Veteran TV-movie writer Harvey Bullock died last Sunday at the age of 84. Bullock was an amazingly prolific author of scripts, usually in partnership with R.S. Allen, whom he met while writing a radio show starring Abe Burrows in 1949. The team of Allen and Bullock went on to become one of the top teams in television writing with credits on The Real McCoys, The Andy Griffith Show, I-Spy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Danny Thomas Show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Bill Dana Show, The Joey Bishop Show, Rango, Hogan's Heroes, Gomer Pyle, Mr. Terrific, My World and Welcome To It, Love American Style, The Doris Day Show, The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, Alice and dozens of others. They also wrote numerous scripts for animation including The Flintstones, Top Cat, The Jetsons and Wait 'til Your Father Gets Home. (Bullock and Allen created and produced the last of these.) This is a very partial list, and I should emphasize that Bullock and Allen wrote some of the most memorable episodes of the TV shows listed. For instance, they did 31 episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, including the one about the goat that ate dynamite, the one where Barney Fife had to track down a cow thief, and the one about Aunt Bea entering a pickle-making contest.
In the world of motion pictures, they wrote Honeymoon Hotel, Girl Happy (starring Elvis Presley), A Man Called Flintstone, With Six You Get Eggroll, Don't Drink the Water and one of my favorite unheralded comedies, Who's Minding the Mint?
Bullock's career slowed in 1981 when his partner Ray Allen passed away…though Harvey did team up in '86 with Everett Greenbaum (whose partner Jim Fritzell had died in '79) and together they wrote the highly-rated TV-Movie, Return to Mayberry, which reunited the characters from The Andy Griffith Show.
Harvey's work will live on and so will his name. In 1974, a police lieutenant character was added to the Batman comic books and he soon became a permanent part of that character's mythology. His name is Harvey Bullock and I don't know quite how it happened but he was apparently named after the writer. I'm told he felt honored.