April 9 - A.J. Carothers

Image courtesy chron.com

On this day, in 2007, Andrew J. Carothers passed away in Los Angeles, California. I have to admit that I’m guessing at the Andrew part as he’s stubbornly identified as A.J. in every obituary and bio I could find. But since both a son and a grandson bear that moniker, I think it’s a safe bet. AJ was born on October 22, 1931 in Houston, Texas. He showed an aptitude for writing at an early age. One of his favorite stories to tell was how he sold his first work at the age of nine, a mystery story to a fellow classmate for a whopping 15 cents (that’s almost three dollars in today’s money). AJ graduated from Houston’s prestigious Kincaid School in 1950 and moved on to the University of California, Los Angeles for his degree. After graduating from UCLA, he joined the Army in 1955 for a two year tour, most of which he spent in Panama. The highlight of his military service was helping set up the first television station in the Caribbean.

Image courtesy wikipedia.com

After being discharged from the Army, AJ returned to Hollywood to begin his career. During the rest of the Fifties and the beginning of the Sixties, he honed his skills writing episodes of early television shows like The Third Man, Bourbon Street Beat and My Three Sons. It was through his work on the last show that he came to the attention of Walt Disney, who was looking for another writer. AJ signed a contract with the Disney Studio in 1962 and went right to work. His first screenplay was for Miracle of the White Stallions, a movie about the evacuation of the Lipizzaner horses from Vienna during World War II. Over the next few years, AJ worked closely with Walt on several projects for both the big and little screens. He wrote the script for Emil and the Detectives. Like Stallions, Emil was first shown on The Wonderful World of Disney before being released to theaters. He then wrote the 1967 Fred MacMurray comedy The Happiest Millionaire which became the last film Walt had a personal hand in producing. When Walt died during the production of Millionaire, AJ had become so close with the boss that he read a eulogy at his funeral.

Image copyright Disney

AJ’s relationship continued for another year after Walt’s passing. He wrote the 1968 crime caper Never a Dull Moment starring Dick Van Dyke and Edward G. Robinson. The tepid box office and mostly negative critical response to Moment (as well as the general floundering of studio reeling from its founder’s death) marked the end of AJ’s contract, but not his career by any means.

In 1970, AJ co-created the sitcom Nanny and the Professor, which played on ABC for three seasons (mainly because for the first two it was sandwiched in between The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family).  Thirteen years later, he created another sitcom, Goodnight, Beantown that ran for two seasons on CBS. His biggest hit (and the project he was best known for) came in 1987 with the Michael J. Fox movie The Secret of My Success. In between those projects, AJ not only wrote more than 100 television show episodes and big screen movies, he became something of a speech writer. His biggest client was none other than Nancy Reagan, but his words also came from the mouths of people like John Ritter, Patrick Stewart and John Lithgow.

Image courtesy hubermarionettes.com

One of AJ’s final major projects reunited him with the Sherman Brothers, who had written the music for Never a Dull Moment. The Brothers had written music and lyrics for a stage show called Busker Alley and they turned to AJ for the book. Tommy Tune starred in a 1995 touring production that never quite made it to Broadway. That same year, the Music Center Spotlight Awards began handing out statuettes and they tapped AJ to script their ceremony, which he gladly did every year until 2006. By that time, he’d been diagnosed with cancer and the disease had started taking its toll. Less than a year after his last script was put into production, the man once praised for (almost) singlehandedly continuing the tradition of Southern gentility would pass away at home at the age of 75.