See You In Nairobi
How Work Became Fun-The Second Time Around Adventures in the Laugh Trade
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“Twentieth Century Follies” was an interesting show. It not only started Sol and me on an 18 year partnership, but it gave me an opportunity to work with the likes of Alan King, Diahann Carroll, June Allyson, Edger Bergen, Milton Berle, Chubby Checker, Pinky Lee, Virginia Mayo, Ed McMahon, Mantan Moreland, Johnnie Ray and even that great Dodger baseball player Duke Snider. These were all favorites of mine from radio, movies and the baseball diamond and here I was working with them in person. What a thrill. The show had this group of stars of by-gone days because the theme was remembering the good, the bad and the follies, that happened up to that year, 1972, in the 20th century. Get it? “Twentieth Century Follies.”
It was about everybody’s favorite pastime, nostalgia. We did jokes, songs and sketches about “Bond Drives,” World War II,” “The death of the DeSoto automobile,” “Hula Hoops,” “
Sol and I wrote a sketch that defined the show. It was with Diahann Carroll as a housewife who has the difficult task of telling her iceman, Alan King, that she won’t be taking an ice delivery from him anymore. She just bought one of those newfangled machines that will replace her old icebox, a refrigerator. After Alan tries to remind her of how important that big chunk of ice that he delivered in his wagon each week was to her and her family, he then tries to persuade her to stay with the tried and true things in life, things like her old icebox. All this is to no avail. He then says, as he’s about to leave, that he too has a difficult thing to do. He has to tell his horse he just bought a truck. I always loved that sketch.
From Follies we went right to the two Friars Roasts that Alan had recommended us for. They were being done by a wonderful producing/directing team, Hemion and Smith. They were, and Smith still is, probably the most prestigious makers of television variety shows in the business. Danny Simon was going to be their head writer and Sol and I were excited to be with a man who loved working with guys who could write jokes. After all, his brother was the famous Neil Simon so he knew from funny, as they say.
What we writers most liked about Danny was that he could be kidded easily and he’d enjoy it. Once when he said, with a bit of braggadocio, that he was the best writer in the business. Jay Burton, a great old time funnyman who had written for Berle, Hope, etc. and who had a slight stutter said, “Best writer in the b-b-business? You’re not even the b-b-best writer in your family.”
Another time, Danny came into Nate ‘n Al’s, a delicatessen breakfast hangout for comedy writers, threw a script down in the middle of the table and said, “Well, I’ve finally finished my play - good, bad or indifferent.” Artie Julian, another old time great writer and funnyman, jumped right in and said, “My money is on indifferent.”
These particular roasts were to be set up like the roasts held by that famed showbiz organization “The Friars.” Of course, these would be shown on TV so they’d have to be “clean jokes only.” We would be roasting Sammy Davis Jr. on one show and the most popular football player of the day, Joe Namath on the other.
One of Sol’s and my assignments was writing for Howard Cosell and “Dandy” Dan Meredith, both hot talents because of their “Monday Night Football,” appearances. They were to do a short bio of our roastee. Now Joe’s knees were always the subject of speculation as to whether he’d be playing or not, so we did “knee” jokes. And of course, Joe was known as “Broadway Joe” for his many women, so there were plenty of womanizing jokes. That’s what roasts are about. Making fun of the fame and foibles of each guest.
Cosell, in his inimitable sportscaster voice said, “Joe was born in 1943 and at the moment of delivery the doctor slapped him on the behind -- and both his knees went out.”
“Joe went to the
“Yes, he came from
Dandy Dan told of how Joe came from a very poor family where the kids had to fight to get enough to eat. Sometimes they were so hu
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About the Book
One of the most important questions you’ll ever ask in this lifetime can be answered only by the person looking back at you from your mirror.
The question is: “How do I find out who I am and what I want to do?”
It usually doesn’t faze those who are lucky enough to have a clear picture of how they see themselves. The student heading for med. school knows what’s in store for him: the work, the respect, the honors, the money, the quickie with Nurse Florence Nightenhot under the O.R. table, the nine-iron, the sand trap and the malpractice suit. But what about the students who have been unable to latch onto specific goals? The English majors, liberal arts majors, the economics majors. What will it be for them? A career in business, a chief executive of IBM? Or will they be running a fast-food stand selling “The Whopper?”
There’s no statute of limitations on deciding what you want to be. The verdict can come a year after college, or five years after or possibly longer. And even if one does make a concrete decision, the concrete can crack pretty fast because things change.
With Howard Albrecht, that fellow we all know and love, it took twenty years but he finally found, “what he wanted to do in life” write comedy for the likes of Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Alan King, Bob Newhart, Dom DeLuise and many, many others. That decision has given him, for the past thirty some odd years, a great deal of pleasure, pain, excitement, stress, anger, contentment, and out and out fun. This memoir tells of those years and his adventures in the laugh trade.
About the Author
Before his segue into show biz writing, Howard Albrecht put in twenty years with the family business, Albrecht’s, with stores in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and throughout the Connecticut and New Jersey area. After years of buying, selling and handling women’s clothing with and without them in it, he asked himself the big question, “There must be something else.” There was. An opportunity to use the skills of jokery he had learned as a child spending summers in the Catskills watching and listening to a wide array of comics and working as a standup comedian during World War II in the USO. He was hired to become a writer on The Jonathan Winters Show and with that as a springboard just kept going from there.
Sol Weinstein, in the meantime, was also deeply into satire, spoofery and overweight, the former as author of the bestselling “Oy Oy Seven - Israel Bond” spy howlers and the latter because of his almost erotic involvement with banana-flavored yogurt. They joined forces in 1971 having met through computer dating, Weinstein telling the machine he was Gina Lollobrigida, and Albrecht believing him, like the impetuous fool that he is. Since then they ‘ve written a host of TV variety and situation comedy shows including Bob Hope Specials, Dean Martin Specials, numerous Alan King topical specials, Barney Miller, Doc, Three’s Company and Love Boat. Four satirical books have clicked off their typewriter, “The Oddfather”, “Jonathan Segal Chicken”, Oh, Henry” and a chilling satire about a woman possessed by the demon of gluttony and only one man can save her, “The Exerciser.”
After eighteen years of television and book writing with Sol and five screenplays with Harold Jack Bloom, Howard finally sat down at the computer to write a jaunty, jolly remembrance of all those shows and jokes, giving the reader a candid insight into the pain, pleasure, stress, excitement and pure out and out fun of working in the comedy trade.