mind at ease immediately. When we
had our first scripts typed, bound, and delivered to the office, Cosby
came in for a writers meeting. He picked up the box of scripts that we

had worked so hard on. They were supposed to be distributed so we
could mark them with notes for the rewrites, but he dumped them
into the trash. We assumed that meant he didn’t like parts of them.
With that emphatic gesture, he said, “i’m not Bob Hope and i’m not
Laugh-In.
” That, of course, made me, who had written for both Bob
Hope and
Laugh-in
, feel most welcome. Perhaps that firm two years
with Rowan and Martin didn’t seem that bad after all.

Cosby was right, though. He wasn’t
Laugh-In
and he wasn’t Bob
Hope. in our first draft of the first show, we obviously hadn’t captured what Bill or the show was all about. Cosby had always been
hilariously funny, but in a non-traditional way. Much of his appeal
was that he was different from the other comedians. He wasn’t Hope,
Henny Youngman, or even Lenny Bruce. He was Bill Cosby. We, as
writers, had to find that voice.

it wasn’t difficult, really. When i had an idea for a monologue,
i met with Bill and told him the basic idea. Bill was such a comedy
genius that he immediately began dissecting the premise for funny
angles. He tossed out ideas off the top of his head. He presented
other comedic aspects of the basic premise. i discovered that if i paid
close attention and took good notes, i could go to my typewriter and
create a funny monologue by following the outline that Bill gave me.

The sketch writing technique came more slowly, but it came. i really learned sketch writing on the Cosby show. We turned out a lot of
material and we rejected much of it. nonetheless, writing that many
sketches was good training.

i shared an office and most of the writing with a writer from England named Ray Taylor. Ray was a creative writer who liked to go
for the off-beat or unusual. He suggested an idea about a mannequin
that came to life in a store window. i liked the concept and we wrote
it together for the first show of the season.

Cosby liked it, too. it wasn’t
Laugh-In
and it wasn’t Bob Hope. it
was unique.
normally, the writers watched the taping of the show together on
a monitor in a backstage room. That way, we could discuss what was
working and what wasn’t and have notes prepared for the betweenshows meeting. However, Ray and i wanted to be by the stage when
the mannequin sketch was performed. We wanted to hear the laughter
and the applause. We felt we should be close by in case the audience
rose to their feet and demanded that the authors make an appearance.
We stood off to the side of the audience seats. in fact, i was leaning
against the grandstand that held the audience, my elbow near someone’s feet. The sketch began. When Bill, who played the mannequin,
first showed signs of being alive, the audience chuckled. That’s about
as much laughter as the sketch got. it went downhill from that opening titter, and then it died.
Ray and i stood there stunned. it was supposed to be a smash. it
was written to be dynamite. Bill Cosby thought it would get gales of
laughter. instead, it just died.
There was a gentleman in the audience whose feet were near my
elbow. He turned to his wife and said as a matter of fact, “it was a
good
idea.”
Ray and i went across the street to the City Slicker to drown our
bruised egos. it didn’t appear that we would be called upon to take
the stage for any bows that evening.
Ray was an enjoyable office partner because he had a delightful
way with understatement. Once, we were working on a sketch about
Bill and his onstage wife. As we were trying to write, i adlibbed a few
lines of dialogue. i was using the voice of the wife and i said something very romantic. i put all my acting skills into the delivery of the
line and i delivered it to Ray in the hope that he would accept it and
type it into the script. instead, he looked at me without changing his
expression and said, “That’s your seductive attitude, i presume?”
Often Ray’s barbs went completely undetected. We had Groucho
Marx as a guest on the show late in the season—actually too late to
save the ratings and the show, and too late for Groucho, too. At that
time, Groucho was past his peak—way past. He had enjoyed a comeback of sorts as a camp act with the college crowd, but he definitely
was not up to performing very well.
Erin Fleming was Groucho’s escort and advisor, whether he
wanted or needed advice or not. Once, i saw a television report on
the premier of Marlon Brando’s new film,
Last Tango in Paris.
That
was a controversial film because it was sexually graphic. After the
premier, the reporters interviewed some of the celebrities leaving the
theatre after the first showing. The inside thing to do was praise the
picture, speak out against censorship, and all that stuff.
The interviewer asked Groucho Marx what he thought of the
film. He said, “Worst film i ever saw in my life. Terrible.”
Suddenly, Erin noticed that he was on camera and she whispered
to him.
Groucho then said, “it was great.”
That seemed to be the influence she exerted on the feeble star.
The joke going around our offices was that Erin wanted to be part of
Groucho’s family so much that she was thinking of having her name
changed legally to “Flemmo.”
One morning we came to work to find that Erin was in our office
and frantically making telephone calls to the east coast. She was very
upset about the fact that Groucho was not going to be receiving a special Oscar at the upcoming Academy Awards show; instead, Edward
G. Robinson was to be the honoree.
Erin called Woody Allen from our office to complain. Woody
said that Robinson was very sick and that was why the Academy was
honoring him now. She called others, but could get no satisfaction.
in desperation, she sat there talking to Ray Taylor and i. “i can’t understand why they didn’t give this Oscar to Groucho. i think i must
have screwed every member of the committee.”
Ray said quietly, “Perhaps you’ve answered your own question.”
She never got the irony.
it may have dawned on her later, though, because she did cause us
some grief when Groucho was a guest on the show. We had rehearsed
the entire show and Groucho seemed happy with the material. Then,
we got a call after he got home that he wasn’t happy with the material. i recalled that scene after
Last Tango in Paris.
Maybe “Flemmo”
changed his opinion again.
George Schlatter set up a luncheon meeting for the next day.
George and i would have lunch at Groucho Marx’s house to discuss
changes in the script. Even though that was a problem for the show, i
was thrilled to be having lunch at the home of the legendary Groucho
Marx.
Groucho had many fine writers working with him in his heyday—Max Kauffman and S. J. Perlman among them. it would be
great, i thought, to ask the comedian’s thoughts about them.
After our meeting and while we were waiting for lunch to be
served, i did work up the courage to ask Groucho. “You’ve had some
great writers working for you over the years,” i said. “Could you give
me your impression of some of them?”
Groucho said, “We never had any good writers. My brothers and
i came up with all the funny ideas.”
i said, “What are we having for lunch?”
On the Cosby show, i got to work with Pat McCormick, one of
the fabled, wacky characters of Hollywood. Pat was a bright, funny,
creative writer and performer. He played the big, rich man who
partnered with the diminutive Paul Williams character to back Burt
Reynolds’s in
Cannonball Run
, the hit comedy movie. Pat was a big
man with no inhibitions. He’d say or do anything. He was famous
for his pants dropping. Reportedly, he did it while gazing up at Michelangelo’s painting in the Sistine Chapel and at his own mother’s
funeral. Those stories may be apocryphal, but that’s the sort of character he was—one that would support such myths. Pat was a minor
celebrity that the major celebrities liked to have around because he
was so goofy he was fun.
McCormick and his writing partner on the show shared an office
next to mine with an adjoining door between the two. While Ray and
i were working on a comedy sketch one time, we decided we needed
a bizarre line, the kind McCormick specialized in.
i told Ray, “i’ll get Pat to put a line in there for us.” There was no
way i was prepared for the scene that greeted me when i opened the
adjoining door. Pat’s partner was seated at his desk typing. Pat McCormick, all six-foot, six-inches of him, was pacing back and forth,
smoking a huge cigar and wearing a derby hat, but nothing else.
He said, “May we help you?”
i said, “i’ll come back later” and got the hell out of there.
Bobby Fisher was making the front pages of all the papers while i
worked on the Cosby show. He was competing for the world championship of chess against the reigning champion from Russia, Boris
Spassky. The match was front page news all across the nation and
probably the world.
Ray Jessel, a writer on our staff, claimed to be a pretty fair chess
player. Of course, Pat McCormick challenged him. One day, a match
between Ray and Pat was arranged that would rival the world championship match. Even though most of us knew little about chess, we
all gathered in the front office to watch the confrontation. They set up
the board and flipped a coin to see who would play first. McCormick
won the honors.
He pondered the board for a few seconds and moved one of his
pawns out two spaces. Ray retaliated by moving one of his pawns.
Pat shouted, “There’s no way i can beat you now,” took off his cowboy
boot, and tossed it through the large plate glass window that opened
onto Beverly Boulevard.
Ray apparently won by default.
Pat wrote strange, bizarre, off-beat, but insidiously funny lines—
the kind that could be used on television and the kind that couldn’t.
One night, he and i were working at nBC. To the side of the freeway
near the nBC Burbank studios was a building with a sign that read,
“The Braille institute.” As Pat and i were leaving the studios on the way
back to Hollywood, we passed that building at about two o’clock in the
morning. Of course, the sign was unlighted and all of the windows
were dark. Pat noticed that all the lights were out and said, “That’s a
shame, those poor people must be working late tonight.”
There was another writer on the Cosby staff who insisted he was
taller than Pat. in fact, that writer felt he was richer than most, more
talented than all, more experienced than the rest, and had no compunction about telling each and every one of us that he was.
My office mate on the show, Ray Taylor, was from London. He
worked there many years as a writer and as a television and radio personality. Several of us Cosby writers were at lunch one day when another person on the show came over to talk to us. He said relatives
were visiting and would soon be on their way to London. He asked
Ray to recommend some nice restaurants in London.
This blowhard writer, who thought he knew more about London
than the natives, fielded the question. “Do they want to see celebrities?” he asked. Then, he went on without waiting for a reply. “if they
want to see celebrities tell them to go to . . . .” He mentioned some
London restaurant. “Big celebrities are always there,” he said. “One
night, Ringo Starr was at one table. Michael Caine was at the next
table. i’m at another table . . . .” He raised self-enhancement to new
heights, whether he had reason to or not.
Several of us on the Cosby staff volunteered our writing services
for a huge charity show that was produced in Hollywood each year.
We had a production meeting one evening at the home of Jack Haley,
Jr. Before the meeting got underway, the writer in question challenged
me to a game of 8-ball pool. i had a billiards table in my home at that
time and played quite a bit. My game at that time was above average.
i handled my colleague pretty easily. i beat him five or six games
in a row. i said, “Another game?”
He said, “naw. i don’t want to play anymore.” He didn’t concede,
mind you; he just grew weary of the game.
instead, he said to me, who had just trimmed his clock for the
past half an hour, “Would you like me to teach you some trick shots?”
i was proud of
The New Bill Cosby Show.
it was well-written, but it
wasn’t successful. When the ratings came out each week, we kidded
that our show had an asterisk after it that meant it was “staff-watched.”
not many people tuned in to see it. Of course, a few years later, Bill
Cosby did manage to get a few people to watch his sitcom.
Ronnie Graham wrote some wonderful musical pieces for the
show, we did some nice opening monologues for Cosby, and the
sketches were innovative and funny. Of course, George Schlatter
added his own wacky imprint to each show. it was a funny variety
show, just not popular.
The most memorable show to me was the one on which Peter Sellers
and Lily Tomlin were guests. Lily did a “Hi, Honey, i’m Home” sketch
with Bill that was hilarious. She played the wife who rebelled against all
the housework she had to do while her husband was at the office.
Lily also teamed up with Peter Sellers in an airline sketch that
began with the pilot announcing a crisis. He told all the passengers to
prepare for a crash landing and to follow the instructions of the flight
attendants.
Peter Sellers turned to Lily, who was seated beside him, and asks
if she was in the correct seat.
She replied by asking, “What’s the difference? We’re going to
crash. Who cares what seats we’re in?”
Sellers explained, “i think we should switch because, you see,
your life is passing before my eyes.”
The rest of the sketch was them reviewing each other’s lives. They
were attracted to each other in the airport, but were both too timid to
do anything about it. They fell in love. Then, the danger passed and
they reverted to being quiet, non-communicative seat mates again.
The biggest sketch of the show featured Bill Cosby as an old butler at a political embassy. Peter Sellers played all of the other parts,
including a delegate from india, who was a snake charmer and carried
his pets in one of his satchels, a British politician, who insisted on a
certain type of tea and also drank a touch too much Beefeaters gin,
and one or two others with their own peculiar quirks.
Bill, as the old butler, was so senile that he kept sending them into
the wrong rooms and causing all sorts of confusion and hilarity.
it was a beautifully-written show, and of course, with Sellers,
Tomlin, and Cosby, it was also magnificently performed.
George Schlatter liked the show, but chided us writers. He was
upset at the cost of the embassy piece. Since Sellers played all the
roles and had extensive makeup for each character, the segments had
to be shot separately and then assembled in editing. That much editing time was expensive. George told us, “Don’t ever hand in another
sketch like that. As i watched the editing time mounting up, it reminded me of filling my boat with fuel. i kept hearing that ding-dingding that meant more money.”
it amused all of us writers that Schlatter was trying to garner some
sympathy by telling us how expensive it was to fill his boat with petrol
when none of us could afford a boat in the first place.
Expensive or not, it was a well-written show. i had to defend it a
few weeks later when we had a show that wasn’t working as well as the
Peter Sellers-Lily Tomlin script. One network executive remarked,
“The writing is letting us down.”
i said, “Wait a minute, how about the writing on the Peter SellersLily Tomlin show?”
He replied, “When you have performers that great, you can’t do
anything wrong.”
That was the usual philosophy in Hollywood. When it was great,
the performers got the credit; when it was pedestrian, the writers got
the blame.
Cosby had a brilliant and funny writing staff. Admittedly though,
we were sometimes our funniest and most brilliant when we weren’t
at the typewriter. The apex of the craziness happened one day when
one of our writers had a luncheon date with a recent Playboy centerfold. The rest of us knew she was coming and we did our research.
We bought the issue she was featured in and passed it around the office so we could all enjoy her in her nude glory.