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

into a waffle.”
Of course, that brought howls of laughter from all of us at the
rehearsal.
Don Rickles said, “What are you people laughing at? That didn’t
even make any sense to me.”
At another run-through, we were rehearsing a circus finale, a big musical number that featured the entire cast. At one point, Karen Morrow, one
of the co-stars of the show, was to ride an elephant. Since we used minimal
props at the run-through, the prop guys got some sort of life-sized papiermâché elephant on wheels. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very stable.
Karen rode the fake pachyderm for just a few beats before she and
the elephant tumbled over. For Karen it was a fall from a considerable
height, so everyone got up from their chairs and rushed to her aid.
She wasn’t seriously hurt, but certainly shaken up a bit.
Then, we had to decide whether to continue with the rehearsal
or end it there because of the mishap. One of the writers chipped in
with, “i’d continue. if she doesn’t get right back up there, she’ll never
ride a fake elephant again.”
The writers’ meeting following those rehearsals was sometimes
as bizarre as the rehearsal itself. We once wrote a sketch for Jim nabors and guest star, Tennessee Ernie Ford. it was a takeoff on a hit
show at that time, Ironside . That show was about a detective confined
to a wheelchair. Of course, ours was a hick version of that show, so
instead of sitting in a wheelchair, Ernie Ford sat in a wheelbarrow and
had Jim nabors, as his assistant, wheel him around.
The sketch died at the rehearsal. it needed drastic revisions, so
at the writers’ meeting immediately following the run-through, we
concentrated on fixing or replacing our sketch, called “ironbottom.”
Some wanted to replace it with another sketch that was scheduled for later in the season. Other writers felt that we could give it a
late-night rework and have a viable sketch ready for the next morning.
One writer, Al Gordon, thought the sketch was alright as it was
with one minor exception. He said, “Lose the wheelbarrow and get
a live donkey.”
none of us agreed with that fix, but he persisted.
Eventually Al said, “Look, get a live donkey. if the donkey urinates onstage, you’ve got a hit sketch.”
Another very funny writer, Arnie Kogen, said, “Yeah, or even if
Ernie does.”
We revised the sketch, leaving the wheelbarrow in, and it still got
few laughs. Apparently, we were funnier at the meeting than we were
at the typewriter.
Al Gordon, a long-time Jack Benny writer with his partner, Hal Goldman, was famous for contradictory statements, often within the same sentence. One time, all the nabors writers were feeling paranoid. We were
complaining about something or another that happened in the offices.
Al cheered us up by reminding us that writers on every show
throughout the history of television complained. it was commonplace. “Except,” he corrected himself, “on The Jack Benny Show .”
He said, “Hal and i worked for twenty-five years on that show. We
shared an office with two other writers and we never had a problem.
There was never a complaint, never any backstabbing. For twentyfive years, we worked together with no problems at all.”
Then he added, “Except that Hal and i knew that we were doing
all the work.”
Al Gordon came into the writing offices one morning after having
attended a Writers Guild meeting the night before. At the meeting,
there was talk of a strike and feelings were running pretty high.
Those of us who didn’t attend the meeting had heard about a
writer, who got up to speak at the microphone the strike committee
had positioned at the front of the aisle so that each member’s questions and comments could be heard. That particular writer collapsed
at the microphone and was taken from the hall.
Since Al was at the meeting, we asked about the incident. Al
Gordon told us, “it was terrible. i was sitting right next to the microphone, you know. This