Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth interview with Susan Silver, Author, “Hot Pants in Hollywood: Sex, Secrets and Sitcoms”
About Harvey's guest:
Today’s guest, Susan Silver, is a show business trailblazer. She was one of the first women to have a successful career as a television comedy writer, in an industry overwhelmingly dominated by men.
Back in the late 60s’, and despite being the youngest runner up for a prestigious Writers Guild Award for a script she’d written in graduate school, the only open door for a female writer in Hollywood was as a secretary. She worked her way up to be producer of a TV show starring comedian Mort Sahl, and then got hired as a casting director on the groundbreaking TV show, “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In”. When the show’s producer, George Schlatter, refused to allow a woman to join his writing team – offering her a job as a writer’s assistant instead - she pivoted into the world of TV sitcoms, and never looked back.
She wrote for some of the most iconic shows of all time, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Maude, The Partridge Family, The New Dick Van Dyke Show, Square Pegs, and many more. In fact, our guest wrote the episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show called “The Square Shaped Room”, which won Ed Asner an Emmy Award. She also wrote TV movies including “The Couple Takes a Wife” starring Paula Prentiss and Bill Bixby, and “The Girl Who Came Gift Wrapped”, starring Karen Valentine and Farrah Fawcett.
She’s one of the founding members of “Women in Film”, and she’s taught comedy writing at the Television Academy, and lectured at the Paley Center, and at numerous universities. She’s appeared on TV many times, on CNN, HLN and The Today Show to name only a few. She’s had her own weekly radio commentary on Robin Hood Radio called “Susan Says”. And she’s written op-ed columns for The New York Times – AND for 4 years she wrote a highly entertaining column about dating, called “The Search For Mr. Adequate”, on NEW YORK SOCIAL DIARY DOT COM.
And FINALY, in 2017, she released her brilliant, hilarious, sometimes salacious, and very insightful memoir entitled, “Hot Pants in Hollywood: Sex, Secrets and Sitcoms”. This book was such an enjoyable read, that I hated to get to the last page. And let me tell you: the episode describing a highly unusual medical “event” resulting from a particularly satisfying encounter with a vibrator, is most definitely worth TEN TIMES the price of the book.
For more interviews and podcasts go to: https://www.harveybrownstoneinterviews.com/
To see more about Susan Silver, go to:
https://hotpantsinhollywood.com/
https://www.facebook.com/HotPantsinHollywood
https://www.instagram.com/susansilver88/
#SusanSilver #harveybrownstoneinterviews