McLean Stevenson - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Stevenson was born in Normal, Illinois. He was the great-grandson of William Stevenson, brother of US Vice President Adlai E. Stevenson, making him a second cousin once removed of two-time presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson II. He was also the brother of actress Ann Whitney. His father, Edgar, was a cardiologist.

He attended Lake Forest Academy and later joined the Navy. After his service, he attended Northwestern University, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in theater arts and was a proud and well-liked Phi Gamma Delta (Fiji) fraternity brother. Afterwards he worked at a radio station, played a clown on a live TV show in Dallas, became an assistant director at Northwestern and sold medical supplies and insurance. He also worked as a press secretary for his cousin in the presidential elections of 1952 and 1956. He formed the "Young Democrats for Stevenson".

In 1961, his cousin invited him to some parties, where he met some business luminaries. He followed his cousin's advice to look for a show business career. He auditioned and won a scholarship to the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. He made his professional career debut in The Music Man in 1962 and appeared regularly in Warsaw, Indiana, in summer stock productions. After this he appeared in New York on stage and television commercials. He also performed on Broadway. However, he began to establish himself as a comedy writer, writing for the seminal That Was The Week That Was, in which Alan Alda appeared, and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. He performed occasionally on both shows. He also was a regular on the 1970 Tim Conway Comedy Hour variety show on CBS. During this period, he also appeared in TV commercials for products such as Winston cigarettes, in which he was shown sprinting around a parking lot of Winston delivery trucks and painting over the product slogan, replacing the "like" in "like a cigarette should" with the grammatically correct "as".

Read more about this topic:  McLean Stevenson

Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:

    I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.
    Barbara Coloroso (20th century)

    Allow me, whom Fortune always desires to bury, lay down my life in these final trivialities. Many have freely died in longlasting loves, among whose number may the earth cover me as well.
    Propertius Sextus (c. 50–16 B.C.)

    Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.
    Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)