Deconstructing the Rat Pack by Richard A. Lertzman

Author:Richard A. Lertzman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2020-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

After being basically a joke writer for comics, Marshall also discussed how he learned to craft funny stories for situation comedies on The Joey Bishop Show. He recalled, “There was a big change in the industry. They were having the funny comedy writers do the variety shows and they assigned serious writers to write ‘funny’ for the situation comedies, which was a mistake. So they decided to teach the comedy writers—who were mostly writing jokes for nightclub comics—to write stories … and we didn’t know how to write for pleasant shows like Leave it to Beaver or Ozzie and Harriet. All we knew was how to write BIG, big hard jokes. Before Phil Silvers and Bilko, no one wrote stories. Nat Hiken changed that.”

Warren Berlinger recalls, “It was a fascinating year. Joey was mercurial. You never knew which Joey you would get. Once I was in the room when Joey got a call that he put on a speakerphone. His agent told him that Frank, Dean, and Sammy were planning to jet off to Japan. And then the agent said, ‘They don’t want to involve you!’ I’m telling you the blood drained out of Joey’s face. He threw a huge fit. He was throwing things, screaming. We all ran for cover!”

There seemed to be a morbid curiosity as to what was going on behind the scenes at The Joey Bishop Show. It became almost a cause célebrè. Speculation was rampant about what Garry Marshall described as “the fighting, screaming, yelling, and drama.”

Rocky Kalish, who was working on The Danny Thomas Show, remembered: “We would sneak on to the set during breaks. It was free entertainment. A circus. You’d see producers and writers carrying their bottles of Maalox. No one was immune. Even the owner of the company, Danny Thomas—Joey was yelling at him because he forced him into a farkakte [Yiddish for crappy] format and shoved his daughter [Marlo Thomas] down their throats. Lou Edelman, who was the most even-keeled, sweetest man you’d ever meet, was aging before our eyes. Directors were wearing pith helmets to protect themselves. Joey was an enfant terrible. I was offered nearly double my salary to turn out a couple episodes and I turned them down. And at that time, I could have used the scratch.”

“‘Sick, Sick, Sick’: All’s Not Right with Joey,” a rather frank article by Dwight Whitney for TV Guide, related that that was how Joey felt when his new comedy show fell apart.

Joey Bishop was a deeply troubled man. Nobody liked his TV show. The critics didn’t like it (they said it was cliché-ridden; the director didn’t like it (he quit); the actors didn’t like it (four of them were fired); indeed, for a while even Bishop himself didn’t like it. Privately, what they were saying was even more distressing. The show was in a “chaotic” state. The star was behaving like a martinet. Going on the set, to quote one player, was “like stepping into a mortuary to view the remains.

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