Bob Schiller — TV writer known for his comedic chops
Bob Schiller, a longtime television writer who had a hand in putting Lucy in a vat of grapes, getting Maude memorably slapped and pitting Edith Bunker against a rapist, died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 98.
His daughter, Sadie Schiller Novello, announced his death.
Schiller was part of television from its earliest days, racking up scores of writing credits across four decades. Many were on some of the medium’s most revered comedies.
His earliest writing jobs, just after World War II, were in radio, including for the popular show “Duffy’s Tavern.” “I was hired and fired four times,” he recalled in an interview for the Archive of American Television.
He transitioned to television and in 1953 teamed up with Bob Weiskopf to form a writing partnership that would last decades. The two worked on numerous episodes of “I Love Lucy,” including “Lucy’s Italian Movie,” for which they were among five credited writers. In one of early television’s most riotous scenes, the show’s star, Lucille Ball, ends up in a vat of grapes with an Italian woman, and the two get into a gooey fight.
In the 1960s, the two men worked on variety shows like “The Red Skelton Hour” and “The Carol Burnett Show.” Norman Lear later turned to them for episodes of his groundbreaking series “All in the Family” and “Maude.”
“There were an awful lot of scripts written during the course of those years that didn’t wind up in front of cameras,” Lear said in a telephone interview this week. “You knew if they were writing the script it would see four cameras” — the number he was using to shoot the shows in front of a live audience.
Robert Achille Schiller was born on Nov. 8, 1918, in San Francisco. His father, Roland, was a clothing manufacturer and salesman; his mother, the former Lucille Bloch, had been an English teacher before her marriage.
The family moved to Los Angeles when Robert was about 10. He went on to study economics at UCLA, receiving his degree in 1939. He wrote for the campus newspaper and used that skill when he enlisted in the Army, contributing to Stars & Stripes and other publications during the war.
His radio work after the war included, in addition to “Duffy’s Tavern,” the series “The Abbott and Costello Show” and “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.”
But that type of radio show began to disappear in the early 1950s, and Schiller, who had married Joyce Harris in 1947 and had a young son, was on the verge of taking a job in his father-inlaw’s clothing business. His agent saved him from that fate at the last minute with job offers from “Four Star Revue” and “The Garry Moore Show.” After that, the writing work came steadily.
Among the other series on which Schiller and Weiskopf worked over the years were Lucille Ball’s later series, “The Lucy Show”; “The Flip Wilson Show”; “All’s Fair,” another show by Lear, which did not last long; and “Archie Bunker’s Place,” the successor series to “All in the Family.”
Although they were known as comedy writers, some of their finest scripts were far more than just gags, fearlessly mixing humor with the most serious subjects being tackled on television at the time.
The two examined alcoholism, for example, in the two-part “Walter’s Problem,” which opened Season 2 of “Maude” in September 1973. In that episode, Maude (Bea Arthur) confronts her husband, Walter (Bill Macy), about his out-ofcontrol drinking. He at first resists the suggestion that he has a problem, and during a heated exchange he hits her, a moment that drew gasps from the studio audience.
The team similarly mixed the funny and the fraught in “Edith’s 50th Birthday,” a Season 8 double episode of “All in the Family” from October 1977 that begins innocuously enough: Archie Bunker and the family are planning a surprise party for Archie’s wife, Edith (Jean Stapleton). In a hilarious exchange, Edith’s friend Sybil, who wasn’t invited, blows the surprise by turning up at the Bunker household before the event to complain. When Edith answers the door and realizes what has happened, she tries to mollify her friend.
Edith: I’m sure it ain’t nothing personal.
Sybil: Oh, of course it’s personal. I happen to know that Archie hates me.
Edith: Whoever told you that? Sybil: Archie. Edith: Oh, Sybil, you know the way Archie is. I mean, he says he hates everybody. President Carter. Mayor Beame. Walter Cronkite. Bella Abzug. Mr. Abzug. The Mets, the Jets, all the United Nations. And they don’t get upset, so why should you?
The studio audience has barely stopped laughing when, as Sybil exits, a rapist comes in and tries to attack Edith. What results is one of the most harrowing episodes of the entire series.
The episode was nominated for the comedy-writing Emmy Award that season, but lost out to another “All in the Family” episode written by Schiller and Weiskopf, who died in 2001: “Cousin Liz,” based on a story by Barry Harman and Harve Brosten. In the episode, Edith inherits a tea service from a cousin and, in the process, realizes that the cousin’s “roommate” was her lesbian partner.
Schiller also shared an Emmy in 1971 for “The Flip Wilson Show.”
His first marriage ended in divorce. In addition to his daughter Novello, he is survived by his wife, Sabrina Scharf, an actress, whom he married in 1968; his sons, Tom and Jim; another daughter, Abbie Schiller Gordonson; and five grandchildren.
Schiller’s mother, a former English teacher, kept his grammar in line, Schiller said in the Archive of American Television interview, but his father may have contributed to his comic ear and his appreciation of a succinct gag.
“He was famous for a two-word joke,” Schiller said. “My mother once said to him, ‘Tell me, when you die, you’ve never mentioned, do you want to be buried or cremated?’ He said, ‘Surprise me.’ Two words. Perfect.”