I've written in the past about my friend Treva Silverman (also known as The Lovely Treva) who was not only the first female writer hired for the staff of legendary TV series The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but was the first writer hired, period.  And has won two Emmy Awards, as well.  On top of all her other credits. (Like writing on the series, The Monkees and...well, you get the idea).  And I've been writing about her a lot recently, since the winds seem to be blowing in a way where she's been a "talking had" on several TV documentaries lately and featured in articles -- notably an HBO documentary on Mary Tyler Show, an episode of the MSNBC series My Generation, and a Los Angeles Times feature piece.  Well, we can add one more -- the other day, People Magazine did a story on her.

All this, and she doesn't even have a publicist... Which saves a lot of money when you get the publicity all for free.

The interesting thing about the headline is that far more impressive than being "the first female writer" hired -- Treva was (as I mentioned) the first writer hired!  Though leaving out “female” from the headline wouldn’t make it as attention grabbing for reasons.  And at least it gets mentioned within the article.
 
The weird thing about the article is that it is so People.  They really didn’t do much work, and left the heavy lifting to MSNBC.  All they seemed to do is watch the My Generation episode and then described a little bit of what they watched that MSNBC did.  In fact, the photo they used was one on TV.  (Which is A Good Thing, since it’s a very nice photo.)  To be clear, this isn’t a complaint about the article at all – I’m very they did it, no matter how much they took the easy way out.

​If you're interested (especially if you didn't see MSNBC's My Generation, you can read the brief article here.
 
And the Treva Watch continues...

CBS Sunday Morning did a seven-minute feature piece on Kathy Bates this past weekend.  It's well-done, but even if you have zero interest in watching...do yourself a favor and at the very least jump to the 4:30 mark and watch for about a minute-and-a-half. 

So as not to give anything away, I'll only say to keep your eyes totally focused on her and not distracted by what else is on when they have a split screen.  It's visceral.  I use the phrase "Trust me" sparingly and carefully.  But trust me.

I've written periodically about my friend Treva Silverman, better known (to me…but also a few others) as "TLT," The Lovely Treva.  I first became aware of Treva years before I met her -- watching the credits at home back in Glencoe, Illinois, for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and seeing an uncommon name that stood out over many episodes, 16 of them.  Later, though, after I moved to Los Angeles for UCLA grad school and then sold a screenplay and joined the Writers Guild, I eventually was in a circle of writers that included Treva Silverman.  ("Oh, I knew you!")  The circle may have changed, but not being friends with TLT.

Treva not only was the first female writer on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but one of the first writers the show hired, period.  She won two Emmy Awards for the series, including "Writer of the Year" regardless of comedy or drama, an award no longer given.  Her career includes writing for such shows as The Monkees, That Girl, Room 222, and one the TV's best, but little-known most-famous flops, He & She, with Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss.  She was writing partners with Joan Rivers, and wrote a superb, though as yet unproduced play, Scandal -- originally intended to be a musical directed by Michael Bennett (A Chorus Line) with a score by Jimmy Webb (MacArthur Park, By the Time I Get to Phoenix).

So, it wasn't a shock to find that when CNN did its series on the History of Comedy, Treva was one of the people interviewed.  And when HBO did its tribute documentary, Being Mary Tyler Moore, Treva was one of the people interviewed a lot.

And there's much more.  Including that early in the career, she played honky-tonk piano in bars.  (Oh, okay, that wasn't exactly what it was, but I always like to describe it that way.  It adds so much to her character.  Not that she needs much to be added.)

I bring all this up because yesterday -- I'm guessing timed for Sunday's Emmy Awards broadcast -- the Los Angeles Times had a wonderful article and interview with Treva written by Whitney Friedlander.  It focused on this being the 50th anniversary of when she won that rare Writer of the Year Emmy Award, and her memories about the episode.  (How rare was her Writer of the Year Emmy?  It's the only time that the award was ever given!  Meaning TLT is the only person ever to be named Writer of the Year at the Emmys.)

By the way, it should be added that when Treva won her second Emmy Award that night for Best Comedy Writer -- for the episode "The Lou and Edie Story," about when the Grants separate -- it was the first time in Emmy history that a woman won a solo comedy writing Emmy without sharing the credit with a male.

​And here's the episode, "The Lou and Edie Story" --
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Fey (adjective, "fay")  Slightly suggestive of an elf in strangeness and otherworldliness.

This is a fun featurette on Tina Fey that was made after she wrote Mean Girls and before 30 Rock was created.  What leaps out the most is all the footage of her from her days at Second City in Chicago.  But second most is the video of her early partnering on stage with Rachel Dratch -- both at Second City, but also later in a two-woman show (which is what got Dratch noticed and signed for SNL, where Fey was already the head writer).
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This is a really great article in the New York Times about composer John Kander who wrote Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss of the Spiderwoman, the scores to the movies All That Jazz and New York, New York, and so much more.  And clearly such a deserving subject, at age 96, still working on Broadway.

​It will not shock you that my favorite line had nothing to do with the theater, but was the description by the reporter about Kander still -- "...making the bed, tight as a drum, as he was taught at Camp Nebagamon when he was 10."
 
For the record, I started at Nebagamon at age 11 (though my friend, Los Angeles Times journalist Patrick Goldstein, who was in my cabin, was a mere kid of 10).  And, yes, we did have to make our cots each day, because every cabin was graded by the Day "Push" (a lumberjack term, since the camp was in Wisconsin's North Woods, on the grounds of the original Weyerhaeuser lumber mills) on how clean it was.

What the article doesn't note is that two other people at camp with John Kander at the time were brothers William Goldman and Jim Goldman.  They all stayed lifelong friends, were roommates in New York, and even collaborated on a musical together, A Family Affair.  Later, Kander went off to his legendary career, William Goldman went off to write Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Mean, and James Goldman went off to write the play A Lion in Winter and the musical, Follies, with Stephen Sondheim.