Following the scripts: Man collects a treasure trove of TV history

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FORT WORTH, Texas—You’re driving around Fort Worth, and you zip past a storage facility, which you barely notice. But if you knew what was inside this one, you might slam on your brakes. Then you might toss your tam high into the air or start humming “The Twilight Zone theme.”

Inside is the very blueprint of television: original typed TV scripts from the 1940s through today—many of them scrawled on by the medium’s most important writers, producers and entertainers. Among the gems: original typescripts from “I Love Lucy”; Ted Knight’s scripts from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”; Robert Keeshan’s scripts from “Captain Kangaroo”; Johnny Carson’s personal scripts from “The Tonight Show”; scripts from “The Texaco Star Theatre,” better known as “The Milton Berle Show,” and, yes, “The Twilight Zone.”

For now, they’re all the property of Fuller French, a Fort Worth collector and private investor.

French, and some others in the industry, say it’s the largest collection of original TV scripts anywhere. In all, there are 100,000 scripts, from 3,000 different shows, including early radio productions.

You’ll find at least one original script of just about every show ever made. On the “A” shelves alone, there’s everything from “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” and “All in the Family” to “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” and “After MASH.”

“‘Gilligan’s Planet’—you didn’t see it?” French says with mock incredulity as he shows off the file boxes containing the best and the worst of television. “Hey, we have it all here. We don’t judge.”

It started with the Superman costume. In 2001, Fuller French was 35 years old and already a serious collector of rare books and a casual collector of TV scripts and memorabilia. The Midland, Texas, native was living in Los Angeles, and he was on the hunt for a costume from the 1950s TV “Superman” series.

He found the old flying suit. But how did that lead to a collection that the Smithsonian should be killing for? And how did he accomplish it in just over six years’ time?

For French, the gatekeeper was a man named Si Simonson.

Simonson had been the special-effects wizard responsible for Superman’s flying and wall-busting on the TV show. French learned that Simonson had a costume and other TV artifacts. It took French about a month to persuade him to consider selling.

Finally, they struck a deal. As they were finishing up, Simonson said offhandedly: “Here, you need to take these, too—this is part of the deal.”

He gestured to a few boxes. Inside were about 80 original Superman scripts, all with Simonson’s handwritten notes scrawled throughout. “Superman breaks through the wall, Scene 14. Superman flies ...” It was the history of television, right there.

The minute Simonson opened those boxes, it hit French like a bolt of lightning. “As a collector, I’ve always loved rare books and television,” he says now. “And then it dawned on me that the perfect marriage of those two is the television script.” His ambitious mission was cast: He would try to track down original scripts of every American television show from the beginning of broadcast history.

French is well on his way. Although it’s not open to the public at the moment, he calls his collection the Broadcast American Radio and Television Scripts (ARTS) Library, and keeps it in a Fort Worth storage facility. In French’s impeccable filing system, most scripts are kept inside their own acetate sleeves, inside large plastic bins, filed alphabetically, and stacked from floor to ceiling in shelving units.

“What Fuller French has accomplished is without equal—in scope, in collection care, in his almost compulsion for authenticity,” says James Comisar, curator of the Comisar Collection in Beverly Hills, billed as the world’s most comprehensive collection of TV artifacts. “There’s a difference between an original script that an actor had rolled up in his hand on shoot day and one that was a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox.”

Comisar has known French for 20 years and says he’s very intense about archiving the very best scripts. “You have the Writers Guild here in Los Angeles—basically the union of all these erstwhile writers. And they don’t have a fraction of what Fuller French has put together.”

That’s true, says Karen Pedersen, head of the Writers Guild Foundation’s Shavelson-Webb Library. She says her library has between 15,000 and 17,000 TV scripts. The University of Southern California’s Cinema Television Library has about 6,000 scripts, according to that library’s director, Steve Hanson.

French certainly realizes the import of what he has. He often cites American Medical Association statistics such as this one: By the time the average American turns 50, he or she will have watched eight years of television.

“That confirms to me that TV writing—embodied in the script—is the most consumed form of American literature,” French says.

Reading about the history of television is one thing, French says. “But actually seeing these pages—these stained pages that were written in a crowded-up writers’ office. It’s from these pages that history was made, a medium was born, and American ideals and culture were transmitted all over the world.”

Pedersen, of the Writers Guild library, says she and her colleagues aren’t just pleased that French is so relentless and exacting about collecting the material: They’re relieved.

“We know that the first generation of television writers is elderly and passing, and we’ve probably missed collecting a lot of materials,” Pedersen says. “And it’s very reassuring that he’s collecting all of these historic materials.”

And so it is for people like Leonard Stern. The 83-year-old was a writer on such shows as “The Honeymooners,” “Get Smart” and “The Steve Allen Show”; French has accumulated some of Stern’s work.

“And he’s in pursuit of a great deal more,” Stern says, “and in all probability, he’ll end up with all of it, because it’ll be treated with reverence. He instills that belief in one. He’s a good soul.”

Stern says there is no true paper trail for the material. “The Television Academy doesn’t have access to scripts,” he says, and the Broadcast Museum—now known as the Paley Center for Media—“is more interested in the program itself. Fuller was fulfilling almost a need.”

Stern says many writers, directors and producers—if they saved scripts at all—weren’t sure what to do with them, so many have ended up at the colleges they attended. “So right now,” he says, “a great many classic works are scattered across the country in remote areas. It’s very healthy to have one central location. It’s an intellectual Cooperstown.”

So, how has he done it? French has been collecting scripts somewhat stealthily. First, he didn’t want to give anyone else his idea. Second, flying under the radar allowed him to find things that had for years gone unnoticed. French says one script can cost anywhere from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars. Storage and insurance cost about $25,000 a year, which he pays out of his own pocket. The collection is maintained mostly by him, but a few volunteers occasionally help him organize and file.

At this point, it’s become a full-time job, but he’s modest when talking about the undertaking. You get a better picture of French’s endeavor by talking to Comisar, the TV curator.

“Fuller French is a modern-day treasure hunter,” Comisar says.

“He’d call every cast member, he’d call every director, he’d call every craft services person that ever worked on the soundstage,” Comisar says. “You don’t just call Aaron Spelling’s office and say we want 10 years of scripts from `Beverly Hills, 90210,’ and they’ll UPS them over the next day. It’s script by script by script, you put it together, and it’s an enormous undertaking, and one that he has done to a gold standard.”

So why has a collection like this not been amassed before French started doing it?

Comisar, a former TV writer, says that within the industry, the script is a very perishable thing. “Friday night, once the script is shot, on your way out to the car, you just throw it in the roll-up Dumpster,” he says. “Because Monday morning, you’re gonna get another script, and that script is gonna be updated five times in the following week. You could have six drafts of a script just for one half-hour episode.”

One day, the collection will become too large for French to manage himself. That’s why he’s starting to talk to various institutions that might be interested in obtaining his library, whether it’s a gift, a purchase or a combination of the two.

“It’s always been my intention to place the library with a university or some other institution where it would be preserved and presented properly—a place that will best utilize it for the benefit of students, faculty and scholars,” says French, who declines to name the institutions he’s spoken with.

As a native Texan, he’d love to see it stay in the state. “However,” he says, “I’m open to the place that’s going to present it in the most favorable light.”

And when that happens, will French wash his hands of TV scripts, in favor of a whole new collection? Don’t count on it. “I think I’ll always be on call for this collection,” he says. “I’ll always be on the hunt for more.”

For the modern-day treasure hunter, there are no commercial breaks.

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SUPER SCRIPTS

Most important: Fuller French says he thinks his most important scripts are the original first drafts of “I Love Lucy,” the series that defined the sitcom. Revisions by writers Madelyn Pugh and Jess Oppenheimer were scribbled by hand..

Radio, radio: One of French’s favorite items dates from World War II: Bob Hope’s opening speech from his radio-show broadcast on D-Day, June 6, 1944; it’s from the collection of head writer Al Schwartz.

Pigging out: Some of French’s collection comes from Frank Inn, who owned and trained many Hollywood animals, including “Green Acres’” Arnold Ziffel. The “Green Acres” scripts were “used” by Arnold the Pig.

The Bradley Bunch? “The Brady Bunch” didn’t always have Mike, Carol, six kids and Alice. In fact, it wasn’t even called “The Brady Bunch.” “We have seven different versions of the pilot,” French says, “and the title changes. It’s `The Bradleys,’ `The Bradley Bunch,’ `The Brady Brood’ ....” In Sherwood Schwartz’s original, typed pilot, Carol is to marry Steve Bradley. They have one child apiece—Cindy is Carol’s, Bobby is Steve’s. Their housekeeper is a plump Swedish woman named Kris.

Ginger or Mary Ann? Schwartz also created “Gilligan’s Island,” but his brother, Elroy Schwartz, typed the original pilot (along with Austin “Rocky” Kalish). Ginger and Mary Ann didn’t exist—their predecessors were Toni and Carol, two secretaries from Cleveland.

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ABOUT THE LIBRARY

For more information on Fuller French’s Broadcast ARTS Library, call 817-259-0077 or visit www.broadcastartslibrary.com.