On Sunday I went to bed a little before 1:30. I slept fairly well and got up at 5:00. After yoga I checked for bedbugs and found a few adults stuck to the carpet tape while a few more babies were on the walls, one of them near the curtain rod. I’m going to put some more two-sided tape on the floor beside the baseboards and on the wall near the curtain rod bracket.
I worked out the chords for the first three lines of the chorus of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian.
I finished editing “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg in my Christian’s Translations blog and I’ll publish it on Monday after posting the video.
I weighed 90.95 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune about half the time.
Around midday I put down more two sided carpet tape along the bedroom floor beside the northern and eastern baseboards. I also ran a strip along the right side of the bedroom door and enclosed the right curtain bracket in a square of carpet tape in case there were bedbugs there so they wouldn’t try to build a nest in the rod pocket of the bedroom curtains.
I weighed 92.35 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 91.25 kilos at 18:10, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since August 16.
I was still two days behind in my journal and worked on catching up.
I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread, with marinara, tomato pesto, wedge fries, and five-year-old-cheddar while watching part two of a roundtable discussion between Carole Burnett Show writers Gail Parent, Ken Solms, Buz Kohan, and Arnie Kogen.
Arnie says his aunt spoke just like Harvey’s character of Mother Marcus.
Buz has 13 Emmys.
Gail says two of her children are MIT graduates and they are funny engineers.
Buz’s daughter Jenji worked with Gail on Tracy Ullman.
One time someone hired Gail and Ken because he mistook them for Buz and his writing partner. He thought they wrote music and lyrics.
Buz worked 4 years for The Carol Burnett Show and then did The Pearl Bailey Show. When he first met Pearl she was at Lake Tahoe and sitting by the pool with a pair of golden scissors hanging from a chain around her neck. She explained that she uses her scissors on the script because when she performs, god gives her the words. By the end of the third show they were close and she was sticking pretty much to the script. When Pearl was canceled Buz went back to Carol’s show. On the credits he was listed as a producer but he was still writing. Ken says that’s the time when everyone started being called a producer. Gail says if the show wins an Emmy for writing then the writers will ask for something.
Buz says that Pearl started her show with the intention of cooking her famous macaroni and cheese for the entire audience after the show and she’d serve them on the rooftop lounge. By the third week they were calling KFC because the logistics of her cooking for everyone were impossible.
Ken says every variety writer ended up doing some sitcoms. Gail points out that Ken never liked writing for sitcoms and he confirms it.
Arnie says in 1968 when he came out to Hollywood there were 16 variety shows. He says if you wanted a date from the writers guild the female choices were Gail and Treva Silverman. Gail got pregnant and people usually send flowers when you give birth but Carol sent her a diaphragm.
Gail and Ken wrote the very first sketch that appeared on The Carol Burnett Show, which was the ski lodge sketch with Jim Nabors and Carol.
Buz says by the 24th show each season writers were running out of good material and so they would dig into material they wouldn’t have sniffed at earlier in the season. There was a sketch called Anthony the Wonder Ant that was always on the board but never got on the air.
After Bill and Buz left, Ken and Mitzi Welch came in to do the song material.
Buz worked with Barbara Sreisand many times and Gail wrote the screenplay for The Main Event for her.
Arnie points out the part of Gail’s novel in which the main character writes a suicide note but her mother only reads it bit by bit every night before going to bed.
Ken says they lost the chance to have Bette Davis on the show because Joe Hamilton didn’t want to pay the extra $25 for the limousine she requested.
The Esther Williams parody was filmed at Carol’s house and in her pool.
Buz wrote the mini musical about the songwriters Potts and Panns. He included a song he wrote in summer camp and then used to sing it to his kids, “You Outta Listen to Your Mother”.
Buz says Nanette Fabray could play the musical saw.
Ken says Bob Mackie still looks 18.
Arnie wrote "the world’s oldest fireman" for Tim.
Ken says Harvey was a bit temperamental and Carol used to tease him with, “What mood are we in today Mr. Harvey Korman?” Harvey was the first actor Gail and Ken worked with on the Steve Allen Show.
Buz says Steve Allen was the best. Ken says he would save every first draft.
Arnie says he got stopped by a cop once who commented while he was writing him a ticket that the show is more fun with Tim being a regular.
Arnie says that Paul Lynd was difficult. He says he’s never seen Jack Jones funnier than on The Carol Burnett Show.
Carol was very approachable.
Jerry Lewis took the same picture of his daughter every day from birth until 5 or 6.
Arnie loved Totie Fields.
Buz worked for Perry Como for four years. Buz had the distinct honour and pleasure of working with Goodman Ace, the dean of comedy writers in New York.
Gail says after Carol they worked for some mean and horrible stars. But she did The Golden Girls, which was a well run show and the stars could deliver lines.
Arnie says Bob Newhart was like Jack Benny. He would surround himself with crazy, funny people. He was very easy to write for because he was a reactor like Benny.
Ken says he and Gail made Vince Edwards funny. He lit two cigarettes the way they used to do in the movies but instead of handing one to his leading lady he smoked them both.
They all agree they’d like to do it all over again.
Goodman Ace was the editor of his high school newspaper. He studied Journalism at Kansas City Polytechnic Institute. He became a reporter and journalist for The Kansas City Journal Post.
He met Jane in high school and they married six months after their first date at an Al Jolson concert.
He started moonlighting as a radio announcer in 1930. He would read the Sunday comics and hosted a Friday night film review and gossip show called Ace Goes to the Movies. He starred with his wife Jane in the radio sitcom Easy Aces from 1930 to 1945. It started one night when the fifteen minute show that was scheduled after Ace’s failed to feed and so he was asked to fill in the time. His wife Jane happened to be there and so they simply had a conversation about playing bridge that the audience found so funny that they were given their own show. He wrote himself as the straight man and gave the jokes to Jane, and their comedy dynamic was similar to that of George Burns and Gracie Allen. One of Jane’s famous lines was “Time wounds all heels”. In 1935 they started doing comedy short films with their radio characters such as “Dumb Luck”.
In 1945 Ace became one of the writers for The Danny Kaye radio show, which he and Jane sometimes hosted. He created the radio series You Are There, which ran from 1947 to 1950.
In 1953 Ace wrote that TV stands for Terrible Vaudeville and that they call it a medium because it’s never well done.
After their attempt at doing Easy Aces on TV failed, Ace stopped performing and focused on writing. He created a show that re-enacted historical events that had been reported by CBS radio. The show came to be known as CBS Was There but Ace was never credited.
He was head writer for 23 episodes of The Perry Como Show (for which he was nominated for two Emmy Awards). He wrote for Jack Benny, Milton Berle and Bob Newhart. After writing a few jokes for Benny’s stage show, Benny sent him a cheque for $50, saying your jokes got a lot of laughs. If you have any more send them along.” Ace sent the cheque back and said, “Your cheque got a lot of laughs. If you have any more send them along.” He ended up giving Benny jokes for free for years.
For radio Ace co-wrote The Big Show, hosted by Tallulah Bankhead, which ran from 1950 to 1952.
He wrote the screenplay for I Married a Woman, and said it was the best thing he’d ever written but the worst movie he’d ever seen.
In the early 50s he started writing a regular column for The Saturday Review. A collection of his criticism was published in1955 as The Book of Little Knowledge: More Than You Want to Know About Television. Later the column came to be called Top of MY Head and it became very popular. These columns were collected in two books: The Fine Art of Hypochondria and The Better of Goodman Ace.
In the mid-60s CBS started a school for would be writers with Ace as one of the instructors. All six of Ace’s students became television writers and two became successful playwrights: George Axelrod and Neil Simon.
In the 1970s several Easy Aces scripts were adapted for the Canadian sitcom The Trouble with Tracy.
A relative of Ace’s once sent him a telegram threatening to jump from the 14th floor of his building if he didn’t send him $14,000. Ace wired back “If you jump from the 7th floor I’ll send you $5000.”
