Stanley Ralph Ross

A Day with Hollywood Comedy Writer,

Producer and Resturanture

My un-published profile of my friend who taught screen writing at The Workshops

The house looked abandoned. A two story, stucco, bungalow on the corner in a shady part of Beverly Hills. Next door, was a nursery run by Mexicans. A for sale sign was stick in front yard, falling over. The grass brown and un-cut for weeks. We climbed the stairs to the front porch, boards missing, Stan fished out a key ring and unlocked the door.

     "The lady wants to sell, but her price is too high. The ‘for sale’ sign has more to do with the IRS than selling. If she can legitimately show the property is for sale, she gets a tax break.” the door finally unlocked and we enter. “She’s an old girl friend. Her husband and I go way back. He had a heart attack a few years back.”

     Inside, a TV was blasting. An inflated Barbie Doll, with puckered lips, ready to blow you, sat facing the tube, dressed in a tight  T-shirt and panties. Very nice, I thought, if she was live.

     "Security,” said Ralph, eyeing my bewilderment over the bazaar scene. “It makes anyone looking through a window think there is someone inside the house."

     This could not be the digs of a successful Hollywood writer, I thought. Where were the secretaries, the assistants, the researchers, the accountants, the dim lights and the soft leather coaches? The place was a shambles. It looked more like the habitat of a down and out writer, someone still struggling to climb up, or sliding down on the other side.

     It looked like a frat house after a weekend party. Piles of literature, magazines, papers, stacks of T-shirts covered the floor, tables and chairs. Another Barbie sat in front of a piano, which hadn't been played since Sam played in Casablanca.  Impressive art work covered the walls. Leaning against the wall on the stair case to the second floor was a  Hurell portrait of of Katherine Hepburn, another photograph of Chaplain, each worth $3,000 in any fine art photography gallery.

     Off to one side was what could have been the dining room, now housing Stanly's music production center. Not the high tech studio of modern Hollywood studio, but a table full of ancient electronic gear - an electronic key board, a reel-to-reel tape recorder, turn-tables, mics and stands. Papers filled the remainder of the space as if  blown in by the wind. The floor hadn’t been vacuumed in since Hoover’s time. The blinds were drawn. The entire space bathed in half light.

     There was a forgotten kitchen, a bathroom and a couch on which no one had or could sat.

     Stanly's working space was on the second floor. On the way up ther stairs, I found the walls covered by testimonials to his achievement, various certificates, one announced his acceptance into the Universal Church as some Saint.  There were framed  clippings from Variety and Hollywood Reporter. On the second floor an easy chair over flowing with paper contained a frame with a recent PhD in literature from UCLA. "Stanley, this needs a better frame than this," I commented, holding up the frame, the certificate askew inside. "A Doctor should have something better."

     Stanley's work station was an IBM clone on a litter covered desk. An overflowing ask tray near at hand.

     "This is the only place I can smoke," he added extracting a pack from his jacket pocket. There was hardly an inch of clear space on his desk.

     Stanley was more interested in showing me a new computer golf game, then talking about the film business. He switched to flying a jet under the Golden Gate Bridge, another game he was developing with some young gearhead.  He missed the Oakland Airport, and crash his air plane into San Francisco Bay.

     I could have been in Guy Neouri’s private eye office in St. Paul, but I was in the working space of one of Hollywood’s most prolific writers. Stanley had created and/or developing shows for TV including "Wonder Woman", "That's My Mama", "The Electric Company", "The Monster Squad", "The Challenge Of The Sexes", "The Kallikaks", "Where In The World Is Carmen Dan Diego.” He wrote every other espsoide of the Batman and Robin series, you know Bam, Pow, Wack? In all, he write more 60 shows, including movies "Coffee, Tea Or Me?", "Gold Of The Amazon Women", "Three On A Date", "For The Love Of It", "Sky Heist", many others. He was in partnership with Milton Burl, part owner in as dozen of LA’s successful restaurants and a comedy club or two. He wrote awards show scripts, did voice overs (he was voice of the Bull Terrier and The Doberman in “Babe, Pig in The City.”

     Stanley grew up telling stories on the street corner in Brooklyn, worked in advertising for a while then at ABC. He wrote the ACB Wide World of Sports introduction . . . “the thrill of victory… and the agony of defeat… the human drama of athletic competition . . .” While I was standing,  there being no un-occupied chairs,  Milton Burl called. Stanley put him off until Monday.

     Stanley came to Maine in the summer of XXXX to lead a master class in writing comedy for television. He returned for the next few summers and we became friends, sharing laughs and observations of life. He was a tall, robust man, over 6 feet 6 inches with a booming voice, a persistent smile and always eager to spin a yard, if you were willing to listen. I was in LA for the annual ASC Awards, and fortunate to be tagging along with Stanley for the day. I asked him, “give me one tip on the writing process.”

     “That’s easy. Turn off the screen.”

     “What?”

     “Turn off the computer screen. You can’t be creative when what you have written keeps calling you to go back and correct something. Turn off the internal editor, let the creativity flow out. Get it down while it is there. Tomorrow, when you come in and turn on your machine, you’ll find a lot sloppy, incomplete sentences, misspellings, typos . . . that’s fine, for you’ll also find gems, ideas, insights that you would have missed had you been fussing with your prose. There’s a time to create and a time to craft. Don’t get them confused, and don’t let that infernal editor get in the way. Tell that persnickety creep to leave you alone, and come back tomorrow when he, or she, can be of real help.”

     As we left, Stanley turned on the TV and turned up the volume. It would not have have been out of character were he to blow Barbie a kiss as we left. Ralph locked up, tested the door, straightened the for sale sign and we headed over to his home for dinner with the family.