‘Sitcom Writers’: From ‘Dick Van Dyke’ to ‘Everybody Loves Raymond,’ A Behind-the-Scenes Journey

The Evolution of the Idea

Explains Paula, “Early on I had thought of writing a memoir about growing up with a funny father. As a first step, I called a few of my dad’s friends to solicit their recollections of him. These were his former colleagues, Leonard Stern [Get Smart], Sherwood Schwartz [Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch] and Larry Gelbart [M*A*S*H]. They all were happy to talk about him, but they also told entertaining stories from their own careers. I decided to broaden the book’s topic to include a variety of writers’ perspectives, and to show how TV writing had evolved since my dad first started.”

Her research began with deciding which shows she wanted to showcase, a decision based on various online lists of “best” or “favorite” sitcoms of each decade. From there she looked up the key writers associated with those shows (thank you, IMDB.com). “Since this was my first book in the genre,” she laughs, “I made the mistake of making the interviews too long and interviewing too many subjects. I ended up with 1,300 single-spaced typed pages of transcripts.”

Talking to Some TV Legends

There may have been too many, but Paula was pretty delighted speaking to so many comedy legends. “Obviously I was thrilled to connect with legends like Carl Reiner [The Dick Van Dyke Show] and Norman Lear [All in the Family],” she says. “Talking to the Simpsons writers was meaningful to me, because The Simpsons is one of my favorite shows. I felt the recollections of the older writers such as Leonard Stern were especially valuable, because of the history they reflected. I especially appreciated Treva Silverman’s [The Mary Tyler Moore Show] candor and detail in describing her creative process — but I actually got something worthwhile from every interview. As they’d launch into a particularly entertaining anecdote, or make a particularly insightful comment, I’d be thinking to myself at the time, ‘I’m getting gold here!’”

‘A Martian Wouldn’t Say That!’

The interviews in the book run the gamut from the Golden Age of Television to the present days, reflecting common themes discussed by those varied writers and some key differences as well: “A common theme was the writers’ lack of confidence in networks execs’ creative judgment and vision. As Leonard Stern put it, ‘The execs were picked for their business acumen or their organizational skills; they weren’t sure of ideas and how to deal with them.’ Another common complaint was the silliness of censors’ objections. Leonard even compiled a book of the most outrageous examples! For the title, he used a censor’s comment from a My Favorite Martian script: ‘A Martian Wouldn’t Say That.’

“One of the biggest differences,” continues Paula, “is in the evolution of writers’ rooms. The early sitcom ‘rooms’ consisted of small, congenial meetings of a few people. They’ve expanded into large groups of writers often shouting, arguing, and competing to get a word in. And of course, technology has changed the way the work is done: I have a photo of my dad and two other Honeymooners writers reading a script page still in the typewriter. Today they use screens!”

The Changing Nature of TV Comedy

These observations have essentially given her a ringside seat to the history of TV sitcoms, particularly the way in which the genre has changed over the decades. “Obviously, the content has changed dramatically,” she reflects. “The early shows’ stories were simple and the subject matter was childish. Characters didn’t cope with serious problems or illness. The scope of what the writers could cover was much more limited, and the episodes had little or nothing to do with real life. As writer Joel Rapp says of Gilligan’s Island, ‘You could make up any kind of nonsense for that show!’ Everyone knows — and many complain — about the prevalence of profanity as sitcoms have progressed. Gender roles have changed: in early sitcoms, the husband earned the money and the wife/mother was content in the kitchen. Children were better behaved and didn’t disrespect their elders. Contrast that to Bart Simpson! Racial and sexual diversity was almost absent in earlier shows. It seems to me that TV jokes today are more mean-spirited and characters have become more obnoxious.”

“Most early shows had only one plot per episode, whereas episodes of shows like M*A*S*H, Seinfeld, and Curb Your Enthusiasm had multiple storylines. Former M*A*S*H producer John Rappaport recalls writing one with seven stories! [‘No Sweat,’ season 9, episode 11] Today, audiences see less of their favorite shows compared to TV’s early days: fewer episodes air per season, and commercials take up more of each episode. Camera set-ups have gone from single-cam (shot like movies) to multi-cam, with live audiences attending … and now today, single camera sitcoms are again prevalent.”

Lessons Learned

There were, she explains, certain revelations she came away with — some of which were pretty unexpected. “I was surprised by how much stress and anxiety some of the writers put themselves through,” she concludes. “Norman Lear spent years weeping and throwing up over deadlines! Also surprising was the writers’ self-doubts. I asked if they had confidence in their ability to always find the funny and received such responses as, ‘No, not at all. Not ever.’ ‘Every time I finish a script, I think that’s it; that’s the end of my career.’”

For brief excerpts from some of Paula’s interviews, please continue to scroll down.

Carl Reiner on ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’

Prior to The Dick Van Dyke Show, many TV sitcoms were about a battle of the sexes, whereas the approach to The Dick Van Dyke Show was different in terms of the relationship between Rob and Laura Petrie (Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore). In his interview with Paula Finn, Carl points out that on I Love Lucy, Lucy was was always trying to fool Ricky, motivated by the fact that she was trying to get in his show or be an actress. Helping her would be best friend Ethel Mertz and there was always some crazy plot going on. What Carl wanted to do, instead, was write about he and his own wife.

“She was much smarter than me,” he says. “We had our arguments, but rather than being two against each other, we were two against the world. So Rob and Laura would argue, but the audience always knew that their marriage was strong.”

‘Oh, You’re Going Somewhere, Alice’ — But Where?

As noted earlier, producer Leonard Stern is one writer who was particularly fascinated by the inane notes that would come from the networks. “Here’s one from The Honeymooners,” he relates to Paula. “‘When Ralph says, ‘You’re gong to the moon, Alice,’ it may be the wrong destination. The moon is generally regarded as romantic. Could Ralph send her to Mars?'”

‘All in the Family’ — The Secret of Its Success

For Norman Lear, the success of All in the Family came down to one very important thing: “The four actors were heaven-sent,” he muses. “The way they worked together and off of each other — in every direction, whether it’s Edith and Gloria, Edith and Archie, Archie and Edith, Archie and Mike, Mike and Gloria — the four of them, the chemistry was just very explosive. And that’s a gift of the gods. So that was the biggest factor. We wrote well, but that cast was miraculous.”

Timing Was So Important For ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’

The impact of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, says series co-creator James L. Brooks, was so strong because they were “lucky enough” to have the show airing at the time of the feminist revolution. What this meant was that events taking place in the culture around the writers ultimately helped fuel the show itself. “I don’t think it was in Mary’s character to be a feminist,” he explains, “but … when you’re doing a television show in that time and women’s rights are such an issue, people wanted to politicize the show and get their hands on the steering wheel. And our job was to keep everybody’s hands off the steering wheel and let the show be true to its characters.”

Instant Chemistry on ‘Roseanne’

Roseanne creator Matt Williams explains that in the search for the right actor to play Roseanne’s husband, Dan, referred to a guest star on the Bruce Willis/Cybill Shepherd series Moonlighting, who turned out to be John Goodman. “Later,” Matt explains, “when I had written a couple of audition scenes, Roseanne [Barr] was sitting in a rehearsal room and John walked in. She looked up at him and he looked at her; they didn’t say a word. And then she says, ‘What the f–k are you lookin’ at?’ He said, ‘Move your fat ass’ and — God’s truth — sat down next to her and started doing the scenes. And she just lit up and started laughing at him, and they started teasing. [We] looked at each other and went, ‘Holy s–t. You can’t write this kind of chemistry.’ It was there. So that became the center of the show.”

One Show Influences Another

Phil Rosenthal, co-creator of Everybody Loves Raymond, explains that one of the big influences on him, and therefore the show itself, was the Jackie Gleason/Art Carney series The Honeymooners. As he notes, he was attracted to shows that were rooted to some degree in reality. “Now, The Honeymooners had a certain amount of exaggeration to it, but not enough that it took me out of the believable situation. On Raymond we had one rule in the writers’ room, and that was, ‘Could this happen?’ And The Honeymooners and the shows I tried to emulate after it — like All in the Family, Mary Tyler Moore, The Odd Couple, Roseanne and The Cosby Show from the 1980s — had real people in real situations. And I use the word real to mean not actually real the way it would happen in real life all the time, but believable.”