NEW YOU TUBE INTERVIEW WITH HARVEY BROWNSTONE
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Richard Johnson in the Daily News
RICHARD JOHNSON:
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Susan Silver, an original writer of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” was eager to see “Being Mary Tyler Moore,” which will air on HBO in May.
She had given a filmed interview for the documentary. But much to her surprise and disappointment, it turned out that all the interviews (including hers), were used only as voice-overs.
Nonetheless, Silver was excited the producers used the picture of her from a “TV Guide” article showing her in hot pants, since her memoir is called “Hot Pants in Hollywood.”
She hastens to point out “that was my wardrobe, not my behavior” … despite the subtitle, “Sex, Secrets & Sitcoms.”
GROWING BOLDER
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https://www.bookclubct.com/online-store/Hot-Pants-in-Hollywood-Sex-Secrets-&-Sitcoms-NEW-SIGNED-p275592306
USA ARTICLE
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BUZZFEED ARTICLE BY GREAT JENNIFER KEISHIN ARMSTRONG
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PODCAST FOR NEW YORK TOURISM
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COME TO NY
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=319597052536608
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Lively and in-depth discussions of city news, politics, science, entertainment, the arts, and more.
Hosted by Larry Mantle
Rhoda, She Wrote: ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ Writer On Creating Valerie Harper’s Alter Ego
Article in Washington Post 9/02/19
In writing Rhoda on ‘Mary Tyler Moore,’ I drew from my ‘pushy’ side.
Stacy Knows, Connecting people to good things. Features Hot Pant’s in Hollywood!
Volume 18, Number 1, January 2019
Pioneering Sitcom Writer to Join Upcoming Book & Author Events
Susan Silver became a trailblazing television sitcom writer at a time when women weren’t invited into the male-dominated industry. Teamed with Iris Rainer Dart, who later wrote Beaches, she helped break the glass ceiling with “Love American Style.”
Following that, Silver’s credits include a dazzling cornucopia of many of the most-iconic programs in TV history—“The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Maude,” “The Partridge Family,” “The Bob Newhart Show,” and “Square Pegs,” among others—thoroughly disproving the theory that women can’t write comedy.
In her hilarious and sometimes shocking, but honest, memoir, Hot Pants in Hollywood: Sex, Secrets & Sitcoms, Silver, a midwestern girl from Milwaukee with its Sixties values and normalcy, tells (almost) all about her encounters over the years with a wide- ranging cast of characters from Steve McQueen, Lenny Bruce, and Bill Cosby to Bill Clinton and Shimon Peres.
Along the way, she has had a weekly radio commentary, “Susan Says,” on NPR covering news, politics, and culture; had a long-running online column, “The Search for Mr. Adequate,” aimed at Baby Boomers dealing with divorce, dating, aging parents, or young women of today, looking for advice on work or love; appeared on CNN, “The Today Show,” and “Good Day New York”; and written op-eds for The New York Times.
In talking about Hot Pants in Hollywood, the late Gary Marshall, director of “Happy Days” and “Pretty Woman,” said: “Susan Silver examines everything funny, including her own life. [She is a] talented writer, whose book should be read by those who like to laugh.”
Now, capping off her string of triumphs, Susan Silver will be featured at Book & Author, February 27 and 28, 2019. Be sure not to miss it.
Recent Podcasts
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Leonard Lopate at large interviews Susan Silver.
Writers Bone, Pop Literacy with Susan Silver.
SUSAN SILVER
by Kathryn Boughton
With the recent unsavory revelations coming out of the entertainment industry, Susan Silver’s new book, Hot Pants in Hollywood: Sex, Secrets & Sitcoms, has a timely quality not always enjoyed by tell-all memoirs.
Silver, who wrote laugh lines for some of the most iconic sitcoms of the 1970s, writes in her book that she is like Woody Allen’s character, Zelig, who stood next to every famous person in history. In her case, some of those persons were Jim Morrison, a college acquaintance she knew before he assumed his bad-boy persona; Bill Cosby, who she escaped by inches; Elvis Presley, whose intentions she did not wait around to assess; Steve McQueen, who abruptly withdrew his dinner invitation when she pointed out a man she had had a crush on, and Richard Nixon, who, blessedly, did not make any advances.
Still, she says, she did not face the kind of sexual pressure many women—and men—are reporting today. “I was either the luckiest person or nobody wanted me,” she quipped. I knew Harvey Weinstein but he was just nasty. I know it was prevalent, but if I said ‘no’ to men, they were just fine with it. Stupid men, that they would risk everything to be with us. Good for us.”
In the book, which she will discuss and sign November 18th at 1PM at the Merritt Book Store in Millbrook, Silver chronicles her years as a trailblazing comedy writer on 1970s blockbusters such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Maude and The Partridge Family.
Her tour de force career was, ironically, enhanced by the very paucity of women in the business at that time. A Midwestern girl who grew up near Milwaukee, she was the daughter of parents who did not encourage—or really discourage—her career choice. “I started writing when I was about ten years old and was always a funny kid, mainly to keep myself sane,” she said. “I don’t think they wanted me to be in show business. I was an only child and wasn’t allowed to cross Main Street by myself until I was twelve.”
Despite her parents’ doubts, there were telltale signs of their pride in her accomplishments. Her father, Morey Bensman, kept everything she wrote until his death at age 91, and her mother, Dorothy Horowitz, initially dubious about her daughter’s writing career, was immediately converted when Emmy Award-winning actor Ed Asner mentioned Silver in his acceptance speech.
At eighteen she escaped Milwaukee, going to Northwestern University, where she became involved in theater and soon identified herself as a writer rather than as an actor. “I wrote a sketch and when it was performed I could hear people laughing,” she said. “I said to myself, ‘That is what I want to do.’”
She was literally forced to look beyond the careers then open to women, confessing that she couldn’t be a secretary because I have the worst skills. I was told you have to take typing and shorthand, but I couldn’t do it so I took speed writing. But when I got a job at a local television station in LA, I would have to make up the letters I sent out because I couldn’t read the squiggles I put on paper. It was a nightmare.”
At the University of California at Los Angeles she studied screenwriting with Francis Ford Coppola, acted in local theater productions and appeared on-camera stints at TV stations. In 1969 was casting director for Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, but it was putting stories on paper that still attracted her.
“I wanted to be a writer,” she said, “but I was told men didn’t want any women in their office, which was an apartment. I was told they wanted to walk around in their underwear and fart. Farting almost cost me my career.”
Instead, she closed the door to her Laugh-In office and wrote anyway. She formed a writing partnership with Iris Rainer Dart, author of Beaches. The two wrote Love American Style and co-wrote an episode of That Girl with Marlo Thomas. The episode called for Anne Marie to marry her long-time boyfriend but Thomas nixed the idea, not wanting to let down single women.
Then serendipity struck. Dart took a hiatus to have a baby and Silver saw the Mary Tyler Moore Show, which had debuted mid-season. She was then managed by sitcom icon, Garry Marshall. “I told Garry I could do that show because I was from the Midwest and had worked in a small television station.”
With Marshall backing her, she was allowed to pitch stories for the series, stories that reflected a previously unexplored female perspective. “I wasn’t aware that I could make up stories,” she revealed, “so I pitched stories from my own life.” Her first was one most women can relate to, about being a bridesmaid in a gown you detest for someone you don’t like very much.
“It was the best experience,” she said. “Allan Burns and Jim Brooks wanted an authentic female point of view. I went in with stories that most women could have shared but men hadn’t heard them before. It was the best possible place to start.”
She said there are three schools of comedy: realistic (Bob Newhart),political (Maude) and “recess” (Happy Days and its ilk). “I managed to do all three.”
She explained that sitcom writing is all about listening to the characters’ voices and how one sounds different from others. She based some of her characters on people she knew, fashioning Bob Newhart on her laconic ex-husband while her mother was the model for Maude.
Mary Tyler Moore was both very close to the character she played and executive producer of her show. “She was just that person on the show,” she said. “She never acted like a diva and at readings she would always get it immediately. Valerie [Harper, who played Rhoda] experimented a little and Cloris [Leachman, who played Phyllis] was just nuts and was all over the place.”
Silver said the prospects for writers has not gotten better since the 1970s, when many episodes were written by freelancers. “It’s very different,” she said. “Now they have this writers’ room thing, where there are seven people in a room writing a show. I don’t like it. I call it ‘spritzing’ and don’t consider it writing. There is no pride of ownership. We had our meetings and then went home to write.”
Worse than the lack of individual craftsmanship is ageism. “If you are over forty, don’t show up,” she said. She recounted the story of one successful writer who partnered with his son. “He was told to let his son talk in meetings and then go home and do the writing.”
It is not a wasteland in entertainment, however. She points to comedians like Amy Schumer Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Mindy Kaling. Pressed for a television show she likes, she termed Veep “brilliant” but said she is now more of a news junkie. She offers a weekly radio commentary, Susan Says, on the NPR affiliate robinhood.com.
https://lifewiselady.com/sitcom-writer-sex-career-stars/
THE INTERVIEW WAS THE SHORTEST EVER..BUT THE EVENT WAS GREAT! DON’T BLINK.
Click image or this link to get more details.
HERE IS MY RADIO BROADCAST PROMOTING MY BOOK STORE EVENT IN MILBROOK. MERRITT BOOK STORE NOV 18. 1-2PM
PLEASE COME BY AND SAY HI ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE A LISTENER TO “SUSAN SAYS”
Most fun interview with the hysterical host Cody LaGrow on Newsy
A Pioneer Looks Back at Life at the Writers’ Table Which Was Not a Common Place for Women
The Emmy Awards are this Sunday, and as good as the acting may be, it’s really about what they’re saying. Writing can make or break a sitcom. And it always helps when the writer can get into the mind of all kinds of people. A criticism so often heard about Hollywood is the lack of diversity, especially in the writers’ room. Even now, in 2017, there aren’t that many women at the table so imagine what it was like in the early ‘70s. Susan Silver was there. Silver wrote for shows like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show and Square Pegs. She sheds details of those days in her latest book, Hot Pants in Hollywood: Sex, Secrets and Sitcoms, and gives us the juicy “behind the scenes” view.
Click here to listen to the interview.
I AM THRILLED INTO CAPITAL LETTERS!
This great interview in print and on podcast brought the book up to #9 on the Amazon Kindle list! Very appreciative…hope you enjoy.
‘Mary Tyler Moore’ writer tells all about her life among Hollywood’s A-listers
By Stephanie Nolasco
Published August 24, 2017
When TV director Garry Marshall helped Susan Silver land a writing gig on a sitcom called “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in 1971, she thought nothing about bringing the leading lady to life.
“I thought I wasn’t allowed to make anything up,” Silver told Fox News. “That’s how naive I was. So I went in with stories from my own life. And they thought I was so brilliant! I wasn’t.”
Silver, one of the original writers behind the hit show about a news producer living in Minneapolis, relied on her own personal misadventures, which inspired new episodes. Silver insisted it worked because other women could easily identity with them. She described her tales in her new memoir, titled “Hot Pants in Hollywood.”
“Every woman I know loves their best friend more than anything, but you don’t necessarily want to have them in your workplace, too,” said Silver. “When Rhoda [Valerie Harper] lost her job and there was a position available at the station, Mary kind of hesitated… I think we all have those feelings. I just pitched stories from my own life.”
The one idea Silver did not come up with was the concept of having a character who was single.
“It started out that she was supposed to be divorced,” said Silver. “And the network said, ‘No, no, we can’t have a divorced woman because they’ll think she divorced [former co-star] Dick Van Dyke, because she had been the wife on ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show.’”
And not all of Silver’s past experiences made it on the screen. Before she took on the role, the comedy writer from Wisconsin attended UCLA where she befriend a poet who would go on to become a rock star.
“[Jim Morrison], he was my pal,” she described. “Jim Morrison was not the guy that we know from The Doors in college. He was very preppy… He had that little bowl haircut. He was very shy. He was a poet. And we used to hang out in the theater department of UCLA. He always had these poems.”
Silver recalled how Morrison befriended a biker name Max Schwartz, who ultimately became a prominent beatnik poet in San Francisco. She claimed it was Schwartz who inspired Morrison to take on a new look.
“[Schwartz] wore a lot of leather and had long hair,” she recalled. “I believe Jim took his persona, I really do. Because that’s the kind of persona he developed. He was so shy, quiet, and clean cut. But years later when I saw Jim at the Troubadour, it was like who’s that? It was another person.”
Silver also told us about an unwanted encounter with another future star. In 1963, a family friend, who was managing a new comedian named Bill Cosby, suggested he could drive her home after attending a party for “Hootenanny,” a musical variety show on ABC. It was one of Cosby’s first TV appearances. She revealed how Cosby seemed interested in giving her a chance to collaborate with him.
“He said, ‘I’ve just done my first album. Would you like to work on my second?’ I said, ‘Are you kidding? Of course I would,’” she said. “I was so excited. We got to my apartment and he lunged at me and I did the Lucille Ball, falling out of the car with my legs up in the air.