The cable channel MeTV is rerunning episodes of the schoolroom sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, which was the first TV series on which I had a staff job. This was back in 1976, back when I was teamed with a talented gent named Dennis Palumbo. The one they ran last Friday night was the first one we worked on, though somehow our names didn't get into its credits.
It was the episode I wrote about here. Groucho Marx came to the set to do a cameo guest shot for it but his health simply wasn't up to it. Instead, pictures were taken of Mr. Marx with the cast and he went home. He looked very sick and very sad, and I assume that's why to this day I've never seen one of those photos anywhere.
There are a couple of interesting stories about the episode which runs this evening, which was called "Horshack Vs. Carvelli." Don't worry. I won't be doing this about all of them.
Dennis and I were hired as story editors during a sort of general coup. The network and the show's star Gabe Kaplan were unhappy with the direction the show was taking. They felt there had been too much emphasis on jokes and silliness, not enough on story and character. That was pretty much the way the show's Executive Producer Jimmie Komack wanted it but no one else did. In a move echoed somewhat by recent news out of the Ukraine, Jimmie was elbowed to one side and a course-correction was instituted.
For what it's worth, I thought Gabe Kaplan was very smart and very right. Absolutely none of the changes he wanted to see come about had anything to do with how much attention or how many laughs he got on the series. As far as he was concerned, Mr. Kotter could become a mute extra on The John Travolta Show if that show was good.
The old producers and story editors were surely capable of changing the direction to what ABC and Gabe wanted but the way things sometimes work in television is that you change the tone by changing the staff. Most of them were ousted and Dennis and I were, I believe, the first newly-hired members of the creative team charged with taking the show back towards its original concept. At least, we were the first ones to report for work.
This particular episode was a transitional one. The outgoing producers had developed it with a freelance writer and he'd delivered a pretty good script…that is, according to the old standard. The producers who'd hired him had gotten what they wanted but those producers were producing no longer, and the script was exactly what the new regime didn't want. Dennis and I were charged with doing a full rewrite of the script to make it into what the folks now in charge wanted the show to be.
The story had to do with a boxing match in which Arnold Horshack, the wimpy/whiny member of Mr. Kotter's class, went up against a recurring character named Carvelli — a street tough from a rival school. Everyone expected Arnold to get flattened and in the final draft by the freelancer, there was a gimmicky twist and Arnold wound up winning. Among the many changes Dennis and I made was to dump the gimmicky twist and have Arnold lose…but then to be hailed as a hero just for having the guts to step into the ring.
As it was going into production, another new producer and a couple more writers were joining the staff and they pitched in on subsequent rewrites. On Kotter, every script was rewritten extensively throughout rehearsals and by the time this one was taped, nothing remained of the original writer's work except the notion of Horshack boxing Carvelli. Page One Rewrites, as they're called, happen on just about every sitcom from time to time — on some, every time — and are usually not a reflection on the skills of the original writer.
During the rehearsal process, Dennis and I continued rewriting along with everyone else. At times, we were rewriting others' rewrites of our rewrites. One moment I will never forget occurred around 4 AM one morning as we were huddled in a dank, windowless office on the ABC lot, floundering about in what must have been about the ninth draft. One or both of us decided that the boxing match scene needed some preliminary business before the match commenced so we added in two things.
One was to have Mr. Woodman — the principal of the school, functioning here as referee — introduce a former student sitting ringside…Dino "Crazy" Delaney. "Crazy" had been mentioned in earlier episodes but had never been seen. We stuck him in there. George Tricker, one of the newly-hired writers on the show, wound up playing the wordless part. I believe he was cut out of syndication prints when they had to trim to make room for more commercials so he may not appear on MeTV.
Then I turned to Dennis and said, "You know what this scene needs? It needs cheerleaders."
Dennis looked at me through bleary eyes. "Cheerleaders?"
I said, "Yes, cheerleaders. People love cheerleaders. There has never been a motion picture or TV show that could not be improved by cheerleaders. If Gone With the Wind had had cheerleaders in it, it might have become a timeless classic."
Dennis stared at me for a long moment, then said — because at 4 AM, almost anything can sound like a good idea — "Okay, fine. Cheerleaders." I wrote in a description of four female students in cheerleader costumes doing a little routine at ringside before the match. They chanted — and it will take me exactly as long to type it here as it did to write it that night —
Horshack! Horshack! We're with you!
Rock him! Sock him! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!
"Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!" was, of course, Horshack's catch-phrase on the show. Someone had stolen Joe E. Ross's old catch-phrase and added another "Ooh!" Just to make it different.
We finished the rewrite, sent it off to be retyped, copied and distributed, then went to our respective homes to crash. The next morning around 11 AM, I staggered into the studio. I did a lot of staggering while on Kotter and I've never had a drink in my life. On stage there — don't ask me how this was arranged so fast — were four young women in cheerleader costumes plus a choreographer. They were practicing the cheer.
It was kind of a stunning moment for me. Something I'd written seven hours earlier had somehow become a reality. It reminded me of when I was much younger and could occasionally master a real good magic trick. It was like, "Gee, how did I do that?"
Just then, the Associate Producer came up to me and said in a grumbling manner that between giving lines to four extras, hiring the choreographer and making the costumes, our little addition had cost the show about fifteen hundred dollars. I said, because I honestly didn't know how much trouble we were in, "Are you telling me we shouldn't have written that in?"
She didn't say yes. She didn't say no. But she did say, "I think the joke would have been just as funny with two girls."
One of those girls, by the way, was Kristine Greco, who I wrote about here. I had met her a few weeks before and we'd begun going out. It was because of the cheerleader bit that we decided to keep our friendship secret. She didn't want people to think she'd gotten a line on the show because of her relationship with one of the writers. I didn't want people to think I'd written it in just for her because…well, you can figure out why not. I hadn't even thought of who they'd get to play the cheerleaders because, you know, it was 4 AM.
Another one of the cheerleaders was Elaine Ballace, who I mentioned here and who I still occasionally see at autograph shows and Hollywood-type events.
A month or two later, I went with Gabe Kaplan to the taping of one of those Battle of the Network Stars athletic events. He was the captain of a team of stars from ABC shows, competing against the CBS team (captained by Telly Savalas) and an NBC team (helmed by Robert Conrad). They did them at Pepperdine University in Malibu and the bleachers were filled with students who had turned out to see the celebrities, especially Jaclyn Smith, get wet. I missed Jaclyn getting out of the pool but in the dressing room, I did see Hal Linden naked.
At one point, Gabe and I were walking by the stands and suddenly, about thirty young women leaped up and with a little bit of improvised terpsichore, chanted…
Kotter! Kotter! We're with you!
Rock him! Sock him! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!
Gabe grinned and waved to them, then turned to me and asked, "Didn't you write that?"
What I said in response was a pretty dumb thing, even for me. I said, "Yeah…where'd they hear it?"
Gabe said, "Maybe they own television sets, you putz!"
Oh, yeah…
Getting back to the episode, I remember two other things that might interest someone. During our first rewrite, Dennis and I had decided to give Carvelli a sidekick. We specified that he be black and I'm pretty sure I was the one who decided to name him Murray. I used to name a lot of characters Murray back then. The casting director recommended a black actor for the part and he was hired and began rehearsing.
It took an hour or two but we all realized he was wrong for the part. He was a very large Murray — tall, wide and built like a Sumo. Carvelli was supposed to be the tough guy who was certain to pound Horshack into library paste…but standing next to this actor, Charlie Fleischer didn't look so menacing. The large black guy was replaced with a smaller black guy, an actor named Bob Harcum who turned out to be so funny that he was brought back to appear on the show several times. Since Dennis and I were not the credited writers of that episode, we did not receive the payments that go to a writer when a character he or she originates appears again.
Another memory. At the last minute, our producer rewrote a line of Gabe's at the end, at the part of the story where he's telling Arnold that though he lost the fight, he won a victory just by showing up. Mr. Kotter said, "As far as we're concerned, you're the gold medal kid with the heavyweight crown." That's a line from a song in West Side Story and it prompted a Defcon-2 Alert from the show's Standards and Practices supervisor.
TV shows don't really have such people now but back then, they were everywhere, interfering and destroying humor in a futile effort to achieve two goals. One was to stop the show and network from being sued. The other was to make sure nothing was said or shown that would spark protests and angry mail. The lady from Broadcast Standards insisted Gabe couldn't say the line because it would surely lead to legal action from…
Well, I don't know. Stephen Sondheim, maybe…or the producers of West Side Story. Perhaps the show would have to pay a music clearance fee and who knew how much that could be?
As I recall, this was not noticed or raised until the final taping and so after the audience was released, everyone stood around on the stage arguing, with the Standards Lady insisting an alternate line be written, taped and substituted. Gabe Kaplan, backed up by others, insisted that it was fine. The line was spoken, not sung. More arguing ensued.
The Standards Lady asked the producers to keep everyone there and in wardrobe for that scene while she went off and phoned someone higher-up at ABC Legal. Gabe Kaplan said, "You can call whoever you like but Mr. Kotter is not saying any other line and I'm going to go get out of these clothes," and he headed for his dressing room. That ended the taping for that evening and I never heard anyone mention any problem with the line again. No one sued. No fees were paid. Nothing.
This was my first experience with Broadcast Standards. As I would soon learn, though they seemed to fill an important need, there was a problem with the whole system. That problem was that the people charged with flagging content that might cause legal problems or public outrage were darn near Always Wrong. If they said Act One was fine but Act Two would spark lawsuits and protests, you could just about bet the family jewels that there would be no hassle over Act Two and if there was any trouble, it would be with Act One. I would accrue many more examples of this throughout my days in network television.
I don't remember much else about this episode and I've already gone on about it a lot longer than it deserves. I was not thrilled with a lot of the final product on that series but I thought this was one of the better ones. Anyway, it's on MeTV tonight, in case you have MeTV and want to catch it and haven't already missed it while reading this.
Oh, wait. I do have to tell you one other thing about it. Remember that outside writer whose work was so totally rewritten? Well, Dennis and I hadn't met him before we did that but we made a point of letting him know what had happened and that he hadn't failed. He had simply done a script for a show that always rewrote heavily and he'd done it adhering to guidelines that through no fault of his were no longer applicable. He absolutely understood.
Still, the experience got him to wondering if maybe he was in the wrong end of his profession. He'd always wanted to pursue a career as a stand-up comedian and writing for sitcoms, which he'd done briefly, began to feel like a mistake to him. Instead, he began to focus on performing.
About three years later, I went out to the Ice House, a popular club in Pasadena to see a friend of mine, Frank Welker, performing. To my surprise, Frank's opening act was that writer and he was very, very funny. His name was Garry Shandling. I believe the next time he wrote for a sitcom, his name was in the title. Wonder if anyone rewrote him then.
