A Television Idiocy Story

A recent Friday Questions reminded me an amusing incident.  It was the question about FRASIER’S policy on bringing back characters from CHEERS.  They did it very sparingly because they wanted the show to live on its own.  

Way back in 1983 when David Isaacs and I were doing the iconic AfterMASH with Larry Gelbart we too wanted to build an ensemble that was not dependent on former MASH cast members.  

And that was fine except we started plunging in the ratings.  All of a sudden the network and studio wanted ALL MASH characters brought back… and HURRY!  

Well Alan Alda and Mike Ferrell were not remotely interested.  Neither was David Ogden Stiers.  We did manage to get Gary Burghoff to do an episode (which turned out to be one of our better episodes).  

But we were sitting in a meeting with 20th Century Fox executives.  (The show was produced by 20th Century Fox.)  One suit suggested we get Hot Lips back (like we hadn’t thought of that).  We said we had approached Loretta Swit and she wasn’t interested.  And then this honest-to-God exchange:

SUIT: Well, why does it have to be Loretta Swit?

ME: Excuse me?

SUIT:  Just get another actress and say it’s Hot Lips.

ME:  Are you serious?

SUIT:  Yeah, why not?   

ME: Uh… Loretta Swit IS Hot Lips.

SUIT:  Shows substitute actors all the time.  

ME:  But then it wouldn’t be a big event if we use another actress.

SUIT: Sure it would.  Hot Lips is back.  That’s all you gotta say.

ME:  So we could get Diana Ross and say she’s Hot Lips?

SUIT:  Say… that’s kinda interesting.

This is the kind of idiocy we have to deal with, and ya know what?  It’s way worse now.  Oh.. for the record — we did not approach Diana Ross.  Or any of the Supremes. 
 

from By Ken Levine