Duffy's Tavern (Old Famous Radio Program)

[stuyguy]

@What Exit?

…I gave up 20 minutes in. Some jokes were obvious in-jokes of the time that did not translate well 63 years later and some of the regular characters were too dumb or annoying to put up with…

@RealityChuck

Abe Burrows was a legend of comedy writing. Forget Duffy’s Tavern: Burrows wrote the book for Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, Can Can, Silk Stockings, Cactus Flower and several other big Broadway hits, and he was in big demand as a play doctor: if your play needed more jokes, you hired Abe. He won four Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize.

Chuck is right that Abe Burrows really reached a much higher level once he left behind the relentless grind of writing for radio and TV. In his autobiography *Honest Abe * he described some of the lessons he learned, many of which occurred while writing the book for his first Broadway show Guys & Dolls.

An excerpt from the book:

The big difference between writing a weekly radio or TV show and writing for the theater is that the theater does not require a new show every week. When you have just a few days to write a program full of funny stuff and you come down to the wire – the aweful deadline – you do the best you can, you say to yourself, “What the hell! This may work. I’m going to turn it in and go to bed.”

[The director of Guys & Dolls, George S.] Kaufman never let me get away with anything. I remember one time I had a funny joke that I repeated two more times in my script. Kaufman looked at it and said, “Abe, you’ve done that joke three times.” I answered in a rather patronizing tone, “George, we often do that on radio. We call it a running gag.” Kaufman said, “Abe radio is free. The people coming to see your show have to buy tickets. Give them a new joke.” I quickly wrote a new joke.