Hip 10-Year-Olds With No Caramel Corn

The world needs more creative, off-beat humourists. Unfortunately, we have one less. Or is that one fewer?

Buck Henry has passed away. No doubt he could take the first paragraph and turn it into a sketch about grammar Nazis, perhaps defeated by the forces of Allied illiterates.

I first noticed his name on Get Smart as one of those 10-year-olds he talks about in an article below. The show, at first, was a brilliant satire on spy films. As life went on, I noticed Henry’s name tacked to comedy that was usually very interesting to watch.

He started out in improv, a place with a new kind of comedy, a place not littered with fat wife jokes or seltzer bottles, and moved along from there. This feature story from 1963 is a nice indication of his sense of humour.

Says He Dreamed It Up
Gag Writer Claims Drive To Clothe Animals Is Hoax
By VERNON SCOTT
PALM SPRINGS, Calif., March 14 (UPI)—A nation-wide "drive" to clothe animals was unmasked Thursday as a hoax perpetrated by television gag writer Buck Henry who posed as G. Clifford Prout Jr., but who genuinely is Buck Zuckerman of New York. All three are one and the same man—Zuckerman.
Resting in the desert sun at a resort hotel where he is registered as Buck Henry, writer for "The Garry Moore Show," he said: "I had no particular reason for dreaming up the Society for Indeceny to Naked Animals (SINA)."
Henry, who as Prout picketed the White House, in an attempt to dress animals decently, says, "everything fell illogically into place."

"I did it partly to amuse Buck Henry, but Prout takes it all very seriously. I know Prout quite well. He's a great guy. I wouldn't say he's eccentric, but has the qualities of most men his age (32) only more so."
Playing it straight-faced, Henry-Prout-Zuckerman said he believes zealot Prout has as much right to be taken seriously as anyone else.
"He's very sincere about Sina. He no longer is shocked by seeing unclothed animals. He just feels a deep chagrin and suffers moral pain when seeing naked animals."
Newspapers, television news shows and periodicals took Prout seriously during his campaign to clothe animals, much to the amusement of Henry-Zuckerman. Asked if he was a split personality, Henry refused to answer.
He admitted seeing the movie "Three Faces of Eve" but said, "I found it very hard to believe." The picture dealt with a woman who had a three-way split personality.
"I am Buck Henry most of the day. But if I'm operating as Prout it is at a definite time and place. He operates very efficiently. Zuckerman and Henry overlap," he said. "Zuckerman is necessary for Buck Henry's sense of the past."
Gagster Henry-Prout-Zuckerman said he would return to his home on New York's 56th Street within a few days, but has every intention of continuing Prout's campaign for discouraging nudity among animals. He also threatened trouble for the individuals who have put out a record titled "SINA" with which he (Henry and or Prout) does not have any connection. "Neither does Zuckerman," he concluded wryly.

He spoke a little more about his hoax in this feature piece from July 20, 1966. The last line is particularly relevant today.

Buck Henry Takes Comedy Seriously
By DONALD FREEMAN
Copley News Service
HOLLYWOOD—"I think I will now say something shocking" said Buck Henry, a comedy writer who resembles a Wally Cox after vitamins and who's story editor of the "Get Smart" series. "Shocking, but true. It is simply this—you cannot do good contemporary comedy and still secure the 45 through 65-year-old age group audience."
That is at least a moderately shocking observation not even tempered by a smile. Buck Henry, as the old line goes, is very serious about comedy.
"IF YOU must make the older group understand the jokes," Henry went on, "it imposes certain rules that a absolutely dilute your grade of humor. They aren't dumb these people—they are however in a different bag. They're not tuned into contemporary comedy. These people having reached a certain age and often a certain economic plateau are established well-fed contented and above all nice people—except where comedy is concerned.
"To begin with they do understand solid dirty jokes or very bland clean ones. They've been nurtured on and delight in Lucille Ball, Red Skelton, Berle and the others, all of whom can be very funny—but the one thing they also do is they assiduously avoid making any comment on the real life around us In that sense they are totally un-hip.
"TELEVISION shows are getting hipper," said Henry "Maybe not better, but hipper.
"My parents and their friends of similar age watch our show 'Get Smart.' And they really don't understand it—ah, but 10-year-olds understand the hip stuff we do instinctively. What Maxwell Smart says is for hip grownups. What he does however the funny moves the wild takes—that's for the kids."
An actor - comedian turned writer, Buck Henry is now in his mid-30s, a wry and bespectacled deep thinker who has churned out scripts for Garry Moore, Steve Allen and That Was the Week That Was. Buck is also a graduate of Dartmouth where he insists he developed a deep and abiding fear of snow.

OCCASIONALLY he writes a a few "Get Smart" scripts but mainly he edits, revises, sharpens, inserting a punch line here, a straight line there, along with his special tilted point of view. He is, as they say around the city room, a shirt-sleeve editor and now he sat in his office at Paramount Studios and mused about television.
"Take situation comedies," Buck said, lighting a cigarette. "Situation comedy has degenerated into an endless stream of lovable characters we can identify with. Pretty creepy. 'Get Smart' is a so-called sitcom but I think its funnier than the other sitcoms because we either do jokes or we do story—there are no fill-ins, no caramel corn. Often we're wrong but at least our jokes are real jokes. It's real comedy. 'Peyton Place' has no real drama. It's manufactured nonsense with unreal people."
HENRY'S face assumed a mock apologetic look. "Once last season," he confided, "I wrote a whole 'Get Smart' show just to get in one pun which is pretty crazy, am I right? I'll set the scene, Smart is on a ship whose captain is named Grauman. It so happened that Grauman has an Oriental servant who follows him around.
"Maxwell Smart spots the captain and the servant together for the first time and he says, 'so that's Grauman's Chinese? Imagine a whole show just for that one pun!"
With Buck Henry it is very easy to imagine just that, for Mr. Henry, whose imagination knows few bounds, is the fellow who once assumed the name of G. Clifford Prout and conducted a campaign to clothe our domesticated animals. As the head of the Society for Indecency to Naked Animal,s Henry as Proud turned up—with properly controlled indignation — on a number of programs, including Jack Parr's and Dave Garroway's. He was interviewed and quoted and incredibly believed. Supporters flocked to his cause.
"Why did you do it, Buck? I asked.
"Because at the time I was unemployed and it seemed like fun," he replied. "It was outlandish and outrageous but people assumed I really did want to put pants on dogs. Is that crazy? What I was really doing was telling people to think twice when some loony comes along."

You will not be surprised to learn Kliph Nesteroff interviewed Henry. Read it over here.