Free My Happy Days in Hollywood by Garry Marshall

gangsters. He liked me from the start.
    It was pretty clear that
The Joey Bishop Show
was not going to be on the air forever. So Fred and I quickly started looking around to see what other shows we might be able to write for. We decided that our goal should be
The Dick Van Dyke Show
, which starred Dick and Mary Tyler Moore. However, the show’s producer Carl Reiner knew us from New York and had us pegged as punch-up writers and joke meisters. Carl didn’t know yet that we could write a solid story. So Fred and I had to find a way to convince Carl that we could write big jokes as well as strong plots for the show. Carl was a fatherly type with an original mind. He could think on his feet better and faster than anyone I had ever seen.
    In the meantime we stayed on Joey’s sitcom and traveled with him to Las Vegas when he opened at the Sands Hotel for Frank Sinatra. We made friends with Sinatra’s conductor, the young and talented Quincy Jones. Quincy said he wanted to compose music for sitcoms and we should remember his name if we ever had our ownshows. I couldn’t imagine back then being the show runner of my own show. When I looked at Danny Thomas and Sheldon Leonard, I saw an inner confidence and wisdom that I had not yet developed. Inside I still felt like a wisecracking, fast-talking kid from the Bronx who might eat something I was allergic to and at any minute be rushed to the hospital.
    I was, however, always good at recognizing an opportunity for humor. That was the case the night Fred and I went to a cast party on the Desilu lot. The party was held in the commissary, and writers from all the different shows stood up and told jokes. Fred and I knew the writing team of Bill Persky and Sam Denoff and a few other writers, but most of the people in the room were strangers to us, so it was intimidating. But I stood up and took the mike. There was a head chef named Hal who ran the kitchen where we usually ate lunch. Day after day he wore an apron that looked like it was covered in blood. That night I said, “Hal was going to be here tonight, but he couldn’t make it. He’s in Mexico, where they are having a cockfight on his apron.” That single joke brought down the house. I looked over and saw even Carl Reiner laughing. Months later writers and producers would come up to me and say, “You wrote that joke about Hal’s apron. Funny!”
    During our first year writing for Joey Bishop began to take its toll on us. Fred and Joey would fight. Fred wanted more respect. Joey never had the highest respect for writers, so they were constantly getting into battles. One night Fred was explaining to Joey that we needed to strengthen the “protagonist” in the show to make him more compelling. Fred went on to define the word
protagonist
when it seemed clear Joey didn’t know what it meant. The fact that Fred was talking down to Joey made the star come completely unglued.
    “If you don’t like it here, then get out,” said Joey.
    Fred said “fine” and quit on the spot. I was stuck. Should I quit, too, in solidarity with my partner? In truth I didn’t want to quit. I was starting to like California, and I was just beginning to date a girl named Barbara Sue Wells, who worked as a nurse at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital and happened to live in my apartment building. Barbara was a long-legged very pretty Midwestern girl with thewarmest smile I had ever seen. But I didn’t know what it would be like to write a sitcom without Fred. I weighed the pros and cons. I didn’t want to move back to New York and write for
The Tonight Show
anymore. And I certainly didn’t have a future back at the
Daily News
. So Fred and I talked. He said it was okay to stay in California and find another writing partner. I said goodbye to Fred, and he moved back to New York and got a job on
The Jackie Gleason Show
.
    Joey hired me to keep writing scripts for him and paid me more money. Milt Josefsberg took over as head writer on the show and Milt