Ruth Buzzi

One of the great strengths of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In was everyone did something unique. Jo Anne Worley was brassy. Goldie Hawn was a ditz. Judy Carne was picked on. And Ruth Buzzi came up with an ugly old maid character and took it all over the TV dial years after Laugh-In was laid to rest.

Laugh-In made stars out of the ensemble cast, but they all had been around the block a few times. Buzzi had shown up on Marlo Thomas’ That Girl series (in another case of being on fewer episodes than one recalls) and, before that, voiced Granny Goodwitch in Linus the Lionhearted.

She passed away yesterday at age 88.

This profile hit the news wires when Laugh-In was in its second season, December 20, 1968.

Ruth Buzzi Is Repulsed by Own Laugh-in Character
By VERNON SCOTT
United Press International
HOLLYWOOD – The most courageous woman in all of show business is Ruth Buzzi, the misbegotten old baggage of “The Rowan and Martin Laugh-In" Show.
The NBC-TV top rated series features Miss Buzzi as a forelorn old maid in futile search for a man—any man.
But even the Boston strangler would recoil at sight of Gladys Ormphby, the character played by Miss Buzzi. By comparison, Phyllis Diller is a bewitching beauty.
Gladys has a face that would top a sundial.
The thought of her in a bikini would sicken a marooned sailor. She is the repulsive female loser, a modern Medusa.
While Miss Ormphby is a real dog, Miss Buzzi is an attractive, charming young lady from Wequetequock, Conn., who frets at the thought viewers think Ormphby is the real Buzzi.
"GLADYS IS SO repulsive I can barely watch her on the show," Ruth said the other day.
"She wears a tight hairnet and is completely stripped of makeup. To make her even more convincing I brush my eyebrows together so they meet above my nose. Then I dress in a baggy dress, a boy's sweater, brown lisle cotton stockings for women over 90 and black oxfords with laces and Cuban heels.
"Gladys Ormphby is utterly without style. And you'd be surprised how many people think that's the real me."
Ruth Invented Gladys when she was playing the role of Agnes Gooch in a road company version of "Auntie Mame" in Pennsylvania. When she appeared on stage for the first time in her revolting costume she stopped the show cold. The audience laughed for 10 minutes.
“I had to turn my back to the audience in every performance to stop the laughter," Ruth said with pride.
“When I left the show I decided to keep the character, but I had to give her a new name. I was working at my desk as a secretary between acting jobs and I dreamed up Gladys Ormphby.
"I played the character a couple of years ago on the old Carol Burnett Show, 'The Entertainers.' But she didn't speak."
RUTH WAS ASKED why, if Gladys is so man-hungry, she repulses the passes of Arte Johnson, who plays the old lech in the park bench sketches on "Laugh-In.”
"Look," Ruth said. "No woman, no matter how desperate, would allow that dirty old man to get near her—not even Gladys."
Ruth confuses viewers who aren’t quite certain whether Gladys and Ruth are separate people on the show because Miss Buzzi frequently appears in routines as herself.
"About 90 per cent of the time I'm Gladys," Ruth said mournfully. "The rest of the time I'm me."
And Ruth Buzzi wants the whole world to know that.

She talked a little less about Gladys in this feature story in the Charlotte News of December 7, 1968. With the American election over, Ruth expressed the same opinion as executive producer George Schlatter about a famous guest shot.

There’s No Hairnet To Be Seen
Boo-Boo Gave Ruth Buzzi Funny 'Laugh-In' Skit
By EMERY WISTER
News Entertainment Writer
HOLLYWOOD— "If Hubert Humphrey had accepted our invitation to appear on the 'Laugh-In' TV show, he and not Richard Nixon would have been elected President."
The speaker was Ruth Buzzi, the plain-Jane girl with the hairnet on her head who yocks it up with the rest of the gang on the NBC-WSOC laughfest each Monday night.
"If Mr Humphrey had done it he would have been elected," she repeated, sipping on her orange juice at a mid-morning breakfast. "We made a pitch to get him. He came out to the NBC studio to tape a newscast. But we couldn't get to him. We couldn't get any farther than his aides and they said no.
"NIXON DID the bit, the sock-it-to-me thing, I mean. But it was done with taste. The fact we had Nixon say 'Sock it to me? as a question made the difference. That made it tasteful."
And the show's publicist, sitting at the table with her, confirmed her opinion by saying that Humphrey's refusal to appear on the new show was "a colossal mistake."
"It's not a very nice thing to think that a simple thing like that could influence the election but with so many people hesitating to go one way or the other, it could have had an effect." he said.
Now, how about the off-screen Ruth Buzzi? Is she the same homely mournfully man-hungry girl she is on the air?
NOT ON your life. She's a short, bouncy lass and though not pretty is decidely on the attractive side. And there's no hairnet to be seen.
"Tell you about that," she giggled as she poured herself another cup of coffee. "I was putting on a net one morning and got it on wrong. But it looked so funny just decided to leave it.
"A lot of men may not know what it is but all the women will. Some people say it makes me look as though I have a bullet hole in the head."
Does she write the funny lines she says on the show? Well— "I have to give the writers credit," she said. "They create the material. But some of the funniest things I have done I thought of myself."
Until the "Laugh-In" came along, practically no one had heard of Ruth Buzzi. She was just another face in the crowds of shows on and off Broadway in New York. She was featured in the production of "Sweet Charity" and wound up in Hollywood mainly because the show closed there.
l YOU WOULDN'T believe her home town.
"Write it down," she said. "It's Wequetock, Conn. That's near New London."
She was in Julius Monk's "Baker's Dozen" show in New York's Plaza Hotel and later worked on the Garry Moore "The Entertainers" and Mario Thomas "That Girl" TV shows. And then came the "Laugh-In."
"We started with a special and then they brought us back for the series," she said. "I thought the thing was sheer bedlam at first but I was never so wrong. I have to remind myself now that it's work.
"Our morale is great. We have so many people no one has to learn very many lines. That keeps us all relaxed. We all had a tight schedule on the Marlo Thomas show and believe me I can appreciate what I have now. I had no life of my own shooting “That Girl.”
WHAT KIND of schedule does she have now? Well, the “Laugh-In” parties are taped each Wednesday at noon. They rehearse on three other days and that’s about it.
“People may think it’s tougher this year since we have parties in the beginning of each half hour instead of just one in the beginning. But the only thing different is we split it up. Before we each had two lines to say in one party. Now we have one line in each of the two segments. So it’s the same thing.
“To make it easier, we have cue card holders off camera to help us with our lines. Actually, we tape from 60 to 65 minutes of material a week. Nothing is thrown away.”
And there’s the thing that the producers call “The Library.”
“That’s when they bring in those celebrities,” she said. “They tape those things at various times. That’s why I’m not working today. We have so much material in the library they gave us the day off. And we have two weeks off at Christmas plus the summer vacation.

When Laugh-In left the air (she and Gary Owens were the only originals remaining besides Rowan and Martin), she turned to cartoons and children's programming. She explained why in this story syndicated by the Washington Post. One paper printed this on Christmas Day 1993.

'Laugh-In' regular joins ‘Sesame Street.’
Ruth Buzzi, long active in children's TV, plays the owner of Finder's Keepers thrift shop.
By Scott Moore
WASHINGTON POST
The image of dowdy Gladys Ormphby may be etched into the minds of many adults, but Ruth Buzzi has found a new identity among viewers too young to remember her many roles on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1968-73).
Buzzi, 57, brought on board with seven new Muppets for the 25th season of PBS's Sesame Street, plays the proprietor of the Finder's Keepers thrift shop.
"It's me," Buzzi said of the Ruthie character, who explores the shop's treasures and entertains children and Muppets with her storytelling.
"I love this opportunity to be me. Plus, there's nothing better than being able to be you and also be other characters. Because then, when people see you being a character and being yourself, I think they can enjoy more what you're able to do."
Though she has not been as visible in her post-Laugh-In career as co-stars Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin, Buzzi has been busy with children's programming.
"Agents don't like it, because there's not enough money in it for them, but I always like to do children's shows because to me it's like money in the bank for the future," she said. "The children grow up very, very quickly, and before you know it, you have fans who are adults. I'm not afraid to act like a nut for kids. I love to make them laugh."
In addition to her scheduled 40 appearances this season on Sesame Street (which runs three times a day weekdays and twice a day on Saturdays and Sundays on Channel 12), Buzzi provides the voice of an Neanderthal woman in the Children's Television Workshop-produced Cro. The animated science and technology program airs Saturdays on ABC (8 a.m., Channel 6).
She also has provided voices for Linus the Lion-Hearted, The Beren-stain Bears, Pound Puppies, Paw-Paws and The Nitwits (with Laugh-In's Artie Johnson), and appeared in nine movies. She has won four Emmy nominations along the way.
To teenagers, Buzzi is known as the mother of Screech in NBC's Saved by the Bell. Her picture sits in his dormitory room on the new Saved by the Bell: The College Years.
Buzzi obviously likes the work, though the current Sesame Street role almost didn't come about. "They tried to get me [for a guest spot] about 10 years ago, but my agent at the time said I wasn't interested." Not true, she said.
Luckily, Sesame Street writer Judy Freudberg suggested that they try to get Buzzi for the show's new cast located "around the corner" from Sesame's main street.
"Not only are they giving me a chance to be crazy funny for the kids ... they're also allowing me to do things every now and then that are delicate, and I can show a sweet, easy side of myself," Buzzi said. "I love it when I have a reason to have to put my hand on a little Muppet and feel sorry for it or try to make it understand a point."
That's not to say there is no Gladys Ormphby zaniness. Last month, in acting out a fairy tale about a grouchy princess, Buzzi even incorporated some of Gladys' apparel.
"They asked me if I would be willing to do [Gladys] a couple times on the show. I said absolutely. The original dress is put away, but ... I'm wearing the original shoes and the original sweater, which is getting really, beat up.
"The designers of this show ... are looking to see if they can find me another sweater like the Gladys sweater. What I got originally was a boy's sweater ... but for some reason or another they're just not making brown cardigans for boys anymore. I can kind of see why, can’t you? Who would want to wear one?"

More Benny

We got more Jack Benny in our homes at the start of the 1954 season. And Jack wanted us to have more.

Radio was still hanging in there with a big-time line-up. On WCBS New York, Jack maintained his familiar 7 p.m. time-slot, while the rest of CBS’ programming that evening was the Hallmark Hall of Fame (6:30), Amos ‘n’ Andy (7:30), Our Miss Brooks (8:00), My Little Margie (8:30, co-starring Charlie Farrell, star of Seventh Heaven), Edgar Bergen-Charlie McCarthy (9:00).

As for television, Jack expanded his air-time. And judging by this interview with United Press, published starting Sept. 29, 1954, he wanted even more.

Benny Back on TV Sunday; Hopes For Full Hour in ‘55
By VERNON SCOTT
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 29 (UP)—Jack Benny is the funniest of men—even when he's sick in bed and feeling sorry for himself.
The king of comedians, felled by a vicious cold, was gracious enough to keep his appointment for our interview. Propped up in bed by half-a-dozen pillows, he sniffled disconsolately, hoping some notice would be taken of the fact that his baby-blue pajamas were a perfect match for his eyes.
He proferred his hand weakly. “I’m really not in pain,” he wheezed in a voice which indicated these might well be his last words on earth.
Jack was surrounded by books, magazines, and television scripts. He riffled the pages of a script as he talked.
"I'LL BE DOING a TV show every other week," he announced, "beginning Sunday, October third. CBS, of course." He craned his neck to make certain the facts were clearly written down. Seeing this, he smiled winningly.
"I hadn't planned to do so many shows," he said. "But you know how it is with fans—well, you know." He cleared his throat. "And then there's the money," he added testily.
"My first year I did four programs, the second year I did six. Then I moved it up to nine shows in 1952. Last year I did 12." He took pains to insure the data was carefully noted.
• • •
HE COMPLAINED that the bi-weekly half-hour show would be taxing.
"I wish we had an hour. It would give us time to build up the other characters in the sketches. Next year I'll try to get an hour show." This would be in addition to his radio half hour.
Benny stared off into space letting this pronouncement sink in. It was one of his tricky silences that gets more laughs than a truckload of gags. He twitched his nose and went on.
"We're gambling with my opening show," he confided. "We're not having any big-name guest stars or wild goings-on. You'll remember we did that last year on the first show."
• • •
WE CONFESSED we did not recall last year's opener. Jack looked stricken.
"We had Marilyn Monroe as guest star," he said reproachfully." But Sunday there'll just be Don Wilson and Rochester. And me, of course," he added quickly before lapsing into another silence.
Jack looked as if he wouldn't say another word. He even picked up a magazine and flipped the pages. Then he spoke.
"And I'll have very little time for jokes." He explained this by saying he seldom cracks jokes on his show. He doesn't have to. People laugh at the character he’s built up over the years.
“Sometimes there’s not one funny line for me in the script,” he said with a hurt look. The injured expression was evidence enough why Jack Benny doesn’t have to open his mouth to keep ‘em rolling in the aisles.

Jack’s series never did go to an hour length, and you have to wonder if he was thinking out loud. The idea wasn’t practical. The 7:30 p.m. TV airtime was not his. It was purchased by American Tobacco. As it was, American Tobacco cut its investment in Benny. It dropped his radio show at the end of the season, despite a plan to cut costs in 1955 by increasing re-runs. No one else would pick it up (Bergen was moved into Benny’s slot that fall).

It would have been a strain on the writers as well. Unlike radio, Jack just couldn’t fill time with a band number. Since singer Dennis Day wasn’t around as much, the writers would have to sit there and come up with comedy. It would have been a heavy load.

Jack did get in some extra time on TV in the 1954-55 season. Reports say his appearance on the G.E. Electric Theatre put $70,000 in his vault. And he was beginning to appear on Shower of Stars as well; his tour of duty there lasted all four seasons and included the famous “40th Birthday” special.

Not going to an hour didn’t hurt him. Starting in 1956, Jack won four consecutive Emmy awards. And his series carried on until 1965.

McHale, Movies and Merman

United Press International columnist Vernon Scott began a story in 1964 with the words: “Never, never take an actor’s words at face value.”

He should have taken his own advice.

That year, Scott wrote several columns about McHale’s Navy. Maybe the most fascinating interview was with the show’s star, Ernie Borgnine. Ostensibly, the column was about the series graduating to feature film status. But it took a detour to talk about what became a very uncomfortable subject—Borgnine’s pending marriage to Ethel Merman.

I suspect if you’re a reader of this blog, you’re up on show biz history enough to know the union was one of the biggest disasters in Hollywood. It lasted 38 days. Stories abound (we’ll skip the specifics) that leave you with the impression the marriage was doomed before it happened.

However, when Scott penned his column, that was all in the future. Everything was happiness and rainbows, at least if you want to believe Borgnine’s comments. The story appeared on March 28, 1964.

McHale Navy Sails Into Films
By VERNON SCOTT
HOLLYWOOD (UPI)—Out at Revue Studios they're so pleased with "McHale's Navy" a movie is being made starring the same raucus [sic] crew of the television series.
Ernie Borgnine, bungling skipper of the raffish PT boat swabbies, is as pleased as he is punchy.
"We could be the only outfit in history that makes a series of movies and television shows at the same time," he said, pushing his naval officer's cap to the back of his head.
"Yes sir, we could become a perennial like the 'Andy Hardy' movies were. I think we're the first ones to try it anyhow."
Jack Webb tried it once with “Dragnet" and fell right on his Sergeant Friday badge. But Borgnine's enthusiasm is catching.
"We're flattered they chose our little old half-hour comedy to be made into a picture," he said, sprawling out on the couch of his spacious dressing room on the Revue lot.
“We’ll have it working both ways for us. People who like the TV series will go to see the movies. And people who go to see the movie will want to tune in the series. How about that?"
The big fellow's optimism is understandable. He’s about to become a bridegroom for the third time and if that doesn't qualify him as an unreconstructed optimist, nothing will. He and actress Ethel Merman become Mr. and Mrs. June 27.
"This is going to be a wonderful marriage," he said. "Ethel's a terrific girl and were really in love."
Ernie is already looking ahead to the time when "McHale's Navy" is scuttled by the ratings, an unlikely event in the foreseeable future. But if and when it is deep-sixed, the Oscar- winning actor (Marty) would like to see Ethel and Ernie co-star in a series.
"We could be sort of a modern 'Min and Bill,’ you know, like Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery. Not that Ethel has anything in common with Marie Dressler. We could have a lot of fun with a show like that."
The movie version of "McHale's Navy" will take four-weeks to complete, compared to the three-day schedule for the video segments.
"We're getting the ‘A’ treatment now,” Borgnine grinned. "They're calling me Mr. Borgnine instead of Ernie and they brought the portable dressing room right on the stage for me. What's more they're paying me top regular movie salary, which runs into six figures.
"I think the public will flip for this picture. It's a great script and it's being shot in color. We even had a bigger PT boat built for the movie."
New and expensive sets have been constructed for the picture. They will be kept for future use in the series.
"It's a big boost financially and psychologically for everybody connected with the show," Ernie concluded, "even if it does mean I'll only have six weeks for a honeymoon instead of four months."

Honeymoon for six weeks!!? The marriage didn’t even last that long. (Columnist Earl Wilson revealed after the two separated he had received a card from a very happy Merman on her honeymoon. He learned he shouldn’t have taken that at face value, either).

The feature film contained an irony. Part of the plot involved Borgnine’s McHale trying to get out of a pending marriage.



1964 may have been the climax for McHale’s Navy. A female equivalent series (produced by McHale’s creator, Edward J. Montagne) called Broadside debuted that year. It had a fine cast, but survived only one season of 32 episodes. Another McHale movie came out the following year—but without McHale, as Borgnine was tied up on another film.

The series switched locations from the South Pacific to Italy for the final season, but that couldn’t save it from the ABC axe in 1966. In glancing through Scott’s columns that year, it doesn’t appear he got a follow-up from Ernest Borgnine. Or Ethel Merman.

Monkee See on TV

Their theme song picked up on discontent about the status quo by young people.

“We’re the young generation, and we’ve got something to say.”

To be honest, I don’t think “I’m a Believer” or “Steppin’ Stone” were message songs. But that likely didn’t matter to fans of The Monkees.

There was a guy named Randy in my Grade 5 class who (no, I won’t say “went ape”) loved The Monkees. He had a Monkees lunch box and all kinds of other stuff. The band’s music didn’t do anything for me then, and I didn’t watch the show until it was in reruns (at least in Canada). It was crazy and eye-rollingly corny at the same time. The stars talked to the camera. The storyline was full of non sequiturs. It was maybe the closest thing to a live cartoon. The cleverest episodes worked a song into the plot. The direction and editing owed a lot to the Beatles’ film A Hard Day’s Night.

The United Press did a couple of stories about the show in 1966. The first one, which appeared in papers around May 24, claimed the coming series was competition for ABC’s Batman. It actually ran opposite the network’s The Iron Horse, starring a beautiful old steam train (that’s all I remember about it) and Gilligan’s Island on CBS, which is what I was watching.

Michael Nesmith has been recording for Colpix as “Michael Blessing”. Micky Dolenz’s stage name was Mickey Braddock when he starred on Circus Boy which, oddly, doesn’t get mentioned in the story.

'Monkees' Seeking Fame, Fortune On Television
By VERNON SCOTT
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — N. B. C.-T. V. has a secret weapon aimed at "Batman" and will pull the trigger next fall.
It's not a zap gun. It's not even a roadblock for A.B.C.'s batmobile. What it is, is a new show concocted to woo the younger generation away from the Dynamic Duo.
The series stars a Fearsome Foursome in "The Monkees", a wholly manufactured singing group of attractive young men who come off as a combination of The Beatles, the Dead-End Kids and the Marx Brothers.
Critics will cry foul. Long-hairs will demand, outraged, that they be removed from the air. But the kids will adore The Monkees. You can bet on it.
Screen Gems, which produces the show, interviewed 650 young men and screen-tested 35 of them, before settling on the quartet. The stars-to-be are David Jones, Peter Tork, Mickey Braddock and Mike Blessing. Unlike other rock 'n' roll groups, the boys had never performed together before. Indeed, they'd never even met.

Last September they were brought together, presumably by guys in white coats with nets.
They shot the pilot show and sent the boys in their several directions with the admonition not to call Screen Gems. Screen Gems would call them. Six months later the show was sold and the boys were corralled once more.
Since last January they've been working like slaves to create their own sound, locking themselves on a small sound stage and working away on two guitars, a set of drums, and a tambourine.
The boys are from all four points of the compass. Jones is a 20-year-old one-time jockey apprentice from London. Tork is a New Yorker, Blessing is a Texan and Braddock a Californian.
An interview with the Monkees is an impossibility. Ask if any of them are married and Davy immediately claims he and Mike have been married for years. Peter makes the same claim for Mickey. They give their ages variously from 2 to 98 years.
They break into off-key singing at the slightest provocation and rather than give straight answers they come up with rehearsed and ad lib nonsense, most of it hokey.
They're an irreverent lot who are certain to offend the press. Their antics, however, are natural and boisterously funny.
Beneath the veneer of loud-mouthed confidence, the boys are fervently hoping to make good. They wear their hair Beatles fashion. Their clothes are kookie and their antics off-beat. But somehow on them it looks good.
Each show will have a Marx Brothers-type story line with quick cuts, imaginative camera shots, slow motion and speeded up chases and all manner of gags.
The only thing going against them is an NBC survey which predicts the Monkees will be the big hit of next season. The network said the same thing last spring of a bomb titled “Hank.”

Mr. Scott profiled one of the stars in a column that showed up in papers after the series began. He picked the one that became girl-bait for “16” and other magazines aimed at boy-crazy teenagers. It appeared around October 14.

Davey the Jockey Is Also a 'Monkee'
By VERNON SCOTT
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — David Jones is a pint-sized Cockney jockey with shoulder-length hair who is also a Monkee.
Sounds implausible, or at least something out of Dickens. But Jones is real and a member of the rock 'n' roll group "The Monkees," television's new offering for teen-agers.
A native of Manchester, England, Davey is a scrappy little cuss who dared Western star Dale Robertson to do something about it when he parked his own car in Robertson's parking space at Columbia studios. Robertson passed.
Davey picked up his Cockney accent when, as a lad, he was told he could make his stage debut if he could master the patois in six weeks. Davey out-Cockneyed the Cockneys and it's stuck with him.
His accent won him a two-year role in "Oliver" on Broadway as well as in "Pickwick."

At the tender age of 15 1/2 Davey became an apprentice jockey in England with a promising future.
Only last winter he rode 26 winners in 3 1/2 months. But the trainer with whom he worked told the lad he must choose between show biz and riding nags.
"I like horses and acting," said diminutive Dave. "But I never went back to riding.
"I'm 20 years old but I've had more experience than most chaps of 30. I had no idea of becoming part of a singing group when I came out here to Hollywood. But they put me in with the other three and now I'm a Monkee.
"But there's one difference between me and the others. I didn't have a contract. I hope the series runs a couple of years so I can count my money and rest. Then I'll start all over again."
The little guy—who resembles a male version of Patty Duke—has no desire to perpetuate his current success.
"Put me down anywhere, flat broke, and I'll find my way home,” he said. "I can take care of myself."
The other day he was driving down Sunset Blvd. when a car-full of teen-age females shrieked at him. At a stoplight they insisted they recognized him.
"They thought I was George Harrison of the Beatles," he said outraged. "Imagine a thing like that. Enough to send a chap back to England. But I like it better here in America.
With his first big paychecks Davey bought a new home for his parents in Manchester. Now he's moving into a new apartment to escape fans who clutter his doorstep.
"If things get tight I can lose a few pounds and return to racing,” Davey concluded. "I once earned $10,000 as a jockey, but I lost $9,000 of it betting on the horses.”

The series picked up two Emmys but lasted only two seasons. The show’s still fun to watch; all kinds of great comic actors were hired for one-shot appearances. It wouldn’t get made today. It’d be turned into a reality format.

You Kids Killed The Time Tunnel

How could a TV show with Whit Bissell, John Zaremba and a set made of concentric metal ovals fail?

Pretty easily, as it turned out.

Your correspondent, age 9, loved the Time Tunnel. Actually, I loved the set more than the show, though Bissell and Zaremba fit the parts. Bissell’s general and Zaremba’s scientist were alternately contemplative and urgent, by my recollection.

The Time Tunnel was a product of Irwin Allen Productions, which also brought viewers Lost in Space. I’m not a science fiction fan, but both shows—at their best—had an element of suspense, until Lost in Space turned into the Dr. Smith and the Robot (and Some Other People) Show. If Jonathan Harris had been any more camp, he could have been on RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Scripps-Howard entertainment writer Richard Shull looked at the rise and fall of The Time Tunnel in a pair of columns. As a side note, there’s one reason to like Shull. He was hired by the New York World-Telegram to replace the retiring Harriet Van Horne—who once dissed a Christmas special starring Helen Hayes. Van Horne then changed her mind and wanted her job back, so the World-Telegram fired Shull. You have to pull for a guy that gets shoved around by management like that.

Let’s start with Shull’s column of November 12, 1966, about a month and a half after the Tunnel debuted. Irwin Allen must have put out news release bait that his show was deadly serious because I’ve read a number of columns that snapped at it.

Time Tunnel: Has Interesting Twists
By RICHARD K. SHULL
NEW YORK—Neglected and almost lost in the corridors of TV time scheduling this season is a good, honest adventure show titled "The Time Tunnel."
Unfortunately, it's sandwiched between the sub-moronic Green Hornet and Uncle Miltie Berle's moribund variety show on ABC on Friday. Also, it's directly opposite the gallow's humor of Hogan's Heroes on CBS and the snickering sadism of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. on NBC.
The odds against its success, anyone on Madison Avenue will tell you, are monumental.
And a sure kiss of death for the show would be for a TV columnist to say it's good. So, no more along that line.
But Time Tunnel is good science-fiction well done with some interesting twists. Ex-rock singer James Darren, now 30 and a father of two makes a strong, youth-oriented hero.
The basic idea of a machine capable of transporting humans in time and space is incredibly credible.
• • •

MOST OF ALL, however, the show is dedicated in its honesty to history. You won't find Daniel Boone fighting the South American Incas as in the Daniel Boone show. Nor will ever see Asian tigers battling African lions while South American toucans fly overhead as in Daktari.
Time Tunnel is doing a first rate job of making history palatable to the small fry, perhaps a true reflection of the modern child's mind in which history, space research, and futuristic fantasy all commingle in one welter of events and places past and future.
"The show won't change history, but we can affect the people involved within an event," Darren, an intense fellow, explained.
"And sometimes we'll take credit for the inexplicable of history. For instance, during the Black Plague in Europe, there was one group of people who were untouched while everyone around them died. Who is to say that someone from a time tunnel hadn't played a hand? History never explained," Darren said.
• • •
THE SHOW is produced by Irwin Allen, who also does Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space. He has the facilities of 20th Century-Fox Studio behind him so he can incorporate expensive scenes from old movies into his shows to give them the illusion of grandeur and bigness.
Although the original intent of the show was to travel Darren and his pal, Robert Colbert, both backward and forward in space, so far the show has spent most of its time going back.
The initial episode, a flossy $1,000,000 production, has Darren and Colbert aboard the Titanic. They and the viewers knew what was to happen, but, in keeping with the show's policy, they were powerless to change history. The ship sank.
The following week they were in 1978 and the first U. S.-manned flight to Mars.
Since then, they've been to New Orleans for the 1815 battle in which the misdirected British were sacrificed before Gen. Andrew Jackson's lines; to the East Indian island of Krakatoa for its violent volcanic eruption in 1883, in ancient Troy to see Ulysses's Trojan Horse scheme; in the American West in 1876 to see arrogant Gen. George Custer lead his men to slaughter, and at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 6 and 7, 1941.
• • •
IN EVERY STORY, they become deeply involved with the prime characters, yet never change history.
In most of the episodes, the production values have been outstanding, although in the Custer episode the Indians were a rather potbellied, motley group.
In the context of what is being offered to youngsters as TV entertainment, Time Tunnel is an outstanding show.

Shull changed his mind before the season was over, almost as if he had been betrayed. The Time Tunnel, he decided, stopped being an “outstanding” show and the writers dumbed it down, narrowing the audience in the process. Smaller audiences mean hesitant potential sponsors, and no sponsors mean no show. There was no tunnel within a few months. This appeared in papers May 13, 1967.

“The System” Breeds Silliness
By RICHARD K. SHULL
NEW YORK — Why does a TV series, which shows promise of good escape entertainment in its early episodes, rapidly deteriorate into silliness? Many adult viewers have asked this question.
Blame it on the system. And for a clear example of how it works, look at Irwin Allen, producer of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space and Time Tunnel. The first two of those shows will continue next fall.
Allen is a modern Janus, with a faculty for presenting one face to the networks and advertisers and another to the TV audience. He is the ultimate product of television's system of buying and selling shows.
Take a look at his three series and see what happened.
In the beginning, Allen had Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, a tale of a futuristic research submarine and espionage by foreign agents bent on learning its secrets.
That was the story idea Allen sold to ABC network, and which appealed to the sponsors. But once the show got on the air, Allen began to modify.
To be successful with an early show, Allen knew he had to appeal to that 14 per cent of the audience between the ages of 6 and 11 years.
Youngsters don't especially dig spy stories and romantic sub-plots. Kids do like monsters, almost any kind of monsters.
• • •
SO Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea got rid of the spies and girls, and settled down to the serious business of hairy globs and chrome-plated galaxy men. The kiddies watch, the ratings are sustained, and the network keeps renewing it.
As the star of the series, Richard Basehart, once was given to comment, "It ain't Hamlet, but . . ." And recently David Hedison, the co-star has asked for more money, since he rarely gets to perform opposite a human anymore.
Lost in Space went much the same way. The original idea concerned futuristic space travel with a foundation in existing fact. This appealed to the adult program buyers.
But on the air, Allen discovered the 6-to-11-year-old TV thought leaders were smitten with the cowardly, deceitful nature of the program's villain-in-residence, Jonathan Harris.
The story ideas were overhauled and now the show comes across weekly with a tale in which two children, who ooze with honesty and integrity, must rescue the sniveling, cavilling adult villain.
The kids love the show because it confirms their suspicions about all adults.
It's almost superfluous to point out that Time Tunnel commenced as a painless history lesson in which two travelers in time, weekly would step into some historical event. This idea appealed to the adults who purchased the show for TV.
But again, there was the kiddie element. The little people who make the big ratings took over. When last seen, Time Tunnel had British General Chinese Gordon fighting for his life at Khartoum while futuristic alien beings with their brains outside their skulls were preparing to take over the earth.
So it goes in the world of Irwin Allen, who has mastered the art of selling two shows under the title—one to the networks and sponsors and another to his audience.

Sandwiched in between these columns was one by UPI Hollywood Reporter Vernon Scott. We’ve republished a number of his columns here; Scott used to do a minute-long feature on the UPI radio network, too. Generally, he seemed fairly upbeat and friendly, but he just loathed The Time Tunnel. It became a symbol for him.

This is from January 29, 1967.

Sorry Plight of Time Tunnel
By VERNON SCOTT
UP-International Writer
HOLLYWOOD — Anyone measuring the worth of a television show should first weigh its merits, if any, on the basis of the audience it is attempting to reach.
Thereafter, it should either entertain, inform, stimulate or evoke a combination of these reactions.
Clearly, most television shows this season have failed on all counts. But again, who are the producers trying to reach? The question is not easily answered.
Captain Kangaroo is perfect for his audience. Batman is fine for his. And presumably Bonanza has stolen into the maudlin hearts of viewers from 16 to infinity.
But what of a series such as The Time Tunnel which airs on Channel 34 every Fri-day evening? Who in the world is ABC trying to reach with this nugget? What does producer Irwin Allen have in mind? Tots are in bed by that time. Teenagers are too hep or out on dates. And any adult who watches it has got to be suspect.
• • •
IN THE BEGINNING the show might have been based on a good idea—perhaps H.G. Wells’ “Time Machine.” The premise was to have two handsome young scientists flown backwards and forwards into time from week to week involved in historic events over which they have no control.
But the idea is too costly for execution, for one thing. If you are going to put a couple of guys back in early Rome or in the War of the Roses you'd better have the money to make it look authentic. On this show it never does.
The concept is handled clumsily, the acting poor, the scripts unbelievably bad.
Recently it wasn't enough that the heroes (James Darren and Robert Colbert) found themselves in an Italian' nobleman's villa during World War 1 where they are badgered by the Kaiser's troops and — get this — the ghost of Nero. A spoof you ask? No. A bit of satire perhaps? No. It was pure tedium.
• • •
A MATURE MIND must ask itself why on earth this particular hour-long episode was filmed and aired, and for whom it was intended.
At best it was comic book nonsense for adolescents. But it cannot be written off so lightly. In reality it is typical of the affrontery of television executives determining what the public is offered for viewing.
But this isn’t to single out the Time Tunnel. It is no better nor much worse than the common fare American viewers have been slapped in the face with for too many years to come.
The great misfortune is that good television, not to say great television, is so rare that one is forced to leave the set turned off most nights of the week. There are Time Tunnels of one kind or another on the air almost every hour of prime time.
It is pitiful that a great and powerful medium, indeed America's mass medium, cannot or will not do better.

Irwin Allen went on to greater, big screen achievements, like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno (the latter lovingly spoofed on SCTV). Bissell won a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. Zaremba and his serious mien made a good living in TV CommerciaLand, hunting for beans to put in Hills Brothers coffee. The Time Tunnel became scrap metal.

ABC went on next season to bring viewers a series about General George Armstrong Custer without a visit from time travellers. At least Bissell, Zaremba, Colbert, Darren and Lee Meriwether never dealt with that kind of ratings massacre.

Larry Storch

How far did Larry Storch, who died today six months before his 100th birthday, go back?

He hosted a show on the Du Mont network. Du Mont hasn’t been around for 65 years.

He appeared on the Fred Allen radio show. The show hasn’t been around since 1949.

He made a guest appearance on Duffy’s Tavern. That was in 1946.

In the ‘40s, Storch was a hit in nightclubs. He did imitations. It’s believed people started saying “Judy, Judy, Judy” when doing impressions of Cary Grant because Storch did it in his act (Grant never said the line).

His biggest TV break came in the early ‘50s when he replaced Jackie Gleason for a summer. But it didn’t lead to very much work in television, so he did films and clubs until 1965 rolled around and he was offered a co-starring role on F Troop. While the series aired, he found work voicing cartoon characters at Warner Bros. and then Filmation; Total TV got him to do his fine Frank Morgan impersonation as Mr. Whoopee on Tennessee Tuxedo before this.

But I think people pretty much know him as Corporal Agarn.

When the show aired, columnists wanted to talk to Forrest Tucker. He was the big name on the series. But we’ve found an interview with Storch that touches little on the show, but more on his life at the time. This is from December 28, 1965.

Actor Buys House, Gets $10,000 Off by Taking Cat
By VERNON SCOTT
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) -Larry Storch, the corporal with the low brow and lower boiling point on television's new "F Troop" series, saved $10,000 on his new home by agreeing to keep a cat that went with the place.
"It's true," Storch says.
"My wife and I fell in love with this big, rambling Ponderosa type house up in Nichols Canyon. It was very expensive, but the owner said he'd knock ten grand off the price if we let his cat live there.
"So we bought the place and we still have the cat. His name is Charlie, and pound for pound he lives better than I do."
Company For Cat
Charlie is visited now and again by his former master, an invasion which Storch accepts with a shrug. Charlie also has companion, a Siamese recently purchased by the Storches.
"The new cat's name is Pablo, and he and Charlie get along like brothers. But only after Charlie beat him up."
Larry and his wife, Norma Booth, an AAU swimming champion of the 1940s, have been married four years. But they were engaged for 15 years.
Storch explains: "We wanted to make sure it wasn't puppy love. She proposed to me one day, and I said, 'Okay, let's shake on it.'"
They have an adopted daughter, June, 11.
The Storch home has two bedrooms, two baths, two fire places, a steam room, sauna bath and swimming pool. It si ts high atop a peak in the Santa Monica Mountains overlooking Los Angeles and Hollywood.
One-Car Family
Larry is that rare television star who owns but a single automobile, a flashy sports model. He's up by 6:30 every morning for a cup of tea with Norma. She drives him to work at Warner Bros, for the ABC-TV series and picks him up in the evening.
A successful night club comedian before turning to television, Storch had made his headquarters in New York. He moved to Hollywood three years ago, buying the house (and Charlie) little more than year ago.
"My astrologer said all my vibrations were coming from the west," he says. "And he was right. I'm crazy about life in California. It's the most gracious way of living in the world. Everyone seems to get along better, especially when I think of the mad dogs in New York."
Storch is an introspective man who examines the success of "F Troop" with combined suspicion and relief. After trooping around the country for so many years he can hardly believe his good fortune.
Because Norma still keeps in shape swimming in their pool, Larry has taken up the sport and is anxious to try his skill at SCUBA diving.
Reclusive Comedian
Socially he is almost a recluse. He has hundreds of hi-fi records which he enjoys listening to by the hour. When nobody's listening he joins the recording by honking away on a saxophone which he plays badly.
The Storch family entertains informally when friends stop by for a swim and pot luck. Most of his friends are in show biz and include co-stars Forrest Tucker, Ken Berry and such long-time buddies as Jerry Lester and Buddy Hackett.
"I'm no gourmet," Storch says, "but I enjoy Norma's cooking. She's the most daring cook in the world. I bought her a book on Japanese dishes, and by golly she became an expert at it."
At home Storch can be found stumbling around in blue jeans, T-shirts and bare-footed.
"It's all part of living comfortably," he explains.



How often do actors follow up a success with a real bomb? Larry Storch was one.

He was hired as a co-star on a show that had smatterings of Bilko. Storch appeared opposite Billy De Wolfe in a mid-season replacement called The Queen and I, the ironic title of which could not have been lost on some in Hollywood, including De Wolfe. The story is from January 12, 1969. I don’t recall Pat Morita being on McHale’s Navy.

Sailing With Storch in a New Comedy
By CHARLES WITBECK
HOLLYWOOD — Life below deck comes to the tube in "The Queen and I," a new half-hour comedy Thursday nights on CBS at 7:30 p.m. beginning January 16, with purser Larry Storch, a con man with a thin veneer of class, conspiring against Billy De Wolfe's First Officer Nelson, representing the Establishment, law and order aboard a 25,000-ton cruise ship, the M.S. Queen.
Instead of playing cavalry corporal in the slapstick "F Troop," Larry Storch, remains in dark blue, shifting his base of operations to hustling on the high seas. He books bingo parties on the ship, catered dinners, anything to keep the old girl in business. In one script purser Duffy runs a no-cruise for a passenger who is never allowed on deck, an assignment requiring the aid of a crafty crew. Duffy and his men would even sell the liner if the price was right.
Keeping Duffy in line is the job of First Officer Oliver W. Nelson, the man who really believes he should be running the ship, a spit and polish carper who barks "Don't ever touch an officer" when the purser puts a hand on his shoulder. The role compares to Billy De Wolfe's previous job as a radio station manager on "Good Morning World," only De Wolfe now has the whole crew to boss. Originally, Billy was cast as the Captain, but shifted because the boss would have to be too polite.
"The Queen and I" pilot began filming in early fall under the Bing Crosby, label, created by Howard Leeds and handled by "Hogan's Heroes" head man, Ed Feldman, with the idea of a September '69 slot. Network buyers asked to see the pilot before it was completed. Star Storch fell ill during the filming so network all he had, which was enough to warrant a go-ahead for five episodes and a January starting time.
Feldman continues to run "Hogan's Heroes" and the ship comedy, besides directing the first few episodes, calling on "Hogan" writers like Arthur Julian and Lawrence Marks for broad, slapstick scripts. The only cruise Feldman ever took occurred in World War II on the government, but he can rely on Marks, who wrote a book called "Always Go First Class", and is noted for a yearly ocean voyage. Arthur Julian relates closely to star Larry Storch, writing some of the wildest "F Troop" shows, so time won't be lost in workers getting to know each other.
In the midst of filming show number one after the pilot, an episode examining the question of computers replacing members, director Feldman gave me a shipboard tour on Paramount's stage 16, through galleys, captain's quarters, the bridge and out onto realistic wooden decks surrounded by properly stained aged bulwarks. We stood before the wheel and the navigational gismos, looking out on a painted sky blue background, and Feldman said proudly, "We even rock a little on the show," It's imperceptible, hardly enough to make viewers squeamish."
Their Feldman went back to business filming purser Duffy in pajamas and a bright red bath robe, being served dinner by chef Barney (Pat Morita) and Becker (Carl Ballantine) holdovers from "McHale's Navy." Duffy was served a vintage wine amid plans to destroy First Officer Nelson, and he handled the stuff like a connoisseur.
"I don't want to come off too polished a character," Storch announced between takes.
Describing his character a minute later, Storch, on the lookout for divebombing stage bees, said the purser was real fira steak and ketchup man who learned French from the back of a wine bottle: "Duffy has this veneer picked up on cruises. He goes from champagne to beer, and he's glib, using corny lines to old women like 'Haven't I seen you in movies'."
"F Troop" fans shouldn't be disappointed in Storch's con man, and they'll hear all the Storch dialects and listen to his saxophone right off the bat. Even magician Carl Ballantine slips in card tricks to amuse passengers in a series that won't contain quite the slapstick of the Marx Brothers in their famous shipboard compartment scene, but Feldman promises plenty of broad comedy, and has the horses for the job.

That write-up is more than the series deserved. But Storch deserves recognition, as he could count his professional days back 80 years to the Rainbow Room in Asbury Park and Loew's State in New York. And, in a way, to the days just after the Civil War in a place called Fort Courage.

The Not-All New Groucho For 1961

Your long-running TV show is going off the air. What do you do?

If you’re Groucho Marx, you do just you did on television. You insult people.

You Bet Your Life finished a long run in 1961. Groucho had some spare time. In an interview with United Press International, he explains what was on his mind for the future. And he didn’t have good news for his fellow comedians.

This appeared in papers on February 9, 1961.

Groucho Folds Hit Show for New One
By VERNON SCOTT
UPI Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (UPI)—Groucho Marx announced today he is folding his popular "You Bet Your Life” television show after 12 dazzlingly successful years.
The deadpan comedian isn’t leaving video, however. He’s cranking up a new quiz-interview series titled "What Do You Want?” which is scheduled to replace "You Bet Your Life” next fall.
How does Groucho feel about killing off the longest-running show in NBC history?

“I don’t feel anything,” he said, puffing on a cigar.
“TV is a good racket. The show paid well and wasn’t too much work. It’s been darn good to me. When we started on radio I had no idea it would last 14 years.”
It was rumored the mustascheoed comedian would switch to situation comedy next season.
“Not me,” he exclaimed. “That means working five days a week in some drab studio. On my show I only work a few hours one day a week. Every Wednesday night I show up at the studio at 6 o’clock to discuss the contestants. Then I go out to dinner and return at 8:30 to film the show until 10:30.
“I don’t want to work any harder than that. I don’t have to.”
Groucho again will lean heavily on humor in his new show.
“We’ll have all different kinds of people on the program who have a good answer to ‘What do you want?’ ” he said.
“Maybe we’ll have a gambler who wants to expose card sharks, or a husband, or a mother searching for a missing son.
“But I’ll have to be funny. When viewers tune in to see a comedian they feel cheated if he doesn’t make them laugh.
“In fact that’s the trouble with TV today, there’s hardly any comedy left on the air except for a few Westerns. I have to stay up late to see who’s on Jack Paar’s show if I want to see comedy.
“And situation comedies aren’t funny at all. They’re all right for kids, but they just aren’t funny. They can’t be because sponsors are afraid of offending someone. And I can’t blame them, maybe. Maybe I'd feel the same way if I were trying to sell a product on TV.
“One of the reasons these new comedy records are selling so well is that people can't find laughs on television. It's just not a comedian's medium.
“In the days of vaudeville a comic would walk on stage and say anything he pleased without worrying about offending anyone. We'll be as funny as possible on the new show and at the same time try not to step on anyone's toes.”

Groucho appeared in something different for him the same year. This appeared in papers on October 26, 1961.

Groucho Plays It Straight
By VERNON SCOTT
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 24 (UPI)—"I always thought acting was a racket and now I'm sure of it," Groucho Marx said today.
The caustic Marx brother came to this conclusion after completing the first straight dramatic role in his long (40 years) career in show business.
"I deliberately looked for a serious acting role to prove one of my own theories," he explained.
"My thought has always been that there are thousands and thousands of good straight actors and only 50 good comedians. When I say 50 I'm being generous. Actually there are many fewer than 50 good comics around."
Groucho turned to serious acting by degrees. He will be seen first as a narrator of a Dupont Show-of-the-Week for NBC Nov. 22 in which he is heard more than seen.
In a segment of the "GE Theater" he essays the role of a strict father who refuses to grant his daughter permission to marry.
"Acting is easy compared to comedy," he said.
"In a drama you aren't being tested on every line. You can talk for 15 minutes with no reaction from the audience and nobody gets critical. But a comedian has to get a laugh every 40 seconds or he's in trouble. "
I've come to a point in life where I can afford to gamble with my career. I don't have to worry about money anymore. From here on the things I do will be for fun."
Groucho's TV show left the air after 14 years of rampaging success. He refuses to accept situation comedy series offered him.
"I'm too old for that," he said.
"Now I watch reruns of the show, but I don't get any fun out of it. The real enjoyment was in doing the programs before a live audience.
"Norman Krasna and I wrote a play, 'Time for Elizabeth,' and I'd like to do it as a movie. Broadway doesn't interest me after all these years.
"But no matter what happens I'm not going to sit around doing nothing. And I won't retire, if nothing else works out I may take a job as a writer in one of the studios.
"So far I haven't missed the activity of a weekly TV show, but I imagine I'll be getting restless before long.
"Right now I'm busy writing another book. I like the title—'Confessions of a Mangy Lover.' I'm not saying if it is autobiographical."

Durante

He moved to Hollywood in 1932 but Jimmy Durante never lost that 1920s New York speakeasy entertainer atmosphere about him, even four decades later.

His act was old-fashioned hokum when radio made his career explode again, but audiences loved it. They were taken in by Durante’s sincere enthusiasm for the old numbers and corny jokes. He was impossible to dislike.

In the late ’50s, United Press International put out on the newswire a three-part series on Durante. As is usual in show biz, with happiness comes sadness, too. You can read that in this first part that began appearing in papers on November 5, 1959. I’ll try to get to the other two parts in future posts.

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF JIMMY DURANTE
Comedian Soft Touch
By VERNON SCOTT
UPI Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD – The curtain goes up, the ricky-ticky music blares out, “Who Will Be With You When You're Far Away?” and a ramshackle old man struts jauntily on stage.
The music fades away. "I'm walking into de theater mindin' my own business when dis man comes up and sez, 'I reconize the face, but the nose ain't familiar.' So I ups to him and he ups to me and I sez, 'Any friend of mine, is also a friend of thuh nose.' "
Cackling merrily, the bald little guy breaks into a dance. He pounds the piano. He sings off-key. He spouts another joke in a voice that cracks plaster. He's Jimmy Durante, 66 years old.
A secretive man who baffles even hit closest associates, the old Schnozzola is beloved but not well-known in Hollywood. Fifty years in show business has not separated fact from fiction, and Durante does everything possible to confuse legend with reality.
Example: Jimmy has lived in the same Beverly Hills house for 20 years. His friends insist the Schnozz never has been in the swimming pool. They say it's typical of Durante's eccentricities. But Jimmy swears he goes for a dip every morning.
"Sure I do," he said hoarsely. "Why else have I got a pool?"
His compatriots merely lift their eyebrows in resignation.
The softest touch in the warm-hearted society of entertainers, Durante denies his charities and good works, perhaps to minimize future handouts, but it is known he gives away some $15,000 a year to organized charities and an equal amount to down-on-their-luck buddies. This may not sound like a lot of money for a big star, but Jimmy is not as wealthy as his Beverly Hills Neighbors.
"Aw," he says of his generosity, "I don't like discussin' them things."
Pressed on the subject, Jimmy smoothed down a fragile wisp of hair atop his head. "Well, lem-me see. There's the Jewish Home for the Aged, the Thalians (mentally retarded children), the Lighthouse for the Blind in New York and the Catholic Church among others. But please don't talk about it no more."
Durante's perverse nature crops up whenever his passion for horse races is mentioned. He vows his bets are small and infrequent, and made only at the track.
But I’ve seen him in action during many a TV rehearsal when he spends as much time with the racing form as he does with the script. Jimmy’s sidekick and friend of 42 years, Eddie Jackson, shuttled between Durante and the telephone placing bets. On one occasion Jimmy was astonished to find he’d bet on every horse in a single race.
Yet he will tell you he’s not a real horse player.
“I don’t know how to gamble—and I never won on the horses during a season in my life.”
Then why is he the inveterate plunger?
“I like to see ‘em run,” he grinned sheepishly.
Purposefully or not, Jimmy Durante will twist and sidetrack a conversation so skilfully most people are unaware he is escaping painful subjects. And there have been many painful episodes in the comedian’s life.
His cheerful, raucous on-stage personality gives way to thoughtful reflection when Jimmy is alone. He speaks and thinks about the past a great deal, but not regretfully. He enjoys the nostalgia, re-living the good old days when Clayton, Jackson and Durante were the toast of New York.
Durante's life has been a series of professional and emotional ups of and downs. He's seen good times and bad in night clubs, movies, radio and television The death of his wife, the passing of his partner Lou Clayton, a disastrous love affair in his youth and other tragedies played an important role in shaping Jimmy's way of life.
Jimmy is fiercely loyal to his troupe of seven regulars who surround him on his night club and TV skirmishes.
"I gotta keep 'em workin'," he explained, before enumerating his tight little band. "My drummer, Jack Roth, has been with me 41 years. Eddie Jackson (with whom he squabbled last year) and I been together 42 years, and Jules Buffano, my piano player, has been around 17 years.
“Then there's Louis Cohen, he attended lots of things, and he's been working for me for 40 years. Lemme see. I think it's 24 years Bill Stocker has been driving me around and taking care of me. My press agent Joe Bleeden, has been with me nine years. Sonny King, my new singer, is a two-year man. They're all my boys."
The "boys" make the big-beaked word-mangler's home their own. They drop by at all hours of the day and night to keep the boss happy.
It's a surprisingly democratic clan, in contrast with the sycophants who generally congregate around a star. His pals adjust themselves to Jimmy's schedule which keeps them up until 5 and 6 in the morning hashing over the "good old days."

Canada's Glamorous Ghoul

She played opposite Clark Gable and a host of dramatic stars on the big screen for more than two decades. But you know her for being married to Herman Munster.

On this Canada Day, let’s look at the most famous role of one of Vancouver’s exports to Hollywood—Peggy Middleton. Or, as we all know her today, Yvonne De Carlo.

It is hard to believe The Munsters ran for only two seasons. Its ratings in the first season were so powerful that ABC moved The Flintstones out of the same time slot to give it a chance at renewal. But Herman, Lily et al died after one more year on CBS, and a for-fans-only movie called Munster, Go Home! However, the 70 episodes made were enough to offer it to stations in syndication, and it did a roaring business for years, especially in the after-school time slots.

De Carlo was known as a movie actress with sensuality, so perhaps that's why reporters focused on her wardrobe and make-up when she was cast as Lily Munster. She talked about it with the National Enterprise Association’s Hollywood writer in this story that appeared in newspapers starting June 18, 1964.

Yvonne DeCarlo To Be in New Fall Series as Spook
By EKSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD — Television fans who remember Yvonne de Carlo from her movie glamor girl days will be blinking this fall at the sight of gorgeous Yvonne as a spook in a fright wig. What's more — and for added eyebrow lifting — she says she's Miss Delighted about switching from girl to ghoul.
But this is to report that Yvonne herself is doing a bit of eye blinking about her vampire role as the wife of a Frankenstein-like monster in The Munsters, a new CBS-TV series.
The series is described—are you ready for this?—as "a domestic comedy featuring a family of loveable monsters."
The "loveable monsters" include Yvonne with floor-length wig; hubby Fred Gwynne who looks like the monster; their 8-year-old son, with pointed ears, and grandpa, who imagines he is Dracula.
The Munsters, we are to believe, are monsters in appearances only. Otherwise they are nice, normal people.
That's why even Yvonne is blinking. She has been blinking since she was briefed on her role by the show's creators, Bob Mosher and Joe Connelly.
"They told me," Yvonne reported, "that except for my apperance I should play the part as sweet as Donna Reed plays her TV character. Can you imagine that?"
Whether audiences can or will imagine all this about a family of spooks is the problem. Yvonne says she is not counting on anything.
"I think," she said, "that the first few shows will tell the story. It's either going to be a big hit, like the Beverly Hillbillies, or the season's biggest and quickest flop."
The Hillbillies, obviously, started a trend toward off-beat family comedy on television. And the sale to another network of TV rights to the famed Charles Addams cartoon characters cued "The Munsters."
As rival ghouls to ABC-TV's The Addams Family, The Munsters will have, says Yvonne, the legal protection of Revue Productions. Revue inherited from the old Universal studio TV rights to the images of the Frankenstein monster, Bela Lugosi's Dracula and the Wolf Man.
"And even the Wolf Man," Yvonne giggled, "turns up in the series as my ex-boy friend. Can you imagine that?"
As satire on old movie monsters as well as on contemporary TV domestic comedy. The Munsters will not be bothered, at least, by nice neighbors next door. "Our neighbors." Yvonne reported, "are scared to death of us."

De Carlo discussed make-up, and little else about the show, in a United Press International interview shortly after the start of the second season. We learn a bit more about her home life instead. This appeared in papers starting October 10, 1965.

"Mrs. Munster" Takes Two Hours for Makeup
By VERNON SCOTT
Hollywood (UPI) — Yvonne DeCarlo devotes two hours every morning acquiring a case of the uglies for her role as the funeral Lily of "The Munsters" series. In a reversal of the traditional actress attitude, Yvonne is pleased when she looks her worst for the cameras.
Even so, she is still beautiful to her family—husband Bob Morgan and sons Bruce, 8, and Michael, 7.
On a normal workday Yvonne leaves home every morning at 5:45 to allow the makeup artists the two hours it takes to apply greenish makeup, Theda Bara eyes and the weird hairdo fancied by Lily Munster. Another 45 minutes is devoted to removing the greasepaint at the end of the day.
By 7 p. m. Yvonne jumps into a new auto, which she is equipping with coffin-handle baggage rack, for the 15 minute drive up the hills from Universal studios to her home on the outskirts of Beverly Hills.
Home is a baronial house set on six and a half acres of Santa Monica mountaintop with four patios, a 60-foot-long free-form swimming pool (with 20-foot waterfall) and horse stables.
As Yvonne puts it, there are five bedrooms in use, not including a large guest apartment in what would be a basement in eastern homes. There's also a spacious rathskeller which holds Bob's desk and a piano for rehearsal accompaniment for Yvonne's night club act.
Upstairs Yvonne is gradually redecorating the house in which she has lived since 1950. She bought the place some five years before she met and married Morgan.
At the moment she is completing the living room, which is furnished in elegant dark walnut, offset by vinyl walls. The color scheme is pale green with touches of a avacado. Her bedroom has been redone in ivory and gold.
The Morgan family suffered a tragedy three years ago when Bob, a stunt man, was almost fatally injured filming of "How The West Was Won."
He was thrown beneath the wheels of a runaway train. Yvonne gave up all her activities to nurse her husband back to health. Morgan recovered after almost a year of hospitalization, during which one of his legs was amputated.
He now works as an actor and has returned to playing golf—shooting in the 70's. But the stables on their property are now empty.
A Mexican woman comes in twice a week to do the cleaning, and an aunt lives with the Morgans to look after the youngsters while mother and father are working. Yvonne, however, does most of the cooking. She says her New England boiled dinner and several Italian dishes are family favorites.
The Morgans entertain infrequently because of Yvonne's heavy workload. On weekends the family lazes around the swimming pool.
There is a station wagon for trips to the snow during the winter and for hiking and fishing in the Sierras in summertime. Bob drives a new sports car. Bruce and Michael romp around the acreage with a pair of apricot-colored standard poodles named Spunky and Igor.
When Yvonne has a long weekend she frequently moves into the Disneyland Hotel with her sons, spending the days at Walt Disney's magic kingdom and relaxing in the evening around the swimming pool.
"I try to spend as much time as possible with the boys when I get a breather from the show," she explains.
"It isn't necessary for me to appear in night clubs now that "The Munsters" is a hit. But I do make personal appearances once in a while to help plug the series."
Yvonne is almost unrecognizable without her Munster makeup, happily returning to her own glamorous appearance.
"I guess I lead a double life," she concludes. "And I must admit I'm happy with both."

De Carlo’s career after Lily took her to the stage across the U.S. She appeared on Broadway in the Tony-winning Follies. She also returned to a former place of employment in Vancouver in 1987 to mark the 60th anniversary of the Orpheum Theatre. It still stands. So do the hospital she was born in and the church she attended. One is a block south from where I am writing this post. The other is a block north.

De Carlo had a stroke in 1998 and died at the Motion Picture home at the age of 84 in 2007.

Happy He's Murray

Television would have been quite different if CBS’ “A Man on the Beach” had become a hit series in 1958.

It starred people who went on to TV fame after “Beach” failed—Max Baer and Gavin MacLeod.

MacLeod’s real breakout role was on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” He had a series before that. He appeared as Happy at the outset of “McHale’s Navy” before walking away for a movie role. He wasn’t missed. The cast was far too big and the comedy antics were soon given to Joe Flynn and Tim Conway, not MacLeod and the rest of Quinton McHale’s ragtag Bilko wannabes.

Occasionally he got focused in what were likely handouts from the network to fill entertainment columns. One mentioned how Carl Ballantine ad-libbed with a pair of scissors and removed what little of MacLeod’s hair he had left. Another called him the show’s good-luck charm because every time he announced his wife was expecting, the ratings went up or the show got renewed.

MacLeod was kind of “the other guy” when he was cast as writer Murray Slaughter on “Mary Tyler Moore.” Ed Asner and Ted Knight got meatier newsroom characters to play. UPI columnist Vernon Scott seems a little challenged to find something interesting about MacLeod himself in this wire story of February 20, 1971; the earliest national attention I can find that MacLeod received.

McLeod Likes To Write And Paint
By VERNON SCOTT
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) – Gavin MacLeod, the harried news writer on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," is an unharried family man who writes plays, not news, in his spare time.
A native of Mount Kisco, N.Y., MacLeod is married to Joan Roovik.
She was a Rockette and he an usher at the famed Radio City Music Hall when they met at a church communion breakfast.
They were a steady twosome for a couple of years before they married and moved to California.
Their children are Keith, 10; David, 9; Julia, 8; and Meghan, 6.
Thanks to the children, the family also includes a St. Bernard named Gillian of Moose Lake; three eats, Georgie Boy, Sam and Owl, and two nameless lizards.
Fortunately for their neighbors, the MacLeods live on a half acre of San Fernando valley real estate in the foothills of Santa Monica mountains. Gavin has his eye on a larger home and grounds where the family can keep a horse and own a swimming pool.
Their current house has three bedrooms—which means two daughters and two sons in each of the kids’ rooms—and is decorated in the popular French Country style. MacLeod is a collector of abstract and impressionistic oil paintings by young California artists.
He dabbles in art himself. And it is not uncommon to see all the family on a weekend painting canvases or sculpting in clay. MacLeod says it is an excellent way to communicate with his off- springs.
He works on the CBS show five days a week, usually arriving at the studio at 9:30 a.m. after a 45-minute freeway ride.
Almost invariably he is home for dinner. Unlike many a husband who boasts of his wife's dexterity in the kitchen, MacLeod says Joan is a good cook when she wants to be. Translation: when there is company.
The MacLeods don't entertain often, but when they do, Joan can cook up a stuffed cornish game hen with the best of them.
Sunday morning is a special delight for the younger MacLeods. Old Dad struggles out of bed and prepares breakfast for the entire family.
His specialty is making hotcakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, snowmen and other figures. Little Meg is especially delighted with her father's talent for fancy pancakes.
Actor MacLeod has worked in 18 movies, including “Kelly’s Heroes,” and has appeared in 250 television shows. At the moment he would like to see “The Mary Tyler Moore” show run for the next decade or so.

In the early years, the show’s writers would make him the centre of plots on occasion, though one episode about Murray driving a cab was pretty much stolen by Joyce Bulifant as Murray’s wife. Time took care of things as the characters became more three-dimensional as the seasons chugged along.

This syndicated story appeared in papers around July 15, 1972:

Gavin Likes Nice Role
By DICK KLEINER
Hollywood (NEA)—GAVIN MacLEOD is a member of what is probably television's finest comedic ensemble company, The Mary Tyler Moore Show on CBS. This is a fairly big surprise to MacLeod, because of some years he was typed as depraved.
As Murray Slaughter, Mary's newsroom pal, MacLeod is certainly one of the good guys. And he likes being a good guy. It has helped his home life and it is giving him a pleasant public image.
"For years," MacLeod says, "I always played the depraved, the vile, the awful. And, really, it affected my home life. I remember once, I was in 'The Connection,' and I'd come home and I'd use vile language around the house. Fortunately, we only had one child at the time and he was just a baby."
HE SAYS he hasn't any idea how the men who put The Mary Tyler Moore Show came to think of him as a good guy. He knows they saw him in an episode of Hawaii Five-0 playing a depraved, vile, awful drug pusher—and they asked him to come in and read.
“I don’t know how it happened,” he says, “But I love being nice. And the public thinks I’m nice because Mary likes me on the show. People stop me after church and in supermarkets and it’s always, ‘Hi, Murray,’ with a big smile. It’s a great feeling.”
Now that he's discovered the joys of being a good guy, he wants to do more of the same. At the moment, he’s studying singing. He wants to do stage musicals. And he and his wife, Joan, who was a Radio City Music Hall Rockette when they met, want to start their own small stage theater, perhaps somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.
MacLeod is from Pleasantville, N.Y., which is the home address of The Reader's Digest. His father died when he was 13 and from then on he's always worked. His first job was as a waiter—"I was the youngest waiter in Pleasantville"—and on his first day he spilled soup on a customer. But he decided he’d rather act than spill soup, so he worked hard and won a scholarship in drama to Ithaca College in upstate New York. That’s where he learned to act—and get his first taste of being depraved.

MacLeod got fired from the WJM newsroom in 1977 and immediately boarded “The Love Boat” for a long and lucrative voyage. It never aspired to be anything other than cheesy fun and it made MacLeod even more popular with an aging TV audience.

His TV career was bookended with boats, but he was at his finest with an ensemble cast that’s lauded by many as among the best ever on the small screen.

McLean's Failures

After a while, you had to feel sorry for McLean Stevenson.

He left a top-rated show because he wanted to be a star. And viewers quickly rejected his attempts. Three of them. He became the butt of jokes. The jokes became the butt of jokes (on SCTV’s “The William B. Williams Show).

Television is such a crap shoot. Being popular doesn’t mean you’ll have a successful series because so many things are involved, including writing and cast chemistry. A good time slot and promotion from the network help.

Stevenson knew his first show was doomed. Here he is in a wire service story, January 2, 1977.

Will Mac Finally Make It?
By Vernon Scott
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — McLean Stevenson, who looks and suffers like the guy next door, doesn't work at this illusion. He is, indeed, the prototype of the average schnook.
At least that's how Mac sees himself.
Mac is back with his own half-hour series playing much the same character he did for two years on Doris Day's sitcom and for three years in "M*A*S*H"—the nice guy beset by problems with which he can almost cope.
Stevenson himself regularly faces almost insurmountable confrontations.
JUST getting "The McLean Stevenson Show" on the air was enough to give most actors a terminal case of the bends.
It started with deceptive simplicity. After two years of Doris Day and a like sentence in "M*A*S*H," Mac wearied of ensemble acting in situation comedy.
He was prevailed upon to devote another year to "M*A*S*H" while NBC waited in the wings with a pair of hot producers ready to role [sic] an exciting variety show.
"Before we could get the variety show going, the producers split up and NBC dropped the project," said Mac during a rehearsal break at the network. His basset-like face mirrored a long acquiescence to the fickleness of fortune. "I was left out in the cold.
"But NBC still wanted me. They signed me to a one-year contract. I did a variety special which might have worked into a weekly series. But it didn't pan out."
THE SHOW, in fact, was panned on all sides. Mac unconsciously gave a perfect imitation of a man whose undergarments are too tight.
"So I wound up doing guest shots. I made a nice weekly income on talk programs and game shows. Last spring they brought this situation comedy to me."
What they brought him was almost a mirror. Stevenson could see himself as Mac Ferguson, a midwestern hardware store owner assailed on all sides by vexations large and small.
In his new series Mac is bedeviled by a snide old mother-in-law, a loving wife, an oversexed teen-age son, a divorced daughter and two grandchildren.
"We shot the first seven episodes," he said. "Then NBC changed program executives. The new guys didn't like one of the actors and replaced him with another.
"THEY scrapped the first seven episodes and started from scratch. Do you know what that does to a cast!
"Still, we weren't too upset. We thought we had plenty of time because we were going on the air in January. Suddenly they told us we had go on Dec. 1.
"We've been working morning, noon and night ever since. The minute we finish a show it's on the air. We're running as fast as we can. Nobody knows when or if we'll ever catch up."
Happily, Stevenson is accustomed to adversity. He invaded the nightclub field last year as the opening act for Glen Campbell at the Las Vegas Hilton.
He was as successful on stage as he had been in his variety special. Mac's not a stand-up comic. He doesn't sing, dance or do card tricks. After a few performances things went so badly he informed the hotel he was quitting.
"BACKSTAGE I said I was packing and leaving immediately," Stevenson recalled. "Then Baron Hilton, president of the Hilton chain, came to my dressing room to ask why I was leaving.
"I spent an hour raving about how I didn't like what I was doing, my act was terrible and that I was quitting. Mr. Hilton asked me one favor to go on stage the next show and repeat exactly what I told him.
"That's what I did. I got laughs you wouldn't believe. I was on for almost an hour. Fortunately, Mr. Hilton taped the performance. I ran it back, patched it up and it became a hit opening act. I quit for different reasons on stage every night. The audience loved it."
Stevenson and Campbell, moreover, drew record breaking crowds.
Mac sees himself as the classic man caught in the middle, a chronic victim of circumstances.
As Lt. Col. Henry Blake in "M*A*S*H," Mac was confounded by the troops. Now as Mac Ferguson, he is at the mercy of a feckless family.
"I chose to play Colonel Blake as Everyman instead of making him a buffoon," Stevenson said. "I'm doing the same thing with Ferguson. He tries to cope.
"The truth is, it doesn't take, much acting on my part. Both Blake and Ferguson are really me."

The show lasted three months. He tried again 1½ TV seasons later in a patented Norman Lear right vs left plot. This wire service story is from September 20, 1978.

Stevenson ready to bounce back
By JERRY BUCK
AP Television Writer
HOLLYWOOD (AP) — Three years after he left "M-A-S-H," it looks as though McLean Stevenson has finally gotten the break he's been looking for.
He stars in the new CBS comedy "In the Beginning," which premieres tonight at 8:30, playing a conservative Catholic priest who finds himself in confrontation with a liberal and liberated nun played by Priscilla Lopez. They're thrown together to run a storefront mission in the inner city.
The series, from Norman Lear's T.A.T. Communications Co., looks good, with the skillful blend of comedy and relevant issues that has been Lear's trademark. It also looks good for Stevenson, a long, lean actor with a facial expression somewhere between inquisitive and puzzled.
After "M-A-S-H," he suffered one disappointment after another. On "M-A-S-H" he was Lt. Col. Henry Blake, the commanding officer of a frontline hospital of medical misfits. He left after the third season, but says he does not regret the decision.
"A long time ago I gave up thoughts of security," he said. "I once worked for an insurance company. They didn't pay you much money but you knew where you'd be at 65.
"In 1961 when I got into show business, I gave up any idea of security and thought of opportunity. I haven't had a year yet when I haven't made more money than the year before. If I'd stayed with 'M-A-S-H,' I wouldn't be making a third of what I'm making here."
He said he enjoyed his creative relationships with the people of "M-A-S-H" and said his complaint was with the studio management then running 20th Century-Fox. "The year we started ‘M-A-S-H’ the sum total of all our salaries was less than what they paid Yul Brynner for 'The King and I,'" he said. "It folded quickly, but 'M-A-S-H' is still running strong."
He signed a contract with NBC for a variety show, but other than a special, nothing came of it. He was left with little to do except appear on the "Tonight" show.
Then NBC excavated an unsuccessful pilot called "The Prime of Life." It was retitled "The McLean Stevenson Show" and it gave new meaning to the word dismal.
"It was 1952 television," he said. "It was 'Ding dong, honey, I'm home.' It was a dated show. It was intended to be a contemporary show dealing with the problems married people in their 40s face. But, hell, the problems of today are the same as the 1940s. It was 'Ozzie and Harriet' again."
When his contract at NBC expired, he took time off to think. He said, "I went to the top of the mountain to re-evaluate what I wanted and what it was all about.
"I had begun to become a personality rather than an actor. I didn't want to do any more junk or things I didn't believe in. I told my agent I just wanted to be an actor. No more package deals. Just a good series. And, I wanted to deal with people with established records who knew instinctively what was best for me." Three days later, Lear asked Stevenson to come in for a talk.
"We talked for 15 minutes. He said he'd just gotten this script and had read the first scene and decided I should play the priest," Stevenson recalled.
CBS bought the series on the basis of a pilot, but a large portion of that was later changed.
"Now you know immediately who we are," Stevenson said. "It was belabored in the pilot. A lot of the religious jokes are gone. Now, instead of jokes about religion we have jokes about the actions of religious people."
"It's a perfect character for me," he added. "I can become him. It doesn't become an acting problem for me."

The show was even more of a failure than the first one. It was cancelled after about a month.

Remember how Bullwinkle J. Moose tried to pull a rabbit out of a hat? “This time for sure!” he’d exclaim. And it didn’t work. Stevenson likely felt that way about series number three. This is from the Los Angeles Times news service, January 25, 1979.

Stevenson's glad about turning in his collar
By HOWARD ROSENBERG
HOLLYWOOD — "I'm glad I'm not playing it any more," said McLean Stevenson about his role as a priest on the defunct CBS series, "in the Beginning."
"That damned collar was killing me."
A comedy about a priest and a nun who run a ghetto street mission, "In the Beginning" was canceled this season after only six episodes, becoming the second Stevenson -starred series to get early defrocking. The first was 1976-77's "The McLean Stevenson Show" on NBC, now only a fitful memory to its star, who insists that two successive cancellations are not a personal rejection by the public or even a mortal blow to his psyche. "Having been a hospital supply salesman and having sold insurance, I was used to that."
Undaunted, Stevenson is now plunging forward with his second series and T.A.T. production of the season, NBC's "Hello, Larry," premierlng Friday.
It's a comedy about a radio talk show host, a single parent rearing two adolescent daughters, a not unfamiliar TV refrain. "It's just a complete flip flop of 'One Day at a Time' (with the same executive producers, Perry Grant and Dick Bensfield)," said Stevenson, "and I am now the Bonnie Franklin of the men's world."
Actors are known for gushing about their projects of the moment, even obvious duds, and Stevenson now admits he "was lying" when he once spoke glowingly of "The McLean Stevenson Show." But he says his stated affection for "Hello, Larry" is genuine, and he does seem to fit comfortably into its premise.
Stevenson himself is a divorced father of a son, 21, and daughter, 8, and radio, after all, is sort of show biz. "This is closer to what I really know about than anything I've ever done," he said.
After the cancellation of "In the Beginning," Stevenson was planning an extended vacation, he said, only to be coaxed into making "Hello, Larry" by T.A.T. president Norman Lear. Insisting money was not his motivation, Stevenson maintains, however, he's being paid the third highest T.A.T. salary ever, behind only Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton, and that his contract guarantees him one director for the entire run of the series, regular hours and no stage mothers on the set. Moreover, he said NBC has promised "Hello, Larry" eight exposures before being pre-empted.
NBC president Fred Silverman "won't pull the chain fast," Stevenson says, emphatically. "If your show has any kind of hope, he'd move you to a new night," But wasn't it Silverman who recently "pulled the chain" on the entire slate of first-season NBC series? Stevenson quickly recovered. "But there weren't any good ones," he added.
It was Silverman, then the CBS programming chief, whose refusal to give up on "MASH" extended the life of a superb series and kept Stevenson employed as Col. Henry Blake, a role he played three seasons before moving on to what he believed would be greener pastures. "I'd been in the business for 14 years and paid my dues."
Stevenson signed a development deal with NBC, where plans for a variety series fell through, but then along came "The McLean Stevenson Show," which he himself ridicules, calling it a cut above "My Three Sons."
On the other hand, "In the Beginning" was simply a well-intentioned series gone awry, Stevenson said. "First of all, it was intended to be a 9:30 show with total emphasis on a street nun and a conservative priest. They (T.A.T.) felt, and I agreed, a nun and priest could get info some of the kind of problems as a Starsky and a Hutch, inside people's heads, where there are problems."
Instead, the series was slotted at family-oriented 8:30 p.m. "and so we had to get a bunch of goony kids in there doing all this stuff and I got to do pratfalls," said Stevenson. "It got very watered down, very sitcomy, and I ended up doing church jokes, because that's all we had left."
Even without a series, Stevenson says he could live comfortably on writing comedy, performing on talk shows and in clubs and collecting residual checks. So no sweat if Silverman does pull the chain on Larry and his daughters.
"Fifteen years from now," he said, "who's gonna care?"

And as Stevenson kept being cancelled, M*A*S*H carried on. He got one more shot at stardom in 1983 with Condo. That’s right. Gone after 13 weeks.

Stevenson died in 1996. At least he could say one thing. He never did After M*A*S*H.