Milt Josefsberg (1911–1987)

The author wrote for Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Bob Hope, "All in the Family", "Mork and Mindy", and others. He reviews the elements and morphologies of the craft of writing comedy for entertainment. He had the gift of total recall, and provides abundant examples of one-liners, shows, plots, and the business of being a writer.

Credit Milton Berle with starting it all with variety acts. Followed by "Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, Jack Benny, Garry Moore, Dinah Shore, Carol Burnett, Tennessee Ford, Andy Williams, Flip Wilson, Danny Thomas, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin."
How much money? If a writer sells six to eight comedy scripts per year to the various existing series', the reward is "roughly from $60,000 to $75,000" front money. Then there are residuals. And the residuals are peanuts compared to the returns for those who own a piece or percentage of the sitcom shows. Most comedy series are owned by writers.

Writers turned moguls are Norman Lear, Garry Marshall, Susan Harris, Ed Weinberger, Gary Goldbergh, and Danny Arnold ("Barney Miller").

While the variety show used to be the backbone of broadcasting, and may come back, the entertainment vehicles which pay for humor continue to change.
I - Elements: Jokes, puns, malapropism, play on words, monologues.
II - Tricks of the Trade: Brevity, Rhythm, Rhyme, Repetition, Role Reversal..
III - Standbys: Dirty, Old, Files
IV - Subject Matter: Sex, Race, Inebriation, Frailties, Death, etc.
V - Characters, Routines, Formats (been done).
VI - Writing - alone and with others.
VII - Rejection.
VIII - Critics
IX - Censorship.
X - Situation Comedy.
XI - Variety Show.
XII - Biography of a Script.
XIII - Business of Becoming a Writer.
XIV - Exercises
XV - Notes
In his own Preface, Milt quotes his mentor P.G. Wodehouse, who published into his 80's a resurrected Jeeves novel every year: "When I sit down to write, I'm twenty-five. When I take a three-mile hike, I'm ninety-four." Making people laugh makes you feel young, and happy.… (plus d'informations)