An Interview with Sam Bobrick - Part Two

Kliph Nesteroff: September 1968 - you started writing for the Kraft Music Hall specials. The first one starred Alan King with guests Don Rickles and Sugar Ray Robinson.

Sam Bobrick: They hired us for the summertime and they liked us so much that they kept us. We took over the winter show for a year. They wanted to come back but the show was in New York and we were living in California, so it was too hard. Dwight Hemion and Gary Smith were the producers. 

Very, very nice guys. Dwight Hemion was probably one of the best directors I have ever worked with on television. We did a summer show for them too - the Don Ho show. It was a vacation in Hawaii. I spent six weeks in Hawaii.

Kliph Nesteroff: Danny Simon was also on staff...

Sam Bobrick: Danny was the greatest first draft man. He would write a first draft that was great. But he would doubt himself. He would keep rewriting it. He was working on a play. It was called the Shadow Only Knows. It was about two brothers and one lives in the shadow of the other. It was about him and Doc! He rewrote it so much it eventually became The Convertible Girl and it ended up being about a gentile girl who converts to Judaism!

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs)

Sam Bobrick: How did he get from there to here? Well, he always doubted himself! But he was a wonderful writer. He would work with Marty Ragaway and they were always bickering. But as soon as we heard his typewriter stop we would run in and grab the pages. We knew were going to be great. We were all in New York.

Kliph Nesteroff: One of the guests on one of those Alan King Kraft specials was Buddy Hackett.

Sam Bobrick: He and Alan were friends. You hear terrible stories about him being a very difficult man, but the funniest man. Buddy Hackett was very sensitive. You never knew what he was thinking, but he was always thinking something. We knew he had the temperament and Alan had no temperament at all. Alan King was really a prince to work with. He'd work with the writers, roll up his sleeves and sit there and pound out the show.

We did a show, Ron and I were the producers and writers. We did a sketch where Buddy and Alan, friends in life, how they were when they were children. There was a little kid to play Alan and a really fat kid to play Buddy. That made Buddy mad. He came up to me. He said, "Who's that fat kid!" I knew there was trouble. I said, "What fat kid?" He said, "You don't see a fat kid?" I said, "No." He said, "Oh. Okay." And that was that. He didn't want a fat kid playing him.

Most comics are very, very tortured and they're just a strange group. They are so conflicted and so jealous and so many things, "Why him! Why not me?" I found it very difficult being around comics, especially the ones that didn't make it or couldn't make it or were on the periphery. They were tortured, so tortured. Buddy Hackett was a very tortured man.

Kliph Nesteroff: You wrote Norman Is That You? It has gone down in history as having the most bizarre second life of any Broadway production...

Sam Bobrick: Broadway hated us because we were television writers. There was a snobbery in New York. It's still very cliquish. They tore us apart. We thought we had the biggest hit going. The audiences were roaring - roaring. And opening night we got killed by everyone. They accused us of writing a television show.

Two things happened. It was the first comedy about homosexuals. The premise is a father from Cleveland comes to New York and discovers his son is gay.  The son takes off and the father is stuck with the other gay guy. Today it would be politically incorrect, but at the time it was a funny, funny show. The critics were upset that it was a serious subject and they thought it should be treated seriously. Coming from California, you don't treat it seriously.

It was based on people we knew. The next day the reviews were in the paper and they killed us. There was a story about an axe murderer on the front page. A guy hit a woman in the head with an axe and threw her down a shaft. And then I read our reviews. I thought, "My God, they were nicer to the axe murderer than they were to us." You would have thought we had done the worst thing in the world. You needed the papers in order for a show to succeed in those days. We had a novice producer and he just left us in the lurch. We ended the show. I think it played a week.

Kliph Nesteroff: Twelve shows.

Sam Bobrick: The rights reverted back to us.

Kliph Nesteroff: Despite it closing after twelve shows, George Schlatter bought the film rights immediately.

Sam Bobrick: Yeah, he read the play on an airplane and he bought the film rights. I think Billy Wilder offered us money and when the reviews came out he withdrew it. George read it and bought it. There was a French producer, Arthur something. His wife was going shopping and he didn't want to go along so he went to our play. We closed on Saturday night and he saw it Saturday afternoon. He saw the show and said, "I want this for a movie." Then he found out the rights were sold, so he said, "Well, then I want it as a play in Paris." He put it on in Paris and it ran five years! Then it played all over Europe and about forty different countries. It became a big, big hit.

Kliph Nesteroff: What did you think of the George Schlatter film?

Sam Bobrick: I hated it. Did you ever see it?

Kliph Nesteroff: I did.

Sam Bobrick: Oh my God. We wrote a script - we wrote one script and I guess they rewrote it. I remember when I went to see it at the MGM. I said, "Where did the puppets come from!?"

Kliph Nesteroff: Wayland Flowers and Madame.

Sam Bobrick: And then at the end... it had an ending where the guy becomes straight! I said, 'Oh, shit.' I never watched it again. That movie came out and then I was involved with another disaster called the Last Remake of Beau Geste. Marty Feldman had trouble trying to work out the story. 

He was handled by George Shapiro so I worked with him to work out the story. I didn't do the movie with him. He did it with a friend and he was going to direct it. My mother was in town and I got her tickets for a preview screening. I arranged for my mother to go see the Last Remake of Beau Geste. Now she had already seen the movie of Norman Is That You and never said anything about it. So she came home and I said, "Hi mom, how was it?" She said, "You know, son, maybe movies aren't for you."

I thought that was funny. The movies were rough. I did another one with Gary Coleman and they shot a new ending for it and it looked totally different. People had completely different hairstyles. I was no longer involved with it, but you know, it was just terrible. My movie experiences weren't so terrific, but I liked writing them.

Kliph Nesteroff: Did you work with George Schlatter?

Sam Bobrick: We did, but then the project laid around for seven years. We were hoping it would revert back to us. He did it on videotape or something - they didn't use film. It was a cheap kind of thing. I was working on another show at the time, so I couldn't get involved with it. It was just a disaster, I thought. I hated it.

Kliph Nesteroff: You worked on the Tim Conway Comedy Hour with Ron Clark, Rudy DeLuca....

Sam Bobrick: Rudy Deluca, Barry Levinson and Craig Nelson. They were writers. They were working on a local station. We read some of their material and it was wonderful. We gave them a name. We called them the Third Bananas. They were wonderful. Barry became a famous director and Craig became a famous actor. 

There were only thirteen episodes, but we really had fun doing it. We were doing outrageous sketches. We were doing the kind of sketches on that show that they eventually did on Saturday Night Live. Crazy sketches. Tim played Hitler as a football coach and the costume he wore was Charlie Chaplin's from the Great Dictator. He was the exact size as Charlie Chaplin. We did a sketch with mountain climbers trying to climb a floor. Just outrageous things. CBS wasn't prepared for it and we followed another variety show starring Jim Nabors. We didn't have much of an audience. I know we had a lot of young kids watching it and Tim was wonderful to work with. DeLuca and Levinson would write sketches and were brilliant, brilliant guys.

Kliph Nesteroff: Every show Conway had got canceled quickly and eventually he had vanity license plates that said Thirteen Weeks.

Sam Bobrick: Thirteen Weeks, yeah. Then he did another one about a detective. Ron produced that one. I was in New York rewriting the musical The Wiz, so I didn't do that one. Tim was so talented. He could fall up a flight of stairs.

Kliph Nesteroff: April 1970 you wrote The Bob Goulet Show starring Robert Goulet. Bob Hope was a guest.

Sam Bobrick: Yes, he was. I forgot I even wrote that show. Bob Hope only sang a song. The deal was he didn't want money, but he would do it if Goulet did three appearances on his show. Three for one. The sad thing was Hope was on our show and he was wonderful, but he never ended up hiring Goulet. 

We went to Goulet's house and he was so nice. I think Hope sang a song from Camelot and he was really terrific and he wouldn't go home. After the show he just wanted to hang around. Norman Rosemont was the producer. He was Bob Goulet's manager. Marty Passetta directed. He was from the Smothers Brothers show.

Kliph Nesteroff: You created a sitcom called Love and Cement.

Sam Bobrick: Oh gosh, we never sold it. It was a tenement situation comedy. A guy living in Brooklyn or something. We did a pilot for Paul Lynde. We had to spend some time with him. People loved him from Hollywood Squares. We would go to lunch and people would follow us out like the Pied Piper. They just loved him, but we didn't want to stay with the show. We just did the pilot and left.

Kliph Nesteroff: Paul Lynde played gay without being out - and the premise was that he was the head of a family with wife and kids.

Sam Bobrick: Yeah, well, those days you couldn't do anything. We tried to sell a pilot about a divorced couple and they said no. You had a lot of restrictions whereas now there are none. It's easier to write now because you can say and do anything, but we couldn't do this, couldn't do that. You couldn't show bellybuttons. On the show I Dream of Jeannie they had to cover up her bellybutton.

Kliph Nesteroff: How about Pat Paulsen...

Sam Bobrick: He was a very unassuming and very grateful guy. I knew him and his wife. Pat didn't know how funny he was. He was doing a play of mine once and called me up. It was opening the next night. He said, "Is it funny, Sam? Is it funny?" I said, "No, Pat, it's a drama." He believed me. But when he went on the laughs were tremendous and he called me back and he was mad with me (laughs). 

But he was a good friend. Toward the end it was difficult for him and I would write things for him to help. His manager was one of my best friends - Neil Rosen. He was a writer as well. He had a summer theater and Neil had me direct some plays featuring Paulsen up there. We got to know each other even more so than when we were on the Smothers Brothers. 

He thought funny. Sometimes you're amazed by who is funny and who is not funny. Pat was just funny without knowing he was funny. He did the Ice House and I would go to see him. He was good, he was always good. I think the Smothers met him at the Ice House. Tommy and Dickie - I remember seeing them at the Hollywood Bowl and they were so funny. They were so talented. 

Tommy was kind of in charge of the team. Dickie just enjoyed his life with his race cars. Tommy was the older one, I guess. He took care of it. They were just a great, great team when they were young. I didn't keep up with them when they were older. God, this is fun, Kliph. I'm amazed with what is coming back to me. 

Go Back to Part One with Sam Bobrick

An Interview with Saul Illson - Part One

Kliph Nesteroff: You wrote for every star from Bing Crosby to Jack Benny, Dean Martin to the Smothers Brothers, but your earliest credits were at CBC Television in Canada.

Saul Illson: Yes, I started at the CBC. There was a singer by the name of Denny Vaughn. He was an entertainer. Denny was basically responsible for getting my foot in the door as a writer in Toronto. 

I was twenty years old. I wrote a song called "Haunting Love," which was recorded by Margaret Whiting at Capitol. It wasn't a big success, but it was making a little noise - especially in Canada. 

I was on a late night interview show called Jimmy Tapp. Denny happened to be on the show promoting his new season on CBC. I think that was 1954. I was there and I don't remember what I said, but they performed my song. 

Afterward Denny said, "Gee, I really like that number a lot. You have anything else? What have you done? Who are you?" We started to talk and he said, "Come and meet me tomorrow at the Windsor Hotel in Montreal." I went down and I spoke to him. I sang for him and told him about an idea I had for a musical. After an hour he said, "I think you should come down to Toronto. I'll introduce you to some people." 

And he did. He introduced me to a producer-director by the name of Norman Campbell. I went through the same thing with him. I sang for him. Two hours later he introduced me to the guy who was going to star in the show. "I'd like you to meet Robert Goulet." That's how my career began.

Kliph Nesteroff: You said the televsion host was named Jimmy Tapp?

Saul Illson: Jimmy Tapp in Montreal.

Kliph Nesteroff: Any relation to Gordie Tapp?

Saul Illson: No. I knew Gordie, of course.  He was the host of Country Hoedown on CBC in Toronto. No, he wasn't related to Jimmy Tapp at all. 

Of course, when you worked at CBC Toronto it was a company town. Everybody knew everybody and went to the same commissary. Whether it was Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster or whoever.



Kliph Nesteroff: There was an active television community at that time, but when it came to TV comedy Toronto didn't have much other than Wayne and Shuster.

Saul Illson: Yes. Wayne and Shuster. I knew them like everybody else. When I talked about my musicals in the very beginning, Johnny Wayne started making suggestions, "Why don't you do this? I think if you make that character do this and so and so..." Frank Shuster looked at me and said, "Don't listen to him."



Kliph Nesteroff: It was like there was a law that they were the only comedians allowed in Canada. They were known for having knockdown arguments. The new generation felt they had worn out their welcome on Canadian television.

Saul Illson: I don't know anything about that, but the deal they made with Ed Sullivan in the States was that Sullivan could not edit their material. If you had six minutes Ed Sullivan would make you cut two minutes right before the show. But he wasn't allowed to do that to Wayne and Shuster. That was their deal.



Some of their sketches ran for ten minutes! They were good. I never sat in a writing room with them. When I was doing a show called Parade they came on and did the show. But their's was a class act, writing wise. 

I started doing a series in Canada called Showtime. There was an agent from the William Morris agency who would come up to Toronto and sign a lot of talent. He signed a comedy writing team by the name of Frank Peppiat and John Aylesworth. He asked me if I would be interested in having him represent me. So I signed with him. 

My first show was with producer Nick Vanoff and it was a show with all the little monsters: Paul Anka, Frankie Avalon, Fabian, and Bobby Darin. It was hosted by Pat Boone. Paul Anka was maybe sixteen. Nick Vanoff was talking to his manager Irving Feld. He had produced circuses at Madison Square Garden. He told Paul to come in tomorrow at ten o'clock so we can go over the music with the band. Irving Feld says, "I'll have him here." In the background you hear, "Like fuck you will." That was Paul Anka.

Kliph Nesteroff: You did a Pat Boone show that was directed by another former CBC Television guy - Norman Jewison.

Saul Illson: Yes, that was later. I did about four Pat Boone shows. My first comedy show was with Danny Kaye.

Kliph Nesteroff: The writers room was quite impressive on The Danny Kaye Show.

Saul Illson: Unbelievable. Larry Gelbart. Mel Tolkin. Herbie Baker, who had written a lot of special material for Danny. Sheldon Keller. That's where I met my writing partner Ernie Chambers. I wrote a piece for Danny and went into his dressing room which was an actual home built on top of CBS Television City at his insistence. 

They literally built a bungalow for Danny Kaye on the roof of CBS. He was a cook, so they built him a kitchen. Of course it caused tremendous problems with Judy Garland and Red Skelton, which is another story. But I gave my material to Danny and he went over it. He said, "This is a good piece, I like it, and I want to do it."



Kliph Nesteroff: Pat McCormick was in that writers room.

Saul Illson: He arrived after my time. Pat was one of a kind. It's hard to describe Pat McCormick. He was a really good comedy writer, but insane. I spent one season with Danny Kaye and after that I had an offer to work for Nick Vanoff. He promised me if I would come work with him I could produce. I wanted to produce as well as write, because every time I handed in a piece it was always chopped up. So I took the job working for Nick who did a show called Hollywood Palace. 

There was a writer by the name of Jay Burton. Jay was probably one of the best joke writers I ever worked with. We went over to Debbie Reynolds house. She was going to be on the show. Carrie was a little girl then. This was 1964-1965. Carrie had rescued a pigeon and nursed it and they were going to release it soon from this cage. Debbie said, "Would you like to see this bird?" Jay said, "No, no, I'll take your word." She opened the cage and the bird ran around and took a dump on Jay's shoulder. 

Jay went over to see Bob Hope who was doing a Command Performance for King George at the Palladium. At the last minute Hope said, "I need another joke." They said to Jay, "Hope needs a joke quick!" Jay wrote a joke and now he's looking for Hope. At the Palladium, all the dressing rooms were below the theater itself and Jay is running around. He was afraid he was going to lose his job. He opens a door, there's someone. He opens another door, there's somebody else. He opens a door - and there is King George. He looks at him and says, "Heya, King!" And closes the door (laughs).

Kliph Nesteroff: What was the experience of writing the Hollywood Palace like? You were dealing with a different star every week.

Saul Illson: Basically we would write what we called wraparounds. They would come in with their act and then we would add some material that was current. As a matter of fact, I think that my first show - I was cursed on the air by Jack Carter. He's not America's sweetheart, by the way. 

What happened was - Khruschev was fired from the Kremlin suddenly. So I thought of a line that would be funny. I went to Jack and I said I have a joke you should do. I gave it to him right before he went on. "When Mrs. Khruschev heard what the Kremlin did to her husband, she became so irate she ran into the Kremlin and said, 'America is right! You are all a bunch of communists!' Well, he did it and the joke did not get a laugh. Nobody laughed. 

Kliph Nesteroff: Jack Carter got mad about this.

Saul Illson: On the air! He said, "Saul Illson wrote that for me. It's not my joke."

Kliph Nesteroff: I interviewed Hollywood Palace producer Bill Harbach.

Saul Illson: Yeah, he's a legend. Did he talk about getting in the cab? Bill Harbach was brilliant, but he used to count on his fingers. He had strange ways of communicating. He'd get into a cab and say, "Take me to Circle 5-7000" instead of just saying NBC. He said to his secretary, "Get me Ethel Waters!" She knew that meant Esther Williams.

Kliph Nesteroff: When you watch the Hollywood Palace, you can always hear Bill Harbach's laugh in the background.

Saul Illson: Always. He sat in the audience right behind the camera and he was the cheerleader. I worked on that show for a year. Immediately Nick got a show called The King Family. He asked me to produce it. I did the show and continued to contribute pieces for the Hollywood Palace. Nick Vanoff was the nicest, smartest, and best producer I ever worked for. 

I have worked for crazy ones like George Schlatter - who I love. He's a maniac, in a nice way. Did he ever tell you the story about Al Hirt at Rockefeller Center? It was one of my first jobs in television. Clark Jones was our director at the time. Across from Radio City Music Hall they were building the Sperry-Rand Building. The girders were still up and everything. 

Clark said, "You know, on top of Radio City Music Hall there's a balcony. We could put Al Hirt up on the girders and shoot it from the balcony and it would be an interesting place to do the number." Schlatter said, "Sure, let's do it." We had Al Hirt for one day. I think it was a Sunday morning. He would do two numbers. We didn't need much rehearsal. 

So we told Al Hirt we were going to do it up on the girders on the sixth floor, which was level with Radio City Music Hall. Clark Jones checked and the sun would be just right. They told him there's no elevator. Al Hirt said, "Are you crazy?" But Schlatter convinced him to do it. Sunday morning we all went and we working up on the girders. We had a crew carrying all their equipment. We pre-recorded the music the night before with drums, guitar, and everything. We get up there and there's a nice platform for him to work on. 

Hirt said, "Damn, it's cold up here." I said to someone, "Bring that old can over here." And we lit a fire. We're rehearsing the number and some old man who was a watchman ran up the sixth flights. He came up and said, "What are you doing? You're going to burn the building down! You have to put out that fire!" He was yelling and screaming. The watchman was disgusted. He turns around, walks two feet, has a heart attack, and dies! 

So now he's lying there. And everybody is stunned. Now the police arrive. They explain nobody is to do anything until the coroner arrives. But we were going to lose the sun and Al Hirt in two hours. The police covered the body with a pink blanket. Clark Jones said, "The damn thing is in the shot. Move the body." The police had said, "No, you can't move anything." George said to me, "Go to the police and ask if we can put a dark blanket over the body." So I went to the police, "Would it be possible to cover it with a dark blanket?" They said, "That's unusual - but okay." A dark, gray blanket covers the body. 

Clark Jones said, "No, we need to make a mound on the other side so it looks the same on both sides." So we picked up debris or whatever and we covered that with a dark gray blanket. The police couldn't believe what was going on. Clark Jones says, "Okay, I think it's even. It looks balanced." The police said, "You're going to do this number now?" Schlatter said, "Sorry, sorry, but we have to do it." 

So we started the playback and Al Hirt is beside himself, he wanted to quit, he wanted to leave, he cursed George Schlatter. Schlatter said, "You have a contract. You have to do it or you don't get paid." We started to do it - and the guy's family shows up - and they start to cry! Al Hirt sees them and he yells, "Cut! I'm not doing this! I'm leaving." Schlatter said, "We only have you for two hours - let's just get it over with!" 

Al Hirt went to the family. He asked them to move over to the side so he wouldn't have to look at them! We did the number, pack up, leave. Coroner never showed while we were there. Three weeks later George calls and says, "We have a meeting with NBC. The agency, J. Walter Thompson, said it can't be in the show. They heard about what went on." George set up a screening at NBC for the executives at J. Walter Thompson. They're looking and they're watching it and they play it about five times. George says to them, "Now tell me - which side is the body?" One of them said, "It's very obvious - it's the one on the left." The other guy goes, "No, no, look at the height. It's the one on the right." This went on for two hours! They couldn't come to a conclusion and so the number stayed in the show!