RIP Sol Saks
Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2011 1:41 pm
Sol Saks, Writer of ‘Bewitched’ Pilot, Dies at 100
Sol Saks, who wrote the first episode of “Bewitched,” the popular sitcom about a suburban housewife skilled in the uses of enchantment, died on Saturday in Sherman Oaks, Calif. He was 100 and a Sherman Oaks resident.
His wife, Sandra Wagner, confirmed the death.
Broadcast on ABC from 1964 to 1972, “Bewitched” starred Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha, a comely young witch. (The character was called Cassandra in Mr. Saks’s original script.) Her husband, Darrin, was a sometimes bothered, often bewildered mortal first played by Dick York and later by Dick Sargent.
Mr. Saks’s pilot, “I, Darrin, Take This Witch, Samantha,” marries the couple off only to have Darrin discover on their wedding night that his bride is equipped with magical powers. Darrin is surprised.
Mr. Saks was not formally involved with the show beyond this script: he preferred writing pilots to the grind of a weekly series, his wife said, and his contract called for him to write no further episodes. But he remained associated with the show in public memory to the end of his life.
“Bewitched” inspired a 2005 feature film starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell.
Mr. Saks’s other credits include the screenplay for the film comedy “Walk, Don’t Run” (1966), adapted from a story by Robert Russell and Frank Ross. The movie was Cary Grant’s last picture: in it, he plays matchmaker to a young couple (Samantha Eggar and Jim Hutton) amid the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
Sol Saks was born in New York City on Dec. 13, 1910, and reared in Chicago. He studied journalism at Northwestern University and afterward worked for a small paper in Dunsmuir, Calif.
He began his entertainment career in radio, writing for “Duffy’s Tavern” and other shows. On television, he wrote for “My Favorite Husband,” “I Married Joan” and “Mr. Adams and Eve,” a late-1950s sitcom starring Howard Duff and Ida Lupino.
In the mid-1960s Mr. Saks was an executive producer with CBS in Hollywood, where he oversaw comedy programming.
Mr. Saks’s first wife, the former Anne Chaddock, died in 1972. Besides Ms. Wagner, he is survived by two children from his first marriage, Mary Spivey and Daniel Saks; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
He was the author of “The Craft of Comedy Writing,” published in 1985 by Writer’s Digest Books.
“Bewitched” was sometimes called derivative by critics, who cited big-screen films like “I Married a Witch” (1942) and “Bell Book and Candle” (1958) as influences. Mr. Saks had no trouble conjuring a reply.
“Go back to the Greeks, who had stories of gods coming down to Earth to live with mortals,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2004. “There are stories in other cultures of angels doing the same. The only thing is, before ‘Bewitched,’ this basic tale had not been used as a TV series.”
