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Mel Tolkin
Mel Tolkin (né Shmuel Tolchinsky; August 3, 1913 – November 26, 2007) was an American television comedy writer best known as head writer of the live sketch comedy series Your Show of Shows (NBC, 1950–1954) during the Golden Age of Television. There he presided over a staff that at times included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and Danny Simon. The writers' room inspired the film My Favorite Year (1982), produced by Brooks, and the Broadway play Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993), written by Neil Simon.
Tolkin, who won an Emmy Award and every other major prize for television writing, was the father of screenwriter-novelist Michael Tolkin and TV writer-director Stephen Tolkin.
Mel Tolkin was born Shmuel Tolchinsky (Russian: Тол(ь)чинский, cog. Тульчинский, Ukrainian: Толчинський, Polish: Tolczyński, cog. Tulczyński, means "from Tuľčyn") in a Jewish shtetl near Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine), the son of Nessie (Cartman) and Mendel "Max" Tolchinsky, a labourer and door-to-door salesman.
A background of anti-Semitic pogroms, shared by other comedy writers of his generation, he noted in 1992, "I'm not happy to have to say ... created the condition where humor becomes anger made acceptable with a joke".
His family moved to Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1926, where Tolkin became known as Samuel. He studied accounting after graduating from high school, and surreptitiously entered show business by composing songs and sketches for local revues and playing piano in jazz clubs. Fearing his parents would disapprove of what they would see as an impractical career choice, he began using the pseudonym Mel Tolkin.
During World War II, Tolkin did military service in the Canadian Army, playing the glockenspiel in a military orchestra. He moved to New York City, New York, in 1946, and married Edith Leibovitch that year. Teaming with Lucille Kallen, who would become his longtime writing partner, Tolkin began concocting comedy for performers at the Poconos resort Camp Tamiment. In 1949, the duo became the sole writing staff of the NBC television network variety show The Admiral Broadway Revue. By the following year, that series, starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, had evolved into Your Show of Shows.
Considered by TV historians as a classic of the medium, with Ronald C. Simon, television curator of The Paley Center for Media calling it "a pinnacle of television history", the series presented 90 minutes of comedy live each week for 39 weeks a year, for a total of 160 shows airing February 25, 1950, to June 5, 1954. From its sixth-floor office on West 56th Street in Manhattan, writers including Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Danny Simon, Larry Gelbart, and Lucille Kallen.
Tolkin, famously fought, argued, quipped, crafted, "paced, muttered, swore, occasionally typed and more than occasionally threw things: crumpled paper cups, cigars (lighted) and much else. The acoustical-tile ceiling was fringed with pencils, which had been flung aloft in a rage and stuck fast; Mr. Tolkin once counted 39 of them suspended there".
Mel Tolkin
Mel Tolkin (né Shmuel Tolchinsky; August 3, 1913 – November 26, 2007) was an American television comedy writer best known as head writer of the live sketch comedy series Your Show of Shows (NBC, 1950–1954) during the Golden Age of Television. There he presided over a staff that at times included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and Danny Simon. The writers' room inspired the film My Favorite Year (1982), produced by Brooks, and the Broadway play Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993), written by Neil Simon.
Tolkin, who won an Emmy Award and every other major prize for television writing, was the father of screenwriter-novelist Michael Tolkin and TV writer-director Stephen Tolkin.
Mel Tolkin was born Shmuel Tolchinsky (Russian: Тол(ь)чинский, cog. Тульчинский, Ukrainian: Толчинський, Polish: Tolczyński, cog. Tulczyński, means "from Tuľčyn") in a Jewish shtetl near Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine), the son of Nessie (Cartman) and Mendel "Max" Tolchinsky, a labourer and door-to-door salesman.
A background of anti-Semitic pogroms, shared by other comedy writers of his generation, he noted in 1992, "I'm not happy to have to say ... created the condition where humor becomes anger made acceptable with a joke".
His family moved to Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1926, where Tolkin became known as Samuel. He studied accounting after graduating from high school, and surreptitiously entered show business by composing songs and sketches for local revues and playing piano in jazz clubs. Fearing his parents would disapprove of what they would see as an impractical career choice, he began using the pseudonym Mel Tolkin.
During World War II, Tolkin did military service in the Canadian Army, playing the glockenspiel in a military orchestra. He moved to New York City, New York, in 1946, and married Edith Leibovitch that year. Teaming with Lucille Kallen, who would become his longtime writing partner, Tolkin began concocting comedy for performers at the Poconos resort Camp Tamiment. In 1949, the duo became the sole writing staff of the NBC television network variety show The Admiral Broadway Revue. By the following year, that series, starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, had evolved into Your Show of Shows.
Considered by TV historians as a classic of the medium, with Ronald C. Simon, television curator of The Paley Center for Media calling it "a pinnacle of television history", the series presented 90 minutes of comedy live each week for 39 weeks a year, for a total of 160 shows airing February 25, 1950, to June 5, 1954. From its sixth-floor office on West 56th Street in Manhattan, writers including Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Danny Simon, Larry Gelbart, and Lucille Kallen.
Tolkin, famously fought, argued, quipped, crafted, "paced, muttered, swore, occasionally typed and more than occasionally threw things: crumpled paper cups, cigars (lighted) and much else. The acoustical-tile ceiling was fringed with pencils, which had been flung aloft in a rage and stuck fast; Mr. Tolkin once counted 39 of them suspended there".