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Only You, Dick Daring!
by Merle Miller and Evan Rhodes
William Sloane Associates, 1964
(from WSJ list of Seth Freeman's favorite books on working in TV, "A Job With the Silver Screen:
"In the early 1960's, novelist Merle Miller was asked to write a pilot for CBS to star Jackie Cooper, former child actor and the popular star of the series "Hennesey." Miller had never written a pilot, so an executive gave him the short course: "You've got to capture them in the first thirty seconds, and they've got to stay captured... In the first thirty seconds the pilot should go like this, 'Fifty thousand murderous Berbers are headed toward Cairo, and only you, Dick Daring, can stop them.' Dick Daring, that's our hero, in thase case Jackie Cooper, couny agent." As Miller explains in this book, his account of "how to write one television script and make $50,000,000," as he was soon shuttling between coasts and writing dozens fo scripts that he is told are "beautiful" by executives even as they hire other writers to rewrite behind his back. What ends up being shot is a pointless porridge that has no chance of ever making on the schedule. Miller's painful, if droll, experiences might be hard to belive if they hadn't actually happened - and if virtually the same scenes weren't being played out in writers; offices and network suites today.")
William Sloane Associates, 1964
(from WSJ list of Seth Freeman's favorite books on working in TV, "A Job With the Silver Screen:
"In the early 1960's, novelist Merle Miller was asked to write a pilot for CBS to star Jackie Cooper, former child actor and the popular star of the series "Hennesey." Miller had never written a pilot, so an executive gave him the short course: "You've got to capture them in the first thirty seconds, and they've got to stay captured... In the first thirty seconds the pilot should go like this, 'Fifty thousand murderous Berbers are headed toward Cairo, and only you, Dick Daring, can stop them.' Dick Daring, that's our hero, in thase case Jackie Cooper, couny agent." As Miller explains in this book, his account of "how to write one television script and make $50,000,000," as he was soon shuttling between coasts and writing dozens fo scripts that he is told are "beautiful" by executives even as they hire other writers to rewrite behind his back. What ends up being shot is a pointless porridge that has no chance of ever making on the schedule. Miller's painful, if droll, experiences might be hard to belive if they hadn't actually happened - and if virtually the same scenes weren't being played out in writers; offices and network suites today.")
- GenresNonfiction
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1964
1 person is currently reading
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About the author
Merle Miller
43 books26 followersMerle Miller, born in Montour, Iowa, wrote almost a dozen books, including more than half a dozen novels. His first, ''That Winter'' (1948), was considered one of the best novels about the postwar readjustment of World War II veterans. His other novels included ''A Day in Late September,'' set in suburban Connecticut on a Sunday in September 1960, ''The Sure Thing,'' ''Reunion,'' and his masterwork, the monumental "A Gay and Melancholy Sound" (1960).
Oral biographies accounted for his greatest success. The first of them, ''Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman,'' was published in 1974. It was adapted from an abortive television series for which the former President spent many hours in the early 1960's talking with Miller, the researcher and writer for the project.
His Johnson biography, a book for which he conducted 180 interviews and consulted almost 400 oral histories, was a best seller in 1980. Although he said he began the biography disliking the former President, in part because Miller was an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, he ended up appreciating Mr. Johnson's parliamentary achievements and calling him ''one of the most complex, fascinating Presidents of all time.''
In 1971, Miller wrote a widely discussed essay for The New York Times Magazine, ''What It Means to Be a Homosexual,'' which, he said, brought him more than 2,000 letters, many of them from other homosexuals thanking him for helping to restore their self-respect. This article, and the enlarged book published from it, "On Being Different," made Miller the first nationally-known advocate for gay rights. He closely followed that famous essay with the novel "What Happened," fictionalizing some of his own horrific life experiences which lay behind the NYT essay.
Miller attended the University of Iowa and spent a year at the London School of Economics. He joined the Army Air Corps in 1942 and served as an editor of Yank magazine, in both the Pacific and in Europe, until his discharge in September 1945. He worked briefly as an editor at Time and Harper's magazines.
Oral biographies accounted for his greatest success. The first of them, ''Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman,'' was published in 1974. It was adapted from an abortive television series for which the former President spent many hours in the early 1960's talking with Miller, the researcher and writer for the project.
His Johnson biography, a book for which he conducted 180 interviews and consulted almost 400 oral histories, was a best seller in 1980. Although he said he began the biography disliking the former President, in part because Miller was an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, he ended up appreciating Mr. Johnson's parliamentary achievements and calling him ''one of the most complex, fascinating Presidents of all time.''
In 1971, Miller wrote a widely discussed essay for The New York Times Magazine, ''What It Means to Be a Homosexual,'' which, he said, brought him more than 2,000 letters, many of them from other homosexuals thanking him for helping to restore their self-respect. This article, and the enlarged book published from it, "On Being Different," made Miller the first nationally-known advocate for gay rights. He closely followed that famous essay with the novel "What Happened," fictionalizing some of his own horrific life experiences which lay behind the NYT essay.
Miller attended the University of Iowa and spent a year at the London School of Economics. He joined the Army Air Corps in 1942 and served as an editor of Yank magazine, in both the Pacific and in Europe, until his discharge in September 1945. He worked briefly as an editor at Time and Harper's magazines.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 25, 2015
This is one of the greatest books I have ever read. It has always been my dream to be a television writer in 1962 and this book fully prepared me to reach my goals.
I think this is a memoir with maybe some names changed? It reads like a fiction book, but I remember where I got it at the Rochester Central Library and it was in the old building in a non-fiction room.
I think this is a memoir with maybe some names changed? It reads like a fiction book, but I remember where I got it at the Rochester Central Library and it was in the old building in a non-fiction room.
Displaying 1 of 1 review