I mentioned my old employer, TV producer Jimmie Komack here. This prompted questions from Dave Harvey…
As is often the case when I read your posts, it prompts some additional internet browsing. I looked up James Komack on Wikipedia and IMDB, and was wondering if you could answer a couple questions.
Do you have any knowledge of the Milton Berle illegitimate son story? Did Mr. Komack ever verify or refute this story?
Komack was a highly successful writer/producer for a long time, but for the last decade or so of his life, he has zero IMDB credits. Was that Hollywood ageism at work, or something else?
Thanks for your always engaging website.
Well, I didn't know Jimmie all that well. During the season I worked for him on Welcome Back, Kotter, he and our star Gabe Kaplan weren't, to put it politely, quite getting along; you know, the way Israel and Palestine don't quite get along. The Kotter staff more-or-less broke into two camps — the Komack camp and the Kaplan camp — and my partner and I were on the Kaplan side.
Despite this, I got along okay with Jimmie and liked him even though there was no real reason to. He seemed to get a kick out of the fact that I knew his background, dating back to when he was a stand-up comic and about as far down that ladder as you could possibly be. He had an amazing career, working his way up to an actor, then a director, then a producer and finally the executive producer of a few hit shows.
He struck me as very savvy at knowing how to appease the networks at that moment…and that's about the only skill of his I ever saw. I'd be very surprised if any of the dozens of writers he employed over the years would say, "That Jimmie Komack…he knew comedy." His three big producing successes (The Courtship of Eddie's Father, Chico and the Man, and Welcome Back, Kotter) all struck me as cases where he let someone else run the show…and was wise enough to have it be the right someone. After that, it was a lot of short-term flops and failed pilots especially when he got more involved.
One day while I was working for him, he had two new series cancelled…on the same day. ABC cancelled Mr. T and Tina starring Pat Morita. NBC cancelled, without ever airing a single episode, a series called Snip! starring David Brenner. Both axed the same day. I remembered that back when Komack had appeared in the Broadway play and movie of Damn Yankees, he'd had a line where he said, "Three for five! Three for five!" His character was proud that he'd gotten three hits in five "at bats." So I went into his office and called out, "Three for five, Jimmie! Three for five!"
There are moments in this world when you start to say something and just as you pass the Fail Safe moment — the point where there's no stopping yourself — you realize maybe it's the precise wrong thing to say. As I reached that moment, I caught a clearer glimpse of his expression. He looked like his whole family had died and I knew he wouldn't laugh at what was already coming out of my mouth. Indeed, he did not. He stared at me with horror and hatred as if to say, "Why are you bothering me in my hour of grief?"
Then a very long four seconds later, he "got it" — he still had three hits out of five series he'd sold through his own company — and he started laughing uproariously. I remember that because in all the time I worked for him, it was the only time I said or wrote anything he seemed to think was funny.
One day, he asked me into his office and in an odd way, quizzed me if everything was all right with me, personally. Was I happy? Was I depressed? I told him apart from the insane hours I was working, everything was peachy. He said, "Well, you know…if you ever have a problem, personal or professional, you can come to me. My door is always open if you just want to talk." I had no idea what that was all about. Neither did several others in the office who heard similar things from him. A week or two later, the star of Chico and the Man committed suicide and we all went, "Aha!"
He was very pragmatic and realistic about where he was in the TV business. He used to say, "When I get cold, I'll get ice cold." After a bunch of shows beyond his three hits failed, he got ice cold. I don't think he suffered from ageism at all. I think he just had too damn many flops. When your ratio goes out of whack like that, buyers wonder if you've lost your touch…or maybe never really had one in the first place. Either way, they don't line up to buy from you.
The next-to-last time I saw him, he was about to direct the third Porky's movie and he was talking about how this would be his comeback (he didn't use that word) and how he'd be back again. The film was roundly disliked and didn't do much business…and I think that was it for Mr. Komack. He didn't do much of anything after that.
The last time I saw him was during the '88 Writers Guild strike. There was a big upcoming vote and some of us who wanted the then-on-the-table offer to be defeated were scurrying to amass proxies from members who wouldn't be attending the meeting. I was working at WGA HQ and Jimmie came in with his. He wanted to entrust his vote to someone who'd vote against the offer and when he found out I could be that person, he came over and gave it to me. It was a brief but awkward conversation as he was not in great health or spirit. I'm surprised he made it to '97, which is when he died. Some time before then, he tried and failed a few times to assemble a Welcome Back, Kotter reunion TV-movie.
We never discussed the Berle rumor and I guess I need to explain what that's all about. In his 1975 autobiography, Milton Berle "revealed" that he'd once gotten a prominent actress pregnant and that she'd had the baby but convinced another man (one who married her) that it was his. The actress, her husband and the baby were all unnamed in the book but Berle said that the kid had grown up to be a prominent TV producer with several hits on the air. This has led some people to deduce it was Jimmie Komack.
Jimmie never mentioned it to me but I don't believe it. For one thing, the timetable doesn't work out. Berle was born in 1908 and Komack in 1924, and the story Berle tells in his book of getting this woman pregnant did not occur when he was 16 years old; more like in his mid-to-late-twenties. Secondly, in the book Berle talks about how a "kid" who claimed to be a TV producer approached him at a charity event about maybe appearing in a pilot he was producing.
Berle didn't know who the kid was, didn't think he was legit and brushed him off. Only later did Uncle Miltie find out the "kid" had several hit shows on…and that he was the son of that actress — i.e., his son. What's wrong with that tale? Everything, starting with the fact that Berle and Komack had traveled in many of the same circles for years and must have crossed paths many times before that charity event. Also, Komack was fifty years old when he had his second hit (Chico and the Man) — hardly a kid — and I don't think his mother was in show business.
So who was Berle's illegitimate son? My guess is no one. I think he made the whole thing up, just as he probably made up the story he told in the same book about coming out to Hollywood as a kid and playing the newsboy opposite Charlie Chaplin in Tillie's Punctured Romance. Berle had three children, all adopted, and he was hypersensitive to rumors that he was gay. People do whisper such things when you spend half your career prancing about in women's clothing and acting like a campy drag queen.
I do know I never saw Komack taking after his alleged father like that. Then again, like I said, I didn't know him that well.