The Treva Story

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.

It's a wonderful, richly deserved article, and I hope people read the piece, which you can find here.

And as a bonus, here's the full episode itself.  There's only one thing unfortunate about it.  The video starts at the very last credit, so you not only don't see the opening song sequence...but you also don't get to see Treva's credit!!!

But we can rectify that latter part here (which I pulled from another video of the episode, but it's part of a collection of several episodes that together runs 2-1/2 hours.  The reason I mention this is because, in honor of the Best Writer Emmy Award -- and Best Comedy Writing Emmy Award -- I think the on-screen writing credit shown here deserves to be from the episode itself.  And so it is.

​And here's the episode, "The Lou and Edie Story" --
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