I was always amused at the setup of the Dick Van Dyke show. It was about the comedy writers for Allen Brady, but in real life Allen Brady was the comedy writer for Rob, Sally and Buddy.
Reiner based the show on his experiences as a performer and occasional writer on Sid Caesar's
Your Show of Shows and
Caesar's Hour, even though Caesar himself wasn't half as (shall we say) mercurial as Alan Brady. (Other writers included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, future
M*A*S*H writer Larry Gelbart, and Woody Allen, among others.) Among the writers he also engaged for
The Dick Van Dyke Show was John Whedon, who'd once been the co-writer (teaming with Sam Moore) for the 1940s radio hit
The Great Gildersleeve; and, Phil Leslie, the protege of Don Quinn who eventually took over from Quinn as the head writer of another radio legend,
Fibber McGee & Molly.
(Phil Leslie eventually had a hilarious coda to his career as a broadcast writer---he co-wrote several episodes of
The Addams Family in the mid-1960s!)
If any 1950s television star was a match or near-match for Alan Brady's temperament, it was probably Red Buttons---who scored big with
The Red Buttons Show in 1952 but had such a talent for alienating everyone who worked with him with his tantrums that the show was dead meat after three years. Buttons had to remake/remodel his career almost entirely after he came that close to destroying it. He was a classic example of an overnight success whose unexpected success didn't just go to but shot right through his own head. He ended up making a distinguished career in due course as a supporting player, but he destroyed his own hard-earned shot as a big-timer.
