Don Giller

Another long-winded thread! I'm preparing something that'll mean extremely little to the vast majority on the planet, but hopefully a lot to a very select few: The comedy team of Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses.

Jay had grown up in Baltimore. He was related to one of my mom's closest friends, which led her to babysat him in the '40s. By the mid-'60s, Jay and Tom had been performing regularly at The Cellar Door in D.C.

It was around this time when the two of them played me a reel-to-reel recording of one of their sets. They appeared on a few talk shows, and I recorded some of them off the air onto my own reel-to-reels.

Then, in c. 1971, they abandoned their stand-up career and moved to L.A. to become tv writers, landing jobs with Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett. They became quite successful.

And they wrote for MTM on her short-lived "Mary" show in 1978, when they first got to work with Dave and @Merrillmarkoe. (Merrill also worked with them on the series "Open All Night" in the Fall of '81, which included a cameo with Dave.)

So it was on September 10, 1982, when Patchett and Tarses guested on Late Night. Since they all knew each other from the past, there was a unique comfort level. The show would air ten days later.

They were in NYC holding auditions for their upcoming series "Buffalo Bill," starring Dabney Coleman. The show would premiere the following June.

In a few years Tom and Jay would split apart over career disputes. Tom would create "Alf" while Jay's interests led him to create "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd."