Original subtitles

When we started season three, we had kind of fallen into our groove. We had

established the characters, and the show was successful, and people liked it,

and we kind of knew what worked and what didn't work.

And as I say, the writers knew our strengths and our weaknesses and what we

could do and what we couldn't do, and it required two years to find out those

things. And, of course, we learned things.

Season three that we carried over into season four. There were great shows in

the first year and the second year and the third year.

I never found a level of the writing ever falling off.

How can you make such a big deal over nothing?

Author, author!

How does it feel to be a big -time writer?

Jerry, let's not blow this out of proportion, okay? Well, this is the year

Padgett and Tarsus became producers and wrote an awful lot of our scripts, along

with Charlotte Brown.

The writers were king, as they should have been.

Jim Burroughs' first year that Jim did our show, he had done a Mary Tyler Moore

show, and they were very happy with it. Of course, the word got around a lot

that he was a good director and he was good with actors.

I learned...

Starting in stand -up, I learned the first thing you learn is never show any

fear.

That's the first lesson you learn. And it's probably true of directing. You

to establish yourself as you're in charge of the set.

And Jimmy did that from the get -go.

It's interesting to go through all the years and to find the people who made

their, well, I wouldn't say made their first appearance, but certainly.

They were not the stars that they became.

Joe.

Trev Willard, of course, Fred, played the part of the next boyfriend of

I think I'll stick around a while.

Salute. Well, I hope this means the bickering is finished, because I love

here. Howard Hessman, of course.

We used Howard for a while as...

He was off camera. He was the voice when we'd be watching television or

something. I was always Howard's voice. He was a friend of Peter Bonner's.

And then he played Mr. Plager. Last night I had a dream that a bear came

the cabin and hovered over my bed and burped.

And then, of course, from there went on to WKRP.

Bob's office is still off limits, huh?

Where'd he set up shop?

Anywhere he can, Eddie.

Well, if you see him, tell him to call his mother.

She's writing letters again.

Bill was my father -in -law. I just made the comedy record, and it was starting

to make some noise, and so I got a call to come into New York to do the David

Susskind show, and it was with Buddy Hackett and...

Alan King.

I think Milt Kamen was another one.

And we just kind of all sat around and talked about comedy.

And David said to me, he said, well, you have a

degree. I said, yeah, I graduated. I have a degree in accounting from Loyola

University.

But he said, you mean you don't have to do this?

I said, no, buddy, I have to do this.

So then I met Buddy out here on the coast and he said, he said, you're

right? And I said, yeah, I'm Catholic, buddy.

He said, I got just a girl for you.

So he fixed me up on a blind date with Ginny.

And we dated for like a year and a half and broke up at one point and then got

back together.

Got married in January in 1963, so we've been married 42 years. So Buddy played

a big role in our lives.

Then Bill is the guest star on my show.

Oh, Bob, come on. Five bucks a week?

Hi, folks. Welcome to Uncle Yummy's. I'm Dave. John Ritter started out as really

a small role.

Then, of course, he went on to Three's Company and then on to the show where he

eventually passed away at a very young age.

Well, Bob, bring it on home.

I'm kind of torn between the higgly, wiggly, giggly glop and the great white

whale.

That's a tough decision, Bob, but can you resist vanilla ice cream swimming in

sea of marshmallow sauce and coconut?

I'm not made of stone.

Take the whale.

He was wonderful.

You could see then that he had that ability,

that he was going to be somebody.

I'll just have one scoop of the chocolate.

You like to think that maybe you had a role in maybe...

keeping them in the business at that week that maybe they were thinking about

getting out of the business and then all of a sudden they got a shot on the

show.

I mean, you'd like to believe that. I don't know how much of it is true.

Oh no, I just ordered coffee. Someone must have made a mistake.

Yeah, I think my dad did.

Single scooper, single scooper, this man is a party pooper.

I felt the interaction with the audience was very important because they felt

they were part of it.

I would come out and just kind of warm up the audience and do some material or

just do stuff that had happened that week.

I used to do one about a guy who got drunk at a party and he

came up to the hostess. And, of course, I used to do a routine called a

retirement party in which I played part of a drunk. And I would play that in

Vegas or Tahoe or wherever. And so I had to instantly... become drunk and get

out of the character I was doing.

So it was very easy for me to appear drunk.

And the joke was, a guy's at a party and he has too much to drink.

And he goes up to the hostess and he says,

do lemons have legs?

And she said, no, no, no, lemons don't have legs.

And he said, oh, my God, I think I just squeezed your canary into my drink.

My past is an open book.

You're right, and that's the way it should be.

Your past, on the other hand?

It's always tough to look back and say, where did the time go? It seems like I

just walked off the set.

I mean, recalling how young the kids were in 1974.

My daughter Jennifer was born in 71, so she was three or four years old.

You come into people's living rooms. I mean, that's a great thing about

doing television as opposed to movies.

You've been a part of people's lives.

They all have their favorite shows, and they'll come up and say, gee, my dad

passed away last year, but gee, I remember we used to sit Saturday night

religiously we watched Mary Tyler Moore and the Bob Newhart Show and All in the

Family and MASH and Carol Burnett.

That's a part of their memories.

It's a nice thing to be.