Thursday, June 09, 2011

From Mad Libs to “McMillan”

Some sad news today from the Los Angeles Times:
Leonard Stern, an Emmy Award-winning writer, producer and director whose career in television spanned “The Honeymooners,” “Get Smart” and “McMillan & Wife” and whose additional career in publishing included co-creating the classic Mad Libs word game books, has died. He was 88.

Stern, a founding partner of the Price Stern Sloan publishing company, died Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after a 15-month illness, said his daughter-in-law, Laura Stern.
Funny, I was just watching an episode from the second season DVD set of McMillan & Wife and thinking about how much I’d enjoyed that NBC Mystery Movie series when it was first broadcast in the 1970s. Looking through his credits in the International Movie Database (IMDb), I see that Stern was also behind several other Mystery Movie segments: The Snoop Sisters, Faraday and Company, and Lanigan’s Rabbi. And he produced the Richard Widmark TV pilot, Brock’s Last Case. Amid all of those fine contributions, it’s easy to forget that he was also responsible for the abysmal Holmes & Yo-Yo.

My condolences go out to Stern’s family.

READ MORE:Leonard Stern, Get Smart Producer, Dies at 88
(The HMSS Weblog); “The Passings Parade,” by Ivan G. Shreve Jr. (Thrilling Days of Yesteryear).

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