Leonard Stern

Leonard Stern, the Emmy Award-winning TV writer, producer and director has died at the age 88. Born Dec. 23, 1922, in New York City, Stern began writing jokes for Milton Berle at 16. He majored in journalism at New York University and was a Women's Army Corps recruiter while serving in the Army during World War II. After launching his career in radio, he began writing films in the early '50s, including Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town and Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion. He moved into television and became a writer for the Honeymooners sketches on The Jackie Gleason Show in 1953. He continued as a writer on the The Honeymooners series.

Stern won an Emmy in 1957 as part of the writing team of The Phil Silvers Show. A second Emmy for writing came in 1967 when he and Buck Henry won for an episode of "Get Smart," on which Stern also was the original executive producer.

Stern, who worked on 23 TV series, created "I'm Dickens … He's Fenster," "Run Buddy Run," "He & She" and "McMillan & Wife," and he co-created "The Governor & J.J." and "Partners in Crime."

Stern launched his publishing career with Mad Libs, books whose pages offer brief stories with key words left blank. One player asks the other players to provide nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs. After doing so, as it says in the instructions: "Read the complete silly story back and roar with laughter." The idea for Mad Libs came to Stern and co-creator Roger Price in 1953. Stern was working on a "Honeymooners" script and was stumped for a word to describe Ralph Kramden's new boss' nose when Price dropped by. As Stern recalled in a 2008 interview with Publishers Weekly, "I asked Roger for an idea for an adjective, and before I could tell him what it was describing, he threw out 'clumsy' and 'naked.' "We both started laughing. We sat down and wrote a bunch of stories with blanks in them. That night we took them to a cocktail party and they were a great success." But publishers, Stern later recalled,rejected Mad Libs, some saying it was a game, not a book. But the game people claimed it was a book, not a game. Finally, Stern and Price decided to self-publish a modest print run in 1958.

Stern at the time was head writer for The Steve Allen Show, and Mad Libs received a major boost when Stern suggested that they use the Mad Libs format to introduce guest stars. With Allen asking the audience for a noun and adjective, it led to this memorable introduction: "And here's the scintillating Bob Hope, whose theme song is 'Thanks for the Communist.'"

In 1994, Stern collected his years of dealing with television network executives and censors for "A Martian Wouldn't Say That," a collection of memos and remarks culled from his and other writers' files that he compiled with Diane L. Robison. The title comes from one executive's script note for a line of dialogue in an episode of the 1960s sitcom "My Favorite Martian."

He later co-wrote and directed the 1979 film "Just You and Me, Kid," starring George Burns and Brooke Shields.



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Tony Figueroa