Writing for I LOVE LUCY and Other Funny Stuff: An Interview with Bob Schiller (Past Times Comedy Writing Series) (3 page)

That’s what I did. Ed Gardner was asked, “Where do you find writers?” He said, “I look for people who think crooked.” And that’s exactly right. When I first said hello to Bob Weiskopf, he said, “That’s what you think.”

The first time you met him?

That’s right. That’s thinking crooked, not in a straight line. There’s people who cannot -- it’s almost psychotic with some comedy writers -- who cannot say anything straight. It’s awful, because -- if you examine it from a psychological standpoint, it’s pushing people away, really -- you don’t let anybody get close to you.

Were you familiar with Lucille Ball’s radio show,
My Favorite Husband
, before you starting writing for
I Love Lucy
?

Sure. It wasn’t a very popular show. Lucy wasn’t the knockabout comedienne that came along later. She didn’t start getting her reputation until she was 40 years old. Sol Saks wrote a very good television show with Nate Monaster called
My Favorite Husband.
It was quite different though; I think they just took the name. It was a lovely show, but it didn’t work  -- there’s nothing funny about Joan Caulfield. She couldn’t get a laugh if she slipped on a banana peel.

Lucy was a terrific physical comic, though.

She was really great. She never made a move that wasn’t right. There was a wonderful sketch on
The Ed Wynn Show
, a silent sketch where they held up signs, instead of speaking dialogue. It was a a very clever sketch -- it was the first show that Lucy was on, and she was wonderful. People started talking about moving her
My Favorite Husband
radio show over to television. That was the first interest there was in Lucy, as a television performer.

Ball on
My Favorite Husband.

And you saw her on that show?

Yeah, I saw her. In those days, it was interesting. A lot of the comics would go on for a year, make a big splash, and fade. Like Red Buttons, for example. Alan Young was a big sensation for a year. He later settled into talking to a horse [
Mr. Ed
] -- he was a major star for a year, then he became second banana to an equine.

At what point did you and Bob Weiskopf start working on
I Love Lucy
? You weren’t on the show from its inception.

No. That’s one of the miracles of show business. There were only three writers -- Bob Carroll, Madelyn Pugh and Jess Oppenheimer -- for the first four years. Then Bob Weiskopf and I came on the fifth and sixth year. There were never any other writers on
I Love Lucy
. Ever. Not a word was ever written by anybody else.

Oppenheimer, Weiskopf, Davis, Schiller and Carroll.

Would the five of you write together?

We all worked together on story. All five of us. Weiskopf and I would write the first draft. Then Bob and Madelyn and Jess would get together and decide what else was needed, and Bob and Madelyn would do a brush or a rewrite, depending on how badly it was written. And then Jess would turn it in. It all went through Jess.

He was also producing the show.

Jess was wonderful; he was a producer who would turn off the phone and say, “No calls except emergencies.” We would sit in the room, and outside of lunch we wouldn’t leave that room until we had a story. Jess was only on
I Love Lucy
the first year that we were on. At the end of that season, he quit. They had a big party for him. Desi’s line was, “We haven’t lost a producer, we’ve gained a parking space.”

Jess Oppenheimer was pretty much the arbiter of things, your first season there?

Oppenheimer, Arnaz, Ball, Frawley and Vance.

Yeah. He pretty much -- what he said went. There was always kind of a tension between Desi and Jess. That’s one of the reason Jess quit. He and Desi had a hit, obviously, and it was a matter of “Who gets the credit?” I think when you have two egos involved, two strong egos...

They kept butting heads.

Yeah. Well, Jess was the best producer I ever worked for. He was organized, he was compartmentalized. It was an enormous task to do a weekly show, particularly in those days when not a helluva lot was known about it. And when you stop and think of it, you’re working on a script -- most producers are not writing today -- he was writing, he was in there -- most producers enjoy casting, because it’s not nearly as difficult as writing or directing. And Jess was very good -- there was a kind of jealousy between the two of them, between Jess and Desi. 

How did things change when Oppenheimer left? It was just the four of you then?

When Jess left, Weiskopf and I did the first draft again; it went through Bob and Madelyn, and onto the air. It was relatively easy, in retrospect. We never worked a night; we never worked a weekend. It was quite different from the way things are today. Today they just keep rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. We never did things after the audience went home on
I Love Lucy
; no pickups. Even though Bill Frawley would often flub -- they’d work around it.

You told me that the “secret” of
I Love Lucy
was that the characters of Lucy and Ricky were sort of based on Baby Snooks and Daddy?

Well, they weren’t, but we thought it was that. When you stop to think of it, she’s trying to put one over on Daddy. Over the years, people have said, “How did you do it?” Once you come up with that thought, you get the picture.

I had never thought of it, until you mentioned it -- but you can immediately see the parallels.

Right. Jess did work on
Baby Snooks.

Did he ever indicate that he was thinking of that relationship?

I never talked to him about it. And I don’t know that anyone else ever analyzed it.

Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll had written for Lucy’s radio show.

Madelyn and Bob and Jess worked on
My Favorite Husband.
Madelyn and Bob were staff writers at CBS originally. Any of the physical things we did [on TV], Madelyn would try them out; if she could do them, we figured Lucy could do them. Some of the things that she couldn’t do, Lucy could do. I remember things like stilts. We called Lucy and said, “Can you do stilts?” She said, “I did it when I was a kid; let’s try it.”

Why do you think there were so few women comedy writers then?

I don’t know. I can give you a conjecture. And that is -- it goes back to the battle of the sexes, really. Let me back way up and say that one of the things that made Lucy so successful is, she was always feminine. It’s not easy for a woman comic to be feminine. Funny is Martha Raye -- masculine. Most women when they try to get funny become masculine; it’s not terribly attractive. Maybe that trickles down to writing, I don’t know. I think it’s probably cultural.

You continued your association with Madelyn and Bob on
The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour.

Bob, Madelyn, Bob and I did all three years of the
Comedy Hour.
There were no other writers. Oh yes, there was -- when Bob and Madelyn retired, briefly, Desi asked us if we wanted anybody to help us. So we got Everett Freeman, with whom I had worked on
That’s My Boy.
He came in and we sat around and tried to work out a story together. He got up in the middle of thing and said, “You guys don’t need me” -- and left. The next we heard of him, he wanted top billing. Weiskopf and I wrote the whole fucking show -- he was there for maybe three hours.

Some things never change.

Weiskopf and I were the writers on
The
Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour
and Bob and Madelyn were the story editors; they wanted to take it easy. They just came in and did brushes, and overlooked the thing. It went on for two more years as
The Lucy Show;
the first two years, Bob, Madelyn, Weiskopf and I did it. We used to call it “The Dyke Van Dick Show” -- it was without the men [Desi and William Frawley].

How much participation did Lucy and Desi have, as far as the writing, or the editing of the show?

Not a helluva lot. Oh, I can’t answer that without splitting it. There’s B.D. and A.D. -- before Desi left, and after Desi left. Lucy had a lot of faith in her writers. So did Desi -- Desi was wonderful with writers. He admired them, and respected them. When he left, Lucy was scared to death, and didn’t know really how to deal with people. He was a charmer -- I’d do anything for Desi. And Lucy, she’d have to beg me. She did not really know how to ask for things. And she was always afraid -- she depended on Desi: “It’s okay, honey.”