Free TALES FROM THE SCRIPT: THE BEHIND-THE-CAMERA ADVENTURES OF A TV COMEDY WRITER by Gene Perret

tab there.
it was very helpful because the home i rented, when i wearied of
motel living after about a week, was a good freeway ride away from
Hollywood. We quit work around six o’clock most evenings. if i
tried to journey home during that rush hour traffic, it took me over an
hour. However, if i went across to the City Slicker and sat there having a few drinks until eleven o’clock, there was hardly any traffic at all.
The City Slicker was a gathering spot for many show business
people working at CBS. My wife stayed home with the children when
i first came to Hollywood. They finished the school year and then unloaded our home back east, but the family didn’t join me until about
a month after my arrival.
When my wife got to town, i took her in to meet my fellow workers. We stopped at the City Slicker. The waitress came to our table
and said to me, “The usual, Gene?”
My wife noticed and kidded me about it. She said, “i see. i’ve
been home struggling with the kids and the sale of the house and
you’ve been out here getting yourself drunk, huh?”
The waitress didn’t realize my wife was joking, and she tried to
save me. She said to my spouse, “no. As much as i’ve seen Gene
drink, i’ve never seen him drunk.”
Being a writer, i felt she could have phrased that a little differently.
Maybe lose the phrase, “As much as i’ve seen Gene drink.”
Somehow, my fellow writers, the producers, and my wife allowed
me to survive the pre-production period. That’s the time when we
worked on the show, but we didn’t actually produce any shows. The
staff developed ideas and scripts to be ready for when the stars arrived
and we went into production. That would be when we started putting
the show on tape and over the airwaves.
However, the first week of production almost ended my brief
television writing career. During the first run-through rehearsal of
    The cast of The Jim Nabors Hour . Pictured l. to r. – Karen Morrow,
Frank Sutton, Jim Nabors, Ronnie Schell.
    the show, we almost lost our star. We had a regular, weekly sketch on
the show in which Frank Sutton played Jim nabors’s brother-in-law.
They ran a boarding house together. in the sketch, Frank invariably
got upset with Jim over some plot twist or another. At that first rehearsal, he was to get so angry at the nabors character that he threatened him with a fireplace poker. Since that was only a rehearsal, the
prop guys got some old poker from somewhere. While Frank Sutton
was brandishing the weapon, the pointed head of it flew off and went
straight up in the air, came down, and embedded itself into the hardwood floor right next to the star of our show.
    Six inches to the left, and i would have retrieved my pocket protector and been out looking for an electrical engineering job.
Run-throughs were sometimes exciting because the celebs were
there, but there was no pressure. The cameras weren’t on, and the audience wasn’t present. it was simply a rehearsal for the cast, staff, and
crew. The guest stars, who wanted to be crazy, could be.
We had a short talk spot written for guest, Don Rickles, and Jim
nabors. in the script, it ran less than three minutes. At the runthrough, Don, with his string of adlibs, kept it going for over twenty
minutes, and we laughed practically the entire time.
At one point, when there was a brief lull in the laughter, Don
turned to Jim nabors and said, “You sing beautifully? Are you sure
you’re not Gordon MacCrea’s long lost illegitimate son.” it got big
laughs. Everything Rickles said at that rehearsal got big laughs.
The producers had to end that thing so we could move on to our
writers meeting and get a revised script ready for shooting. They signaled
Frank Sutton to interrupt Don’s soliloquy with his scripted entrance.
Frank obediently walked on, but it didn’t stop Rickles. He looked
at Sutton and said, “What the hell are you doing out here? if i grab
your legs, you’ll turn