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The TV Age of Hysterical Prudishness

Plus: The Strippers Union, an Accidental Penis Shortening and a Toilet Paper Caper

By Buck Wolf

March 1, 2001 — There was a time in America when husbands and wives didn't sleep in bed together, and pregnancy was an unutterable, dirty word. It was called "The Golden Age of Television."

Leonard Stern, an Emmy winner who wrote for the likes of Jackie Gleason and Steve Allen, remembers a hysterically prudish America, when a network would put the kibosh on anything that even sounded like sex. The memos he's collected from those days say it all:

"On page 7, Ed Norton says, 'va-va-va-voom,'" a producer says. "Before we can give clearance, what does it mean in English?"

It's amazing anything could be created under such scrutiny. "We had one thing going for us … and that was Gleason. He was a powerful guy. The network had to listen to him," Stern says.

"They even objected to Norton working in the sewer. They thought that people would be eating while they watched the show and might get grossed out. But Gleason knew that Norton just had to work in the sewer."

Stern, a veteran of 40 years of television, called on such TV giants as Norman Lear, Larry Gelbart and Sherwood Schwartz to compile the most outrageous, idiotic memos from TV executives in 1994's A Martian Wouldn't Say That!! (Tallfellow).

Stern and his writing partner Diane Robison are now bringing the book back into print, and he's promising an update to show the ever-shifting battlefield between writers, producers and the network.

No Nasty Names for Hitler

The past battles did serve for dark humor. When producer E. Jack Neuman was bringing Inside the Third Reich to TV in the early 1980s, Standards and Practices tried to stop him from referring to Hitler as a "bastard."

One memo states, "In the line, 'And that little bastard in the big pants will strut across the stage wagging his mustache' … You must delete the word 'bastard' in regards to Hitler!"

A livid Neuman had to shoot back his own memo, pointing out that Hitler was a textbook bastard. "Hitler's mother was named Schicklgruber, and he was born out of wedlock," he wrote. "No less than two thousand prominent histories mentioned that fact, and no less than half the world's population … regards Hitler as a bastard."

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