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The comedy team of Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster — best known for appearing incessantly on The Ed Sullivan Show — created and wrote this pilot that starred the comedy team of Jack Burns and Avery Schreiber. One suspects that Wayne and Shuster wrote it for themselves and couldn't get it produced with themselves in the lead roles. (Wayne and Shuster once starred in a short-lived sitcom called Holiday Lodge which was a summer replacement for Jack Benny. I recall it being kinda funny but I was nine at the time and haven't seen it since.)

(One other parenthetical aside: The year before, Burns and Schreiber starred in a summer-replacement series for CBS called Our Place that was produced by Ed Sullivan's company.)

This one — Operation Greasepaint — was directed by Bud Yorkin and at first glance, you might think they were going for the look and feel of M*A*S*H but the movie of M*A*S*H wasn't made until 1970 and the TV show didn't go on until 1972 and Operation Greasepaint was made in 1968. It also stars among other people, a very young Fred Willard and the character actor Johnny Haymer who we talked about back here and who did wind up with a recurring role on the M*A*S*H sitcom. I kinda like this pilot…or at least, I like it more than a lot of pilots that did sell…