My post about the Some Like It Hot sitcom pilot brought forth a lot of mail including this one from someone who signed their message "LJS"…
Longtime fan from many venues, but I'm not going to bore you with all of them now. Just wanted to follow up about the Some Like It Hot pilot. I've never seen it either (I wish I had), but Laurence Maslon has. He writes about it in his book on Some Like It Hot.
Besides the cast members you mentioned, Robert Strauss, Jack Albertson, and Jerry Paris (you might be able to find a Dick Van Dyke Show connection there…) all appeared. Anthony Caruso played Spats Columbo's brother (although Maslon has a source that says George Raft wanted to do it as a twin) and Rudy Vallee plays a character called "The Millionaire" who was apparently meant to recur.
Besides Ms. Shawlee (whom Maslon said only got one line in the episode), Mike Mazurki and Sandra Warner returned from the movie. The pilot was written by Herbert Baker, who had a lot of experience in comedy, and directed by Walter Grauman, who didn't. (He was a very fine director of dramatic television shows, however.)
Billy Wilder was supposed to consult, but unsurprisingly, he got busy. He did retain 20% ownership of the show, though. It was a co-production of Ziv and The Mirisches, filmed at NBC. The most interesting trivia Maslon shared was that Curtis was paid with a painting he liked at a local gallery and Lemmon was paid with a shopping spree at a men's clothing store.
Please let us all know if any of your readers know a source for seeing the pilot anywhere. It must still exist somewhere because Maslon has seen it.
Thanks for everything on the blog and for your many other contributions, too.
I hereby let you know that it turns out that a friend of mine has a copy of the pilot and I'll probably see it next time we get together. I shall report on it here after that happens. The friend does not however know the answer to a question that others in my e-mailbox asked me: Did this thing ever air? Back then, it was not uncommon for the networks to burn off unsold pilots, usually in the Summer and usually in "anthology shows" with names like Vacation Playhouse.
But not all unsold pilots made it to air and I would think that if this one had, we'd know more about it. If it never aired, that might explain why there's no mention of it on IMDB.
Interesting that Herbert Baker wrote the pilot. I picketed with Mr. Baker during one of the many Writers Guild strikes and we talked about his work with Danny Kaye (didn't like the man) and Henry Morgan (did). I wish I'd known about the pilot then so I could have asked him about it. He died in June of 1983 so this must have been the 1981 strike. There have been so many, it's hard to keep track.