When Actors Write – Comfort TV Edition

 

“But what I really want to do is direct.”

 

That phrase, spoken by many an actor over the decades, became such a cliché at one point that the American Film Institute immortalized it on a t-shirt. And if you read the credits on many classic TV shows, you’ll often spot the name of cast members taking their turns in the big chair.

 

The transition from actor to writer in series television is not as common in the Comfort TV era, but it has happened several times. And what’s really interesting is that the episodes written by cast members often turn out to be among the best in their respective seasons.

 

The One Hit Wonders

 

Peter Falk
Peter Falk first played Lt. Columbo in 1971, but it wasn’t until 1993 that he tried writing one of the detective’s cases. The result – “It’s All ln the Game,” starring Faye Dunaway as a suspect who tries charming Columbo into letting her get away with murder. It’s such a good script, and the unlikely chemistry between the two leads is so resounding, that there are times you wonder whether she’ll actually succeed. 

 

 

Micky Dolenz

“Mijacogeo” was the final episode of The Monkees, and as with much of the second season it was more an exercise in freeform chaos than sensible storytelling. The evil wizard Glick (Rip Taylor, hamming it up as usual) tries to hypnotize the country with a test pattern stolen from an alien potted plant. Along the way there are random inserts, including one of Adolf Hitler, snippets of two Beatles songs (a first for the series), and some breaking of the fourth wall (“If you think that was exciting, wait till you see what happens after the commercial!”). Even the episode’s song, “Zor and Zam,” misses the mark. 

 

 

Mark Miller

I was not a fan of Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, as I explained in this piece about the series, but stars Mark Miller and Pat Crowley often managed to make dull scripts more interesting. 

 

Miller, who passed away about a month ago at age 97, wrote “The Magnificent Muldoon,” and it’s one of the few episodes I remember fondly since I watched them all on a bootleg set in January of last year. Perhaps he realized the show wasn’t gaining much traction from standard family sitcom plots, so he introduced an eccentric outsider - Burgess Meredith as a Shakespeare-quoting hobo – to shake things up at the Nash residence. And it worked. Miller would later write episodes of The Jeffersons and Diff’rent Strokes.

 

The Occasional Contributors

 

Don Adams

Before starting this piece I was certain that Don Adams wrote several Get Smart episodes, but IMDB credits him with just two. “The King Lives?” is a standout entry that hilariously sends up The Prisoner of Zenda, and provides Adams with an excuse to indulge in his Ronald Colman impression. An un-credited cameo from Johnny Carson adds another touch of class. 

 

 

“To Sire, With Love” also benefits from specials guests, in this case Don Rickles, James Caan, and Pat McCormick (as the dumbest evil henchman in history).

 

Robert Culp

Bill Cosby was the breakout star of I Spy, rendering Robert Culp’s contribution to the series – which included seven scripts – severely underappreciated. I was never a regular viewer so I haven’t seen all of the episodes he wrote, but one of them, “Home to Judgment,” is widely considered the best of the series.

 

Alan Alda

Alda receives writing or co-writing credit on 18 M*A*S*H episodes, including the record-breaking (in viewership) series finale. Two of his better efforts used a letter home as a framing device: “Dear Sis” (Father Mulcahy writers to his sister at Christmas) and “Dear Sigmund” (psychiatrist Sidney Freeman psychoanalyzes the 4077 staff). And in the two-parter “Comrades in Arms,” Hawkeye and Margaret take their love-hate relationship to a new level.

 

 

Bernie Kopell and Fred Grandy

I’ve always thought the cast members of The Love Boat had one of the best jobs in television. With the guest stars carrying the stories they didn’t have to memorize as many lines, they got to play scenes with more show business legends than just about anyone in television, and their job took them to exotic ports around the world.

 

Bernie Kopell and Fred Grandy had so much spare time that together they wrote 11 series episodes. Were they great? 

 

Were any Love Boat stories really great? They were serviceable and they delivered what viewers wanted from this series – romance, comic misunderstandings, and…that’s about it. I did like the Kissing Bandit story they wrote for Billy Crystal, but they also are responsible for the somewhat cringe-worthy “Isaac’s History Lesson,” also known as the hambone episode.

 

The Serious Scribes

 

Ozzie Nelson

It’s amazing how the guy who played himself on television as someone who avoided work at all costs may have actually been the hardest working man in 1950s television. The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet ran for 14 seasons, and Ozzie is listed among the writers of more than 260 of its 435 episodes. He also directed more than 380 of those shows. And they’re all still pretty funny. 

 

 

Michael Landon

As if starring in three successful television series wasn’t enough, Michael Landon also wrote episodes for all of them. His four scripts for Bonanza include two standouts: “Kingdom of Fear,” in which the Cartwrights are abducted and forced to work on a chain gang by a sadistic judge, was originally deemed too brutal for television. “Forever" was, on the surface, about mourning the death of a lady Little Joe loved, but it really served as an unofficial tribute to Dan Blocker, who died prior to the season’s start.

 

For Little House on the Prairie he wrote or co-wrote more than 30 scripts, several of which chronicled milestones in the lives of the Ingalls family. “Journey in the Spring” found Charles traveling home for the funeral of his mother; and in “There’s No Place Like Home” the family moves from Winoka back to Walnut Grove. 

 

 

Landon is credited as the sole creator of his third TV hit, Highway to Heaven, and the writer of more than 20 episodes. A remarkable talent, gone too soon.