Remembering Bud Yorkin

We’re sad to learn that producer/writer Bud Yorkin passed away yesterday, August 18, 2015 at the age of 89. Yorkin enjoyed a long career in television, directing or producing on many classic shows including: The Colgate Comedy Hour, The Dinah Shore Show, The George Gobel Show, and The Jack Benny Show. Starting in 1959, he teamed up with Norman Lear and co-created and produced shows including: All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Maude and Good Times, among others. 

Below are some excerpts from Yorkin's 1997 Archive interview:

On co-creating All in the Family with Norman Lear:

I was living in England doing a picture with Alan Arkin called I'nspector Clouseau' and that’s where I saw Till Death Us Do Part…I couldn’t believe anybody could put that on television. I sent a tape back to Norman (Lear) and I said, "this will blow your mind. You can’t believe what they say about the Queen, what they say about gays. I’ve never seen anything like this on the tube."  He said, "Well, I think we ought to do it."  I thought that, you know, (this is) one of Norman’s fantasies, we’ll never get this on the air! I didn’t have any belief that it was going to happen. I said, geez, there’s Norman again. I literally never thought it would get on the air, nor did I even think we would ever get to make a pilot out of it. When we finally did make the pilot, which I thought was terrific, ABC passed on it. They passed, it was too controversial. So... I got a meeting at CBS with Bob Wood. As I’m walking into Bob Wood’s office there’s a delay, he’s running a half-hour behind. So I walk over to Mike Dann who was president then and he’s got boxes all around, he’s moving out. And I always thought Mike Dann was a real terrific guy. He says, "I’d like to see that show" … and now we’re sitting in his office, watching the second pilot of All in the Family… oh, my God, he’s falling down. And Fred Silverman’s walking by and he’s says, "what’s all going on in here?" I said, "it’s a pilot." Fred Silverman sits down, watches it, says, "I’ve got to have this, this thing is going on CBS." I said, "I don’t even know if we can get it from ABC." He said, "I don’t care, we’ve got to have it."  The next thing I know we’re in meetings with Bob Wood.. I must say they had some bravery. We never changed three words from the first two pilots and that was the first show that went on the air.

On the controversial subject matter and language of All in the Family:

We said, don’t put us on if you’re going to put this first show on and then we’re going to have to fight for every show. We don’t want to do it because we’re not going to back down. And we went plain out with the areas that we were going to deal with the first year. We already knew we were going to deal with gays, we were going to deal with black and white problems. We were going to deal with contemporary problems. We were going to be funny, that was the purpose, to make people laugh, but beyond that we were going to make them think a bit. And if you don’t see that on, then don’t put the show on. At that point, Norman and I were doing reasonably well in the motion picture industry and we didn’t need this. So, they said, "no, no, no, we’ll do it." But they still gave us only an order for six shows. So it went on Tuesday night following Hee Haw, another show that was on CBS —you couldn’t find two shows that were opposite.

On the importance of casting:

I think the most important thing, once you get a script-- the right casting. Most important. Actors make directors look like they know what they’re doing. You get a bad actor in, I don’t care who the director is, sooner or later they’re going to say the guy doesn’t know what he’s doing. The magic is the acting. There’s no doubt in my mind.

On directing live television versus directing film:

Live (television) has the sense of real theatrics, it’s happening, it’s why you love to watch a football game, because you know it’s happening right now. Film has the feeling that it takes on another kind of energy— to do film that you rehearsed it, nobody’s going to make a mistake, if they do you’re going to redo it. I think from a directing point of view they’re much, much different. I think there are very few directors in television that (can) duplicate what you can do in film… To do the kind of energy that you can possibly do by editing a piece of film is one thing, to do that live is very difficult. And a typical example to me, quite honestly, someday people will examine, they did an ER on quote videotape “live”, and that was not live. See, they had no idea how to shoot a live show. So all they did is they took it on a steady cam, they kept moving it around and doing what is known as masters. Take shooting the whole group from one angle, shooting the whole group from another, move it around. You could have done that with a film camera. But they did it “live” and it was a good publicity stunt. But it had nothing to do with being live. Live is— can you get everything that you can get on film on a live camera. But it has to happen right then. You don’t have any chance for a mistake. Television is basically a close-up, as we all know. Film, you have a bigger, the picture is bigger and you have a bigger plane to fill, see your framing, your staging is different.

On the Hollywood Blacklist:

Well, I was impacted by it with the Tennessee Ernie Ford Show. Roland Kibby was on the blacklist. So he had not worked at all. And I was determined to give him a job and let him write on that show. And I took on J. Walter Thompson and Ford Company and threatened, quite honestly threatened that I would expose this sham if they didn’t allow me to use Kib. And they finally acquiesced. J. Walter Thompson  said, you can use him but we don’t have to give him credit. I said, oh, got to use him and got to give him credit! And, and I fought that and they backed down. I looked Kib in the eye and I said, you know, you’re going to do this show, and if you don’t do this show I’m not going to do this show. We’re going to see how far we can carry this thing. And so I’m very proud of the fact that I had first hand with that particular show.

On continuing to work in his 70s:

Well, I’m, I’m terrified that I don’t know what I would do with myself if I didn’t work. It means something to me in several ways. One is that I do have little children in my second marriage. I’m reliving my life. And I don’t want to feel like I’m a guy in a rocking chair, which maybe I should be, but I don’t want to feel like I am, with these kids around. So, one way that I can stay energized and involved is to get involved in a lot of things. And you know, and I was reading a book that the late Victor Frankel wrote. He was trying to sum up what happiness is: number one the ability to do things that make you happy, particularly in the workplace. And I believe that. I believe that even though it is more difficult for me because I’m not today’s flavor of the month. I’m a older person, It’s a young man’s medium, particularly television is, and it should be. But with all that, I always think that if you have the right idea, if you have the right piece of material, if you have the right kind of thing, you should go ahead and do it whether you’re older or younger.

On regrets in his career:

I regret that I didn’t do a Broadway show, because I’ve always wanted to do one. And did have the opportunity to do one and I turned that down. I regret that. In some ways, I know this sounds tough, in some ways I regret that, that by the amount of television that I did and the time that it took, in the amount of time that I spent at rehearsal halls or readings or tapings, that I missed a lot of family life. My older children grew up to a great extent without me being home. In television you don’t have a vacation when everybody else does. You finish taping or filming in February, you take off four weeks or six, whatever, and then you’re back writing, April May, and June you start to film.. So I never had the opportunity to go away, spend a summer with my kids, during a long period of my life. I’ve talked that over with them, and I kind of regret that, that. Television, you know, it’s a monster. You’re working, if you’ve got a series, it’s a monster. You’re working around the clock and you’re already worried about next year. It is the greed in a certain way. It’s not money, but it’s the greed that when you’re offered something and they say, here, do it, here, we’ll put it on. You say, gee, I don’t really want to but I’m not going to turn it down. And by the time you do that, you look around, you say, wait a minute, you know, where’s it all gone? It’s one of the reasons I think that people don’t last a long period of time in television.

On how he would like to be remembered:

That’s a big question. I think as someone who’s treated everyone fairly. I’ve never tried to take advantage of anyone. And I think that would be a nice way to be remembered.