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 interview 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.

It will come as no shock to people that I love the Chicago Cubs.  And I particularly love the radio team, headed by Pat Hughes.  In fact, when I watch Cubs games with my MLB.TV subscription, I use their "overlay" feature that syncs up the radio broadcast to the TV picture, rather than the TV play-by-play.  It's not that I have anything against the TV team, they're pretty good.  But I love listening to Pat Hughes, teamed up with analyst Ron Coomer.  Pat Hughes is just warm and knowledgeable and funny and observant and wonderfully entertaining, just a really terrific broadcaster.  And as I noted here a few months back, he was just elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, receiving their Ford C. Frick Award.  And the induction ceremony was over the weekend.

By the way, Pat is wonderful partnered with Ron Coomer, but when he was previously teamed with another Ron, former Cub great Ron Santo (who was posthumously elected to the Hall of Fame), the two were special -- in fact "unique" might be a better word.  As an announcer, Ron Santo bordered on the good side of incompetent but was SO human (he once apologized for being late after an inning break because "I was in the bathroom" and another time brought the family's cleaning woman to the booth), SO funny (intentionally and otherwise), had such an other-worldly phenomenal rapport with Pat Hughes (who clearly protected his broadcasting limitations...) and loved the Cubs SO much that when the two did a broadcast, people in Chicago didn't say they were going to listen to the Cubs game, but rather "The Pat and Ron Show" (something Pat Hughes referenced in his induction speech).  In fact, the station's email address for the radio broadcast was "@patandronshow.com".)

Anyway, I can't let the day go without embedding Pat Hughes' acceptance speech.  It's only 15 minutes, tells some good stories and some funny ones, and much of it is spent praising other people, rather than talking about his career -- which is just so Pat.  If this isn't something everyone here wants to listen to, I understand.  But hopefully you'll give it a couple of minutes, just to hear how warm and personable he is.

And today we have Jane Horrocks starring as...Jane Horrocks.

After those rough, gutsy performances from Cabaret, it occurred to me that we need a bit of a palate-cleanser, so here is Jane Horrocks being herself, so you have a better idea of who exactly it is we've been featuring here the past three days.  This is from nine years ago in a TV interview segment called “Five minutes with…”  Low-key, a bit self-effacing and open.

We'll return tomorrow with the first of the final two videos with Jane Horrocks to close out our Fest, both of which I think are a lot of fun.  And both highlights in her career.