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Sol Saks, the screenwriter and TV executive who became a millionaire by writing the pilot for the TV series Bewitched (1964), was born on December 13, 1910, in New York City but was raised in Chicago from the age of two.
As a child radio actor, Saks began his professional career as a journalist, working as a cub reporter while attending Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. In the generation before him, newspapers were the primary avenue for young men to become working writers and earn a living. For Saks's generation, radio fulfilled that role. He also published short stories before writing for Chicago-based radio programs in the 1930s, earning $20 for his first radio script.
Although Saks aspired to write drama, comedy became his specialty and source of fortune. Radio declined in Chicago by the early 1940s. At the time, Saks focused on Westerns and aviation scripts, often inserting humor into serious scripts, which earned him a reputation as a comedy writer. In 1943, he moved to Los Angeles after learning there was demand for comedy writers. Represented by the William Morris Talent Agency in Chicago, he was initially ignored by their Los Angeles office, so he approached the advertising agency sponsoring Red Skelton's radio show. Hired at $200 per week for The Red Skelton Hour (1951), he left after two weeks to join Duffy's Tavern (1954), the era's most prestigious comedic radio show.
While on the Duffy's Tavern staff, Saks worked with the legendary Abe Burrows, the show's creator and head writer, though they clashed due to Saks's independent nature. The demanding workload—often 80 hours a week, with up to 30 hours straight before air time—led Saks to leave after a year.
Following Duffy's Tavern, Saks wrote for The Baby Snooks Show with Fanny Brice and The Beulah Show with Hattie McDaniel, serving as head writer for one of two writing teams on Beulah, alongside Sherwood Schwartz.
He also contributed to Dinah Shore's radio show, which struggled because writers were unsure how to write for her, and worked on Ozzie and Harriet Nelson's radio show, helping transition it from a variety show to a story format. Both Saks and Schwartz resented the lack of credit—as was typical in radio—and Ozzie Nelson’s habit of verbally taking credit for the writing.
Writers were generally disrespected in radio and TV, much as they had been in film; once scripts were completed, producers often did not want writers involved.
In the early 1950s, as radio transformed into television, Saks shifted to TV, where he found writing easier since TV was more story-driven, unlike radio's line-by-line approach. His first TV credit was for the sitcom My Favorite Husband (1953), adapted from the radio series starring Lucille Ball. Saks initiated the adaptation idea at CBS and chose to cast dramatic actors rather than comedians despite the show's comedic nature. He later developed the sitcom Mr. Adams and Eve (1957) for Ida Lupino and wrote for various TV series and anthology programs.
Known for his independence and habit of quitting jobs he disliked, Saks initially refused a writing role on I Married Joan (1952) because he disliked star Joan Davis but later accepted a seven-week stint to afford a swimming pool. His independence was often mistaken for wealth, a misconception that earned him producers' respect.
He grew to dislike writing for weekly series due to the repetitive nature of placing the same characters in similar situations. Instead, he focused on writing pilots for TV series, plays that never reached Broadway, and the script for Cary Grant's last film, Walk Don't Run (1966), a remake of George Stevens's The More the Merrier (1943). In the 1960s, CBS hired him to oversee its comedy series.
Ironically, after writing the pilot script for ABC's Bewitched, Saks never wrote another episode of the hit series, which aired for nine seasons from 1964 to 1972. The royalties from creating the show made him wealthy. He acknowledged that the idea was inspired by the films I Married a Witch (1942) and Bell, Book and Candle (1958).
In 1985, he published The Craft of Comedy Writing.
Sol Saks died of respiratory failure caused by pneumonia on April 16, 2011, at the age of 100.
