Gordon 'Whitey' Mitchell (February 22, 1932 – January 16, 2009) was an American jazz bassist turned television writer/producer, who served as a writer and story consultant with writing partner, Lloyd Turner through Mork & Mindy's first season.
Biography[]
He was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, on February 22, 1932. Like his brother Red Mitchell was raised in New Jersey by a father who was an engineer and loved music, and a mother who loved poetry, both of them becoming jazz bassists.
'Whitey' led his own groups at The Village Vanguard and The Embers and later toured with big band greats Benny Goodman and Pete Rugolo, played Carnegie Hall with Gene Krupa, appeared with Buddy Rich, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and Lester Young on Jazz At The Philharmonic. He played with Elinor Sherry and Shep Fields in the early 1950s before serving in the Army during the Korean War. From 1954 he worked freelance in New York City, playing with Gene Krupa (1955), Mel Tormé, Jack Jones, J.J. Johnson, Kai Winding, Pete Rugolo, Lester Young, Charlie Ventura, Herbie Mann, Betty Roche, Oscar Pettiford (1956–1957), Gene Quill, Joe Puma, Johnny Richards, Peter Appleyard, André Previn, and Benny Goodman (1963–1964).He performed on hundreds of recording sessions, television and film scores but only released one album under his own leadership on ABC-Paramount in 1956, and one with Red and Blue Mitchell in 1958 as "The Mitchells: Red, Whitey & Blue," released on MetroJazz Records. Mitchell recorded with Anita O'Day, Barbra Streisand, Anthony Newley, and played the bass solo introduction on Ben E. King's hit record "Stand By Me."
From 1965 he switched careers to writing for Television.
On retiring from professional writing, Mitchell taught screenwriting at UCLA and UC Riverside. In 1995 he, and his wife Marilyn, moved to Palm Desert, California, where he had his own radio show, The Power Lunch and wrote a golf column for a local magazine. He recorded his CD Just In Time and played jazz in all the nightclub venues.
He was the author of two books, Hackensack to Hollywood: My Two Show Business Careers and Star Walk: A Guide to the Palm Springs Walk of Stars.
Mitchell was a board member of the Palm Springs Walk of Stars and was honored with his own Golden Palm Star in tribute to his two show business careers in 2006. He's been inducted into his New Jersey high school's Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame.
He died January 16, 2009 (aged 76) Palm Springs, California
Writing Career[]
After 1965 on advice from comic and music luminaries Lenny Bruce and André Previn he moved to Hollywood to pursue a career as a television writer.
His first credit was on My Mother the Car (1966) followed by Gomer Pyle, USMC and The Doris Day Show, writing for all as 'Whitey' Mitchell, before he teamed with Lloyd Turner, to work as Gordon Mitchell on shows like Get Smart, several Bob Hope television specials, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Odd Couple, The Good Life (U.S. not U.K.), Maude, The Partridge Family, All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Good Times, And as sole writer on Different Strokes, AfterMASH, and the Twilight Zone.
He wrote the feature film Private Resort starring Rob Morrow and Johnny Depp.
His last writing credit was for De Sylvia Millecam Show (1994)
Mork & Mindy - Starting Out, Writing Process and Robin's "Ad-Libs"[]
During their time on Get Smart, writer Dale McRaven worked for Turner & Mitchell, and they in turn worked for him as writers during his time on The Partridge Family. At the very earliest stages of Mork & Mindy, before the Pam Dawber & Robin Williams had even met Dale McRaven contacted Turner & Mitchell and asked them to come in to look at the show that Garry Marshall had just gotten greenlit. Mitchell recalled that "There was no pilot, no staff, and no premise other than Garry's effective pitch [to ABC] on the phone. So we showed up at Paramount, met Robin Williams and saw some videotape of Pam Dawber in a failed pilot about a nun. And I remember thinking at the time...sure lots of nuns look like Pam Dawber." [1]
Turner & Mitchell agreed to come on board as writers and story consultants (the latter for all 22 episodes of the first season) and they and Dale McRaven 'kicked around how the show would work' Mitchell & Lloyd wrote the very first episode which was actually "Mork Moves In". The Pilot, written by Dale McRaven was actually written and filmed several weeks after 'Mork Moves In'.
Mitchell recalled that he & Lloyd Turner wrote 4 out of the first 12 episodes written (though not shot/released in that order)
But Mitchell asserts that the more writers that came into the writers room, the more chaotic and less effective at producing finished scripts the show became. "Rather than assign reasonable work reasonably [to the writers] he [Dale McRaven] liked all-night writing sessions with everyone in attendance yelling and screaming and working on this week's script, which was already great, and he didn't seem to care that next week's episode was a shambles and the one for the week after that didn't exist. All ten of us would assemble in Dale's office. He'd show up and we'd begin to work." He recalled that "This was tough to take when the producer in me kept reminding me that the next episodes were not a lot more than memos at the point. This would go on until the smokers in the room ran out of cigarettes' and the script was pronounced funny, which events normally occurred simultaneously, about one or two in the morning. Then we'd take the rest of the day off."[1]
Lile all of the other writers, something that really irked him was the rumor (that circles to this day) that Robin Williams was ad-libbing the show. He was not surprised that regular TV viewers believed this as they have always believed that their favorite comedians came up with 'their own stuff'. But he recalls that "The main TV critic of The Los Angeles Times wrote a story in which he blatantly claimed that 'the writers just hand Robin blank pages and tell him to ad-lib here' How ridiculous! Doesn't the man whose job it is to know these things know that television cameras and crews operate on specific word cues, which are taped to the floor when the show is blocked?"[1]
He related the course of events during a weekly schedule, echoing how naturally diminishing laughter to repeatedly heard jokes affected Robin Williams, and as a result the writers . "Robin and Pam and the cast would read the script Monday Morning and everyone would laugh hysterically and we'd get the feeling that this week would be different and nothing could possibly go wrong with this show. Wrong! by the third day when everyone knew all the jokes and the laughter from the crew had almost evaporated, Robin would get "comedian flop sweat" and start throwing in pieces of his act, sophisticated Sunset Strip drug jokes and references totally out of character for Mork, the space innocent. Then we'd have to tell him no, Mork wouldn't say that and the ensuing brouhaha would lead to another all-nighter in Dale's office. So yes, he ad-libbed when he thought things weren't going well, but those ad-libs were edited out and never became part of the show unless they were in character and once the show was blocked, there could be no more changes."[1]
Mork & Mindy saw the end of the 11 year writing partnership of Turner & Mitchell as, during the course of the show, the all night working conditions having an effect on Lloyd Turner's health and 'made his life miserable'. On visiting a doctor it was 'discovered that his blood pressure was elevated above the numbers that human beings can survive and he was was approaching the deceased category. The doctor asked what he was doing. He said, "Writing Mork & Mindy," and the doctor said, "Don't do that!".[1]
At the end of the first season of Mork & Mindy, Turner & Mitchell would finish out their Paramount contract with their obligation for a pilot and then Lloyd Turner retired.