Television
Continuing to write for Skelton and Hope as he moved into television, Douglas also wrote for Jimmy Durante, Bing Crosby, Woody Allen, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, The Jack Paar Show, The George Gobel Show and Laugh-In. The producer of Laugh-In, George Schlatter, said, "He saw the world from a different angle than the rest of us. He was not only funny, he was nice."
He was best known for his appearances as a frequent guest on Jack Paar's shows of the late 1950s and early 1960s. On one such appearance, when Douglas was well established as a Paar guest, he was chastised by Paar for holding a stack of file cards with his jokes while talking with Paar. When Paar returned to television in 1973 and was confronted by unexpected low ratings, he had engaged Douglas to contribute monologue material by mail. One week there was no mail from Douglas, but his next package contained a note: "Sorry I didn't send anything last week. I forgot you were on."
Douglas and his third wife Reiko, a Japanese-born singer and comedienne, were also regular guests on shows hosted by Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett and Johnny Carson. The couple had two sons, Bobby and Timothy. Douglas' first marriage produced a son (Johnny) and a daughter (Marlene), and his second marriage to singer Marion Hutton produced a son, Peter.
Read more about this topic: Jack Douglas (writer)
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.”
—Salvador Dali (1904–1989)
“Addison DeWitt: Your next move, it seems to me, should be toward television.
Miss Caswell: Tell me this. Do they have auditions for television?
Addison DeWitt: That’s all television is, my dear. Nothing but auditions.”
—Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993)
“So why do people keep on watching? The answer, by now, should be perfectly obvious: we love television because television brings us a world in which television does not exist. In fact, deep in their hearts, this is what the spuds crave most: a rich, new, participatory life.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)