It also was an exciting time because on The Odd Couple I was finally the boss. When I was working for Joey Bishop, Danny Thomas, and Lucille Ball, I was always a “writer for hire” and told what to do. But on The Odd Couple, I was the producer and show runner, equivalent to my mentor the great Sheldon Leonard. Producing Hey Landlord! had merely been a test drive in producing television. The Odd Couple was, from anyone’s vantage point, the big leagues. Would I make it? Or would I fail? And if I failed, where would I go? Could I pay my mortgage on the new house? On the first day of shooting that summer in 1970, all I knew was that Neil Simon was telling the press how much he hated the show. It was not the best way to kick off a new TV series.
Neil was mad because he’d gotten a raw deal from Paramount. The studio had given him money to do The Odd Couple as a Broadway play and movie but had stiffed him on the television rights. Neil had no creative control over the project, and we felt bad that he was getting the short stick. However, Jerry and I didn’t feel bad enough to turn down the job of running and developing our first major television series. Neil had done the hard part of creating well-written and complex comedic characters that we knew would translate well to the small screen. There was no need for us to improve on his finicky Felix Unger and messy Oscar Madison. The ever-bickering duo were the picture-perfect tribute to male friendships everywhere. At first the challenge for us as producers was not further character development, but casting.
The studio pitched Jerry and me some possible combinations: Martin Balsam and Eddie Bracken, and Dean Martin and Mickey Rooney. But no combination seemed up to snuff compared to Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, who had done the movie. We needed to get closer to Matthau and Lemmon. I remembered an actor I had seen opposite Ethel Merman in the Broadway production of Gypsy. He played the stage manager, and basically for two hours Merman sang loudly and sprayed saliva on him while he faced her with his back to the audience. At the end of the show the people in the audience were in love with him. I had never seen such stage presence before, nor a more expressive, regular-kind-of-guy face. I asked the casting department at Paramount to find Jack Klugman, and they sent me a man named Jack Kruschen, who had a mustache.
While Klugman and Kruschen are similar names, the appeal didn’t compare and only one had a mustache. So when Klugman finally came into my office, I knew I had my Oscar. He had what you need more than anything else in television—likability. Audiences would want Jack Klugman to walk into their living rooms once a week. Finding our Felix was not as difficult. Tony Randall had been in dozens of films and was known for his comedy timing and elegance. We had to convince Tony to move to Los Angeles from New York in order to shoot the show. But once he agreed to move we had our cast. Tony and Jack were reluctant to step into Matthau’s and Lemmon’s shoes, though. Who wouldn’t be? We convinced them we would protect them and not let them fail. Who knew if that was true? But Jerry and I were optimistic and eager to get the show off the ground, so we promised whatever it took. Jack was a man’s man with crumpled clothing. Tony was an opera-loving guy with a suit and tie. They were both leery of us and it turns out each other.
We shot the opening title sequence in the streets of New York because the show was a love letter to the city itself and its people, the finicky ones, the messy ones, and everyone in between. As we set up the shots I saw that fans already recognized the stars, particularly Jack, whom many knew from Gypsy. I could see it was hard for Jack and Tony to concentrate with so many spectators. So for the setup of the shots, I ordered a limousine where they could sit together and wait. A few minutes after they went into the limousine, Jack came out of one door, and Tony came out of the other door, and both said almost simultaneously, “I can’t work with him.” I quickly figured out the problem. Jack liked to smoke cigarettes, and Tony was allergic to smoke. In my mind this was not a reason to cancel an entire series before it got off the ground. I simply got a second limousine so they would never have to share air space again. This is what a producer learns to do best: solve problems quickly by throwing money at them. The less money you throw at a problem, the better producer you are.
The casting was perfect because Jack’s and Tony’s personalities were quite similar to those of the characters they played. Today some people even consider them the finest Odd Couple casting of all because they nurtured, developed, and embodied these roles over five years. In TV life and real life Jack liked racehorses, gambling, women, and smoky bars. Tony liked opera, ballet, New York City, and the finer things in life. Jack had an ex-wife and two kids in Los Angeles whom he was very close to. Tony had no children and a wife who lived in New York. The bottom line is that Jack was a messy gambler and Tony was a finicky neat freak.
Their acting styles also were completely different. Tony would ask for changes in the script when he knew something would make it better and stronger. He liked saying, “Change this!” and having us listen to him. In his previous film work—such as Pillow Talk and Send Me No Flowers—stars Rock Hudson and Doris Day had always said “Change this!” and the director or writer would accommodate them. Tony was just a supporting actor in those films, so he didn’t have the same clout. In The Odd Couple, Tony was the star, and he liked the power that came with that new role. Jack, on the other hand, simply needed to know what his character “wanted” in every scene. Once he had his motivation Jack asked for little else. Plus you could get any line or joke past Jack if you pitched it to him at 3:45 P.M. because by 4:00 he would be out the door to listen to the racetrack results on the radio. He would come back on the set afterward, and his head would be right back into work.
The first season we shot the show without a live audience, but Tony didn’t like it that way, and neither did I. He desperately wanted us to shoot in front of a live audience, which some sitcoms at the time were doing. He found the canned laughter grating, like nails on a chalkboard. We agreed that a live audience would make the show stronger because the laughter would be more spontaneous and genuine, but nobody listened to us. Paramount wasn’t rushing to spend extra money to accommodate a live audience on our soundstage. So Tony decided to take matters into his own hands. He went on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show and asked viewers to write in to Paramount and tell them to get rid of the canned laughter on The Odd Couple. He said, “If you all write letters, Paramount will listen.” And he was right. Shortly after that Tonight Show aired, people began to write letters to Paramount asking for the change in format. From the second season on we always filmed in front of an audience, and I think in everyone’s opinion it was a better show. The audience could act as a referee between Tony and Jack and me. Having a live audience is a quicker and more definitive way to find out what is funny and what is not.
While Tony liked a live audience, he didn’t like live children. He found children a distraction when he was working. Each week we had two run-throughs. One was at 4:30 P.M. and kids could come, and the other one was at night, for adults only. Tony didn’t think that kids should be allowed to attend either. He hated the 4:30 one, so we even tried to limit the number of kids in attendance. Whenever my own three children came to visit the set, we hid them under the audience bleachers so Tony wouldn’t see them. For the entire run of the show my children were in fear of Tony discovering their secret location and being thrown off the lot. (It is ironic that many years later Tony had two children with his second wife, Heather, and seemed to love every second he had with them.) My daughter Lori later appeared in an episode called “That Is the Army, Mrs. Madison,” in which we see Oscar marry his wife, Blanche, through a series of flashbacks. Every day at the rehearsals Lori would dodge around the set trying not to make eye contact with Tony for fear he would fire her. But deep down he was the sweetest of men.
The thing about producing your own television series is that things can go wrong and you have to learn to fix them on the spot. In an episode called “I’m Dying of Unger,” the scene was falling flat. The lines were fine, but the comedy wasn’t popping. I suggested that Ton
y and Jack do the scene again, exactly as written. But I added a twist: I had Murray the cop put his nose through the peephole of Oscar and Felix’s door. Felix saw the nose and instantly knew who was on the other side. The scene suddenly got laughs and all our problems were solved. Learning to punch up a scene is sometimes as important as writing the scene to begin with, and I learned that from Carl Reiner on The Dick Van Dyke Show.
I always try to be sensitive to what the actors think of the material because they are the ones who have to say the lines and performing is a difficult job. Tony got upset about the script called “The Subway Story.” He said it was the worst thing he had ever read. I was confused because I’d supervised the script and thought it was funny. So I called up Tony’s agent and asked if there was a problem. He explained that Tony didn’t like the script because it was about a subway robbery and it made New York seem unsafe. New York City had just appointed Tony spokesman for a new publicity campaign to make it desirable for tourists. He worried that our episode presented a conflict. He didn’t think I would have time to change the script. But what he didn’t realize is that the way I work, I always have time to change a script when necessary. So the writers and I rewrote it to make Tony more comfortable and make New York the hero in the story.
In that same episode another problem came up suddenly. Gavin MacLeod (who later played Captain Stubing on The Love Boat) had an attack of appendicitis the Thursday night before the Friday shoot. We didn’t have time to cast another actor, so I decided to jump in. I had acted from time to time in the shows on the Desilu lot, including hiring myself as an actor on Hey Landlord! I thought it was important to be in the Screen Actors Guild as well as the Writers Guild so I would have another job to fall back on. Plus, I had a New York accent, which was what the character needed. Writer-producer Milt Josefsberg had been out of work for six years after The Jack Benny Show, and I didn’t ever want to face a situation like that. With a wife, kids, and a mortgage to pay, I felt pressure to do as many different jobs as possible so I would never be out of work.
Despite the pressure I felt. I was so proud of the work we did on The Odd Couple. It was the quintessential New York show before Seinfeld. Although we didn’t shoot every day in New York, our show was a tribute to the city we all loved so much and many of us had grown up in. I had been a boy in New York. I had been a struggling stand-up comedian in New York. I had been a soldier in uniform in New York. And now I was producing a prime-time television series about New York. Jack liked it when we could experiment and shoot New York outdoors. There was an episode called “The New Car” in which Oscar and Felix win a car on a radio contest. Oscar wants to sell the car but Felix won’t let him, so they decide to keep it and deal with New York City’s parking laws. Each morning one of them has to get up and move the car to the other side of the street. So we shot a montage of them moving the car in their pajamas. It was a unique New York episode and very funny as well.
During our five-year run many writers worked on The Odd Couple. Jack and Tony were not easy actors to please, and thus it was not an easy show to write for. The head writers sat at the table, and the apprentice writers sat around the outer circle in chairs without desks. I always thought the apprentice writers dreamed of one day being promoted so they could see their names on the credits as writers on The Odd Couple. But the truth involved food more than prestige. The head writers got their trays from the commissary and could eat at the table. The apprentice writers had to eat with the trays on their laps. The apprentices dreamed of moving up so they could place their trays on a table. They were motivated to write better so they could eat more comfortably.
One of my favorite writing teams who got their big break on The Odd Couple was Lowell Ganz and his partner, Mark Rothman. Lowell was a skinny guy with a brilliant memory. Mark was a tall, outgoing writer who loved gambling. Mark’s father was a chauffeur named Abe Rothman, and one day Abe was driving Jack in New York City on a publicity junket. Abe gave Jack some pages of jokes that Mark and Lowell had written. Jack liked the material and sent it to me. Despite the fact that Lowell and Mark were dropouts from Queens College, I liked their material, too. You don’t necessarily need a college degree to write comedy. So I flew them out and gave them some work as punch-up writers. They lasted a little while, and then Jack and Tony asked me to fire them, which was sad but not unusual. So I thought we had heard the last from Lowell and Mark.
A few weeks later, however, I was sitting in the live audience watching a run-through when I saw them in the stands, watching the rehearsal.
“Didn’t I fire you?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Lowell.
“Then what are you doing here?” I asked.
“We have no place else to go,” said Mark.
“We don’t have enough money to fly back to New York. So we’re trying to watch the show and learn how to improve our writing,” said Lowell.
I was amazed by their patience and persistence. They eventually wrote another script on spec, and I bought it. Jack and Tony liked the script so much that we rehired them.
I grew closer to Jack and Tony each year. Every Monday the three of us would go to lunch at a Hungarian restaurant on Melrose where Tony loved to eat. Jack was always starving and would eat anything. But with my allergies the only thing I could eat on the menu was eggs. So every Monday while I ate scrambled eggs with toast and they ate more adventurous Hungarian food, we would discuss The Odd Couple and where we wanted it to go. Jack wanted athletes and sports announcers to appear as guest stars, while Tony was always trying to get opera stars onto the show. One time he convinced the great opera diva Marilyn Horne to guest-star. I met with Marilyn and asked her what she would like to do on the show. She said ever so sweetly, “I would like to get kissed at the end.” In most of her operas she had to die by the final curtain. So in her Odd Couple episode she got her kiss from Jack Klugman.
In addition to opera stars, Tony liked pretending to be a lawyer. We had several episodes in which he said lines like “I’m defending myself” or “I’m defending Oscar.” He also liked to have a sidebar with the judge and have us write schtick for him—like playing with the judge’s gavel. His most well-known courtroom episode of The Odd Couple was called “My Strife in Court.” In the episode, now even featured on youtube.com, he gives advice to the jury not to “assume” anything because when you “assume” you make an “ass” out of “u” and “me.” Another funny thing Tony liked to do was jump onto a desk from the ground. So whenever we didn’t have an ending, he would suggest that he jump on a desk, and he was able to do it well into his sixties.
Tony knew when a script was funny and he knew when it was not. He wanted every script to be top-notch. He would give a speech to the writers each year that basically said this: “Soon Jack and I will be at the home for aging actors and there will be people at the home with us. We will invite them into our rooms to see old episodes of The Odd Couple. When I’m showing my friends these episodes at the home, I don’t want to cringe. I want to be proud and say that we did the best we could do with this show. This was our best work and we are content.” Whenever Tony gave this speech we could not help but be inspired. We wanted Tony and Jack to be proud of all of us, and the shows that we were producing and writing. The image of them not cringing at the old people’s home always stayed with us.
While the writing for the show improved with each episode, unfortunately, my partner, Jerry Belson, got sicker. For as long as I had known him he’d suffered from ulcers. But as the years went by they got worse and he began to rely on drugs for relief and escape. Sometimes he was so sick that he was unable even to get in the car to drive to our set. When Jerry did show up his comments were always the best and most insightful in the room. But when he wasn’t there the responsibility of running the show was on my shoulders. I felt invigorated by the new power, but with each visit Jerry seemed to grow more bored. He was losing interest in the show, in television in general, and had already started talking about going b
ack to movies. I convinced him to hang on, that The Odd Couple was a show worth the trouble. As a dad and a father I felt the show was a perfect fit for me, and I didn’t want anything or anyone to jeopardize it. I would do double the work if I had to, just for Jerry to remain onboard. However, the thought of producing it alone didn’t appeal to me. I knew I always did better work with a partner to bounce ideas off of and be inspired by. I brought in Bob Brunner, my old friend from New York, to be on staff.
Another headache I had on The Odd Couple was with my family. They all needed jobs because they now had families. Penny had a daughter, Tracy, and Ronny was a single mom with three daughters: Penny Lee, Judy, and Wendy. I cast Penny as Jack’s nasal secretary, Myrna Turner. Occasionally I would play her brother, Werner Turner. And in one big episode my sister Ronny appeared with us as Verna Turner. In an episode called “The Rain in Spain,” we cast Penny’s husband, Rob Reiner, as her TV boyfriend Sheldn (a clerk left the o off his birth certificate). The first time Penny appeared on The Odd Couple as Myrna I could tell she had real talent. She had not done much acting in high school or college, but she was naturally funny on-camera and she was a quick learner. Most of her scenes were with Jack, and he was gracious enough to teach her about acting. Along with Penny my dad became an associate producer on the show, and my mother even appeared as a tap dancer in one episode. This is when I began to make nepotism an acceptable art form.
My Happy Days in Hollywood Page 8
