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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​For the past year, I’ve been planning on posting this today, but thought about not doing so out of respect for the news.  But it’s the episode’s 75th anniversary, and it’s too warm and gentle and endearing – and therefore, perhaps hopefully, all the more reason not to let the occasion pass.
 
So, to honor what around the world is the first day of school, this episode of Kukla, Fran and Ollie has the Kuklapolitans heading back to class. As it happens, in her early life Fran Allison was a teacher, which get the Kukla and Ollie think about what it would be like having her as their teacher.  And so, they and the other Kuklapolitans play “first day at school,” albeit with a log of singing.
 
And as I said, making it all the more notable is that the episode originally aired on September 6, 1949 – 75 years ago today.

In 1993, Bonnie Hunt created, wrote and starred in the sitcom, The Building.  She also served as executive producer with David Letterman.  When she recently did a Naked Lunch interview for the podcast with Phil Rosenthal and David Wild, she told a story about how she asked Letterman to act in one of the episodes – he agreed, but with one caveat, he didn’t want to be seen.  So, the show had to figure out how to make that work.  They came up with an idea where Bonnie’s character, a good girl who had a somewhat high profile in town, had to go to a video porn store to pick up her brother’s wallet -- when a robber breaks in…played by Letterman in a ski mask. (All the funnier, still smoking his cigar.)  And eventually the police and TV news show up.  And…well, rather than explain more, here’s the sequence –
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This is a very interesting interview (and often funny) that Larry David did with Joe Scarborough for Morning Joe.  It not only covers Larry's career, starting with floundering as a stand-up comic and briefly a writer for Saturday Night Live, but also has a lot of background footage about how his show Curb Your Enthusiasm is made.  Most fun -- and surprising -- is hearing Larry talk about things in his life and career, and then seeing clips of Seinfeld for how they much later turned into episodes.