Before Larry David, before Louis C.K., before Ray Romano, there was the true Golden Age of television comedy, an era of brilliant and landmark programming that dominated the dial from the 50's to the 70's. Bill Persky, the five-time Emmy Award-winning writer, director and producer of over 300 TV shows and films was at the center of that special time in TV history. Along the way, he was responsible for some of the most successful and acclaimed sitcoms of all time, including the classics The Dick Van Dyke Show, That Girl and Kate & Allie.
Persky blazed a trail through television during a time of tremendous social upheaval, when TV was still discovering its power to influence and move audiences. To this day, Persky's groundbreaking female characters, such as That Girl's Ann Marie, remain pop culture icons.
In his memoir, My Life is a Situation Comedy, Bill shares his tales of a life well lived and vividly recollected. Persky's touching, often hilarious and occasionally alarming backstage portrayal is one of triumphs and disappointments, celebrity and calamity, romances and breakups. "I attempted to make things right and maintain a semblance of dignity," he writes, "while constantly slipping on the banana peels of life." Lucky for us, many of those slip ups wound up as fodder for the TV episodes we came to know and love so well. My Life is a Situation Comedy is populated by the larger than life legends and one-of-a-kind characters that figured so prominently in Persky's world. From his work with Carl Reiner on The Dick Van Dyke Show, to a surreal six weeks in London with the mythic Orson Welles, Persky knew them all and somehow lived to tell the tale.
Among the marquee names that sparkled brightly in Persky's universe are Mary Tyler Moore, Bill Cosby, Sid Caesar, Steve Allen, Goldie Hawn, Peter Sellers, Susan St. James, Jane Curtin, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Tim Conway, Andy Williams, Cary Grant and The Smothers Brothers.
