Exit Laughing

Did you hear the one about the old comedy star and the pishers?

Several months before he died, Jack Benny met with a roomful of young NBC executives in Burbank and pitched an idea for a sitcom. He was in failing health, but after more than 60 years in show biz, the legendary funny man thought he had a killer concept:

A liberated modern woman falls for a traditional Italian man and the show is about clashing cultures--old and new--as their love affair blossoms. It was 1974, a time of domestic turmoil, and Benny told his hosts that viewers might enjoy a wry, gentle look at such change.

The 80-year-old comedian, one of the nation’s most beloved entertainers, “really got into it . . . his pitch was just a marvelous acting performance,” recalls Sheldon Leonard, a veteran TV producer and writer who had accompanied his longtime friend to the studio.

“But then there was silence,” Leonard adds. “Finally, one kid told Jack the idea didn’t work. He offered to show him how to make it work, and he looked forward to Jack’s rewrite.”

Benny rose slowly and said: “I look forward to it too. But I’ve got root canal this afternoon and I look forward to that even more.” Calmly, he strolled out of the room.

“This is a business that spits out the old,” says Leonard, 89, shaking his head at the memory. “Experience doesn’t count much anymore, because the people in control are children. In television, a whole cast of characters is dying out, and as they go, who really cares?”

The man who produced “I Spy,” “Make Room for Daddy” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show” laughs ruefully, and a table full of comedy writers nods in agreement. Here at the Algonquin West, it’s just one more story they tell about the pishers--a Yiddish term for inexperienced young people who think they know it all--and the death of television’s golden age.

Call it Broadway Danny Rose does Beverly Hills: a wisecracking crowd of writers who eat well and dress well, but couldn’t sell a hit series now if their lives depended on it. Once, they were the kings of comedy. Some, like Sid Caesar, were huge stars. Others wrote for Benny, George Burns and Phil Silvers. They were powers behind the scenes, gag-writers with their fingers on America’s funny bone who thought they could laugh . . . and work . . . forever.

Now, they meet at different restaurants every month and compare notes on who’s died, whose prostate is in worse shape, and who’s still trying to sell a pilot. To a man, they insist they’re not bitter. Yet their faces tell another story. This is a floating round table of wounded egos and angry pride, where heartburn fights with heartbreak for center stage.

“The joke’s on us,” says Aaron Ruben, one of the regulars at Leonard’s table. “We once embodied a whole world, a very special way of doing comedy, and one by one we’re disappearing. But you know, it’s not like we can’t breathe. In this town, you die when you can’t work.”

So does an entire culture. The aging pranksters who once ruled comedy TV are truly endangered people--craftsmen from another era who pioneered a new medium and captivated millions of viewers, only to lose the biggest ratings battle of all.

“I don’t think people become less funny as they get older, but they do become less hip,” says Barnet Kellman, producer of “Murphy Brown,” “Mad About You” and other shows. “Sitcoms reflect shifting tastes, and there’s a whole new frame of reference today. You’ve got to be in on the joke to tell it. If you’re not, what’s the point of trying?”

A look at the prime-time lineup from 1965--the last year Benny’s show regularly appeared on TV--tells the story. In a quieter, less cynical era, Americans watched “My Three Sons,” “The Lucy Show,” “Bewitched,” “McHale’s Navy,” “My Favorite Martian,” “The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet,” “Hazel” and the like.

Today’s situation comedies are quicker, nastier and more youth-oriented. Casual jokes about condoms and masturbation that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago are now commonplace.

“Styles of humor change and writers have to stay current,” says Bill Persky, who wrote for “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and others. “If Marlo Thomas had a plumbing problem in the ‘60s, she’d call her father. In the ‘70s, Mary Tyler Moore would call a plumber. In the ‘80s, Kate and Allie would fix it themselves--and then Kate would have a six-month affair with the plumber.”

Patience is also a thing of the past: Sitcoms that once told two-act, linear stories have been replaced by quirky, riff-driven shows like “Seinfeld” that put a higher premium on attitude and jokes per minute than plot or character. Meanwhile, actors leap from obscurity to network TV with the speed of a punch line. Nowadays, says producer Norman Lear, “somebody who makes people laugh in a club for three minutes gets their own series. It used to take years.”

As the content of comedy has changed, so has the business. In less than 40 years, sitcoms have evolved from a handful of family-oriented shows on three networks to a multibillion-dollar industry on cable TV that targets key demographic groups with chilling efficiency.

There’s no room for second-best. A show like Benny’s, which bobbed up and down in the ratings for several seasons, might be yanked overnight in 1996. “All in the Family,” which took 26 weeks to catch on, wouldn’t stand a chance with impatient advertisers today.

Neither would the idea of “family entertainment.” These days, sponsors scramble to attract the affluent under-40 group, ignoring most other segments of the population. Programs like “The Golden Girls,” which focused on characters older than 60, now seem quaint and outdated only a decade later.

“You had a sweetness to so many of the older shows, a sense that humor was for an entire family,” says Lee Kalcheim, a longtime writer for “All in the Family” and other programs. “But today’s humor is crueler. It’s edgy, and different people are writing the jokes.”

*

When they broke into TV, writers like Leonard and Ruben had been nurtured by radio, theater and vaudeville; they drew on life experiences outside the medium to tell stories and spent years learning how to polish a script.

Today, a growing number of comedy writers are younger than 30 and they spend little or no time as apprentices in the business. They come to the studios fresh out of Harvard and UCLA, and their chief influence has been television itself.

Jerry Seinfeld, according to his mother, spent years “chained to the TV,” and while his show is praised for originality, he owes an artistic debt to comedians like Benny and Burns. The shtick for which he’s famous--talking to the audience as well as playing a part in the story--was common in 1950s television, and in fact dates from Aristophanes as a comic device.

But who cares about tradition when you’re making so much money? These days, most sitcom writers don’t crank out 39 scripts a season, as in Benny’s era. They write three or four shows a year and aspire to be producers as well, hoping to earn megabucks in syndication rights for a hit series. You don’t just bring your talent to the table, goes the joke. You bring your agent.

If the wunderkind you’re calling on has a memory that begins with “Fresh Prince,” so be it. Larry Gelbart, an industry giant who helped create “M*A*S*H,” swears to the truth of his story about a recent meeting with a young network executive: “I asked him what ideas he was kicking around for the fall. And he said, without a trace of irony, ‘Maybe we can do a white version of “The Wiz.” ’ “

In another meeting, Gelbart says, “a television producer under 40 said: ‘Let me tell you why “M*A*S*H” worked.’ And I answered: ‘Please tell me! After all these years, I haven’t got a clue!’ What was I--some guy working in the dark under the house with a flashlight?”

To be sure, each generation finds its own comic rhythms. The leisurely, slow-building humor of Jack Benny might bore an audience raised on MTV, and it’s important to remember that Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks and other TV writers of the 1950s were once comedy hotshots . . . just like the writers of “Friends,” “Ellen” and “The Nanny” are today.

Mark O’Donnell and his brother, Steve--both in their 40s, both Harvard graduates--typify the new breed. A novelist and periodic contributor to “Saturday Night Live,” Mark praises older sitcoms, yet concedes that he gets impatient with some because they seem formulaic.

Adds Steve, now with “Seinfeld” and formerly head writer for David Letterman: “Many of the older shows had a strangely stilted quality, as if the jokes were being read off index cards. Today, comedy dialogue connects much better. You have a lot more realism on TV.”

But realism for whom? In Hollywood, many industry observers believe that a comedy writer who aims material at people older than 50--even 40--is doomed. The cry of ageism is rampant.

“We’ve all told our share of jokes about this,” says Jack Elinson, a regular at Leonard’s table. “We look at comedies today and say, you call that funny? How could that compare to the Jack Benny show? Then you ask yourself, does anyone remember Jack Benny?”

*

Hal and Al remember. For them, Benny was not just a show. He was a way of life.

Every working day, for nearly 20 years, Hal Goldman and Al Gordon met in a small Hollywood office and helped write the scripts for Benny’s television show. They were a veteran comedy team--joined by George Balzer and Sam Perrin, another duo--and their best work sparkled.

Millions laughed at a 1964 show they wrote about two IRS agents who visited Benny, a notorious cheapskate, and posed a tough question: How could he have possibly entertained four people at Chasens for $3.90, as he claimed on his tax return? The exasperated comedian showed them how, in a black-and-white half-hour that still holds up as a television classic.

It helped that Benny respected his writers. He was a patient man who rarely worked past 3 p.m. and took vacations with his staff. That would shock employees on many shows today, where 30 or more people often sit around until 3 a.m., hammering out scripts under pressure.

“Hal and I had the best jobs in Hollywood,” says Gordon, 71, sitting in a Century City condo and surrounded by photos of himself with Benny and other celebrities. “We worked for a man who was truly a prince in this business. There’s no way we could do that work today.”

The two partners couldn’t be more different. Gordon was the pushy one, the fast-talking kid from the streets of New York who paced back and forth in the room, shouting out one-liners like a human joke machine. Goldman, by contrast, was a mild-mannered fellow from Minnesota who did the typing. He was urbane and well-read, the peacemaker on the staff.

To this day, the two men express genuine admiration for each other’s comedy skills . . . yet each tells a different story about how they wrote hundreds of television scripts.

“Look, I was Jack’s unpolished diamond, the guy who could really deliver the one-liners,” Gordon says. “Hal was a nice man, but I was more active. He wanted to take it easy.”

In his Bel-Air living room, Goldman laughs at his partner’s comment, then gives you his version: “I was the typist, as Al probably told you. And, yes, he couldn’t type. I don’t think he could even spell! Al came up with very good jokes, but I had better judgment.”

They came to writing from different backgrounds. Gordon, who grew up in the same Bronx neighborhood as boxer Jake LaMotta, dropped out of high school to fight in World War II. By chance, he met a group of traveling film stars who recognized his gift for making up jokes.

Although Gordon planned to return home after the war and kill time at the racetrack, he was lured to Hollywood with offers to write radio comedy. But the work was strictly small time.

“One day my agent said, ‘You need a partner, and I’ve got one for you in the next room,’ ” Gordon recalls. “That’s how I met Hal. Two was better than one, so what the hell?”

Goldman, who had graduated from the University of Minnesota, also showed a gift for comedy and radio writing during the war. He had worked with actor Robert Young on Armed Forces Radio, later wrote for Jimmy Durante and was looking for full-time work on the day he met Gordon.

Their big break came several months later: Through friends, they learned that Jack Benny needed new material for Rochester, his black valet. Gordon and Goldman drafted a sketch and stunned Benny by handing it in that afternoon. After another job, they were hired on the spot.

It was 1950, the dawn of TV entertainment, and Benny was preparing to make the transition to a new medium after 20 years as America’s most famous radio entertainer. Goldman and Gordon were right by his side, and they worked for the comedian until his death in 1974.

*

Benny’s TV show was in many ways a replica of his radio act. He remained a penny-pinching, vainglorious man who played the violin badly and was put upon by the world.

Famed for long pauses and a pained “Well!” his best-known gag was the time a robber held him up, demanding “Your money or your life!” After 20 seconds of silence--with the audience in hysterics--the robber repeated the question and Benny answered: “I’m thinking it over!”

Early in a typical week, Goldman and Gordon would kick story ideas around with Perrin and Balzer, then meet with Benny for approval. The teams divided up the two-act show and wrote a draft in several days, after which the comedian met with them to go over it line by line.

There was spirited competition to get jokes into the script, and a key arbiter was a woman unknown to millions of viewers. Jeanette Eymann, an Illinois schoolteacher, had come to Los Angeles on a vacation in 1942 and never went back. She got hired by the advertising agency for Benny’s show, and then--after the job opened up unexpectedly--became a script editor.

Goldman recalls sessions when all four writers were barking out lines, and Eymann kept typing until the script was finished. Periodically, one of the writers realized that four jokes had been offered but only one had been typed, and he’d ask: “Which one did you use?”

“The one that worked,” answered Eymann, her eyes fixed on the page.

Now living in Van Nuys, Eymann, 76, recalls the early days of TV comedy with fondness. The writers told “far too many” dirty jokes in the beginning, forcing her to stand in the hall until they stopped, she says. Yet they learned to respect her, and the five made quite a team.

“A lot of people in this town think they can write comedy,” Eymann says. “But these guys really could. It all starts with the writers. . . . These days too many people have their fingers in the pie and you can tell by the kind of writing that makes it onto television.”

Benny’s TV work aired on CBS and NBC for 16 years. Yet changing tastes--and the huge popularity of “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” in a rival time slot--finally killed the show in 1965. Had the old man with a violin become passe, or could someone like Jack Benny make it today?

Garry Marshall, creator of “Mork and Mindy” and “Happy Days,” says: “Jack was a genius but he wouldn’t last today, because he didn’t tell enough jokes. If he did his long, pained look at the end of a show now, an announcer would come on and start shouting about the next two programs. These new comedy shows are so fast, you could play a bongo drum to them.”

After his show was canceled, Benny did occasional TV specials and Gordon and Goldman kept working for him. Still, they saw the writing on the wall and found other jobs as well.

“I did 47 years in show biz . . . I could go from Dean Martin to Jim Nabors in a heartbeat,” says Gordon, thumbing through pictures of himself with Tony Orlando and other show-biz figures. “But late one night I was driving down Fountain Avenue after work, exhausted, and I thought, what the hell am I doing this for?”

It wasn’t as if he couldn’t get in the door to pitch an idea. Yet there was one incident Gordon had never forgotten--an afternoon several years ago when he was asked to come up with material for a show with younger actors. The minute he entered the room, it felt wrong.

“I gave ‘em jokes, but they only cared about ratings,” Gordon recalls. “They didn’t know the first thing about comedy, and they were telling me how to do it. I said, that’s it.”

Gordon stopped working and took it easy, yet Goldman kept cranking out one-liners until several months ago. At 76, he jokes about being America’s oldest living comedy writer, largely through his 17-year hitch with George Burns. Until the 100-year-old comedian’s death this year, Goldman had worked with him every day, polishing new routines and assembling his books.

“I had a comfortable job,” the writer says, “but I hardly know anyone working now. The business tension is worse than ever, and maybe people my age shouldn’t be doing this.”

TV comedy is a young person’s game, Goldman declares. But his heart says something else.

“Am I nostalgic? Of course I am. Every time I read the obituaries, I see more writers I know dropping like flies. It’s no time to be taking out long-term magazine subscriptions.”

Was that a joke?

“Can’t help it,” he says. “Funny is funny.”