Constellation Similarity Assertions

Lucille Kallen (1922 - 1999) was a prolific writer, proficient in many genres, who helped shape the early direction of American television humor, but is perhaps best remembered as the author of the C.B. Greenfield mystery novels.

Kallen, who was was the only female writer on the staff of Your Show of Shows in a time when men dominated the industry, also wrote for radio, theater, and television. While still establishing herself as a radio writer in the late 1940s, Kallen was teamed with Mel Tolkin as a writing partner at the Tamiment Playhouse, a summer theater in the Poconos run by producer Max Liebman. It also was at Tamiment that Kallen first met the comedienne, Imogene Coca. By 1949, Kallen was working in New York with Tolkin as co-writers for a new television program, the Admiral Broadway Revue, which featured Sid Caesar as host and a cast that included Coca. The show was reincarnated the following season as Your Show of Shows. Kallen, who was joined in the writers' room by such notables as Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, was the only female writer during the entire run of the show. She developed material primarily for Coca and was credited with creating some of her best writing in sketches concerning the bickering married couple, the Hickenloopers. When Your Show of Shows went off the air in 1954, Kallen was chosen to become head writer for the short-lived Imogene Coca Show.

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