Woody Kling
| Woody Kling | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Heywood Fisher Kling April 14, 1925 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Died | April 10, 1988 (aged 62) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | television writer, producer, playwright, and composer |
| Years active | 1948–1986 |
Woody Kling (April 14, 1925 – April 10, 1988) was an American television writer, producer, playwright, and composer.
Born Heywood Fisher Kling in New York City, Kling was the son of Mayme and Ken Kling. Ken was a cartoonist for the New York Daily Mirror, predicting the horse races in his strip Joe and Asbestos. Woody Kling was given the middle name Fisher in tribute to Ken Kling's friend Bud Fisher, who created the first successful daily comic strip in the United States.
In the 1940s, Ken and Mayme Kling hosted celebrity parties at their home at The Eldorado building in New York City. At one of those parties, Woody Kling, then only in his 20s, met the vaudeville star Milton Berle. Berle told a joke, at which Kling did not laugh. When questioned by Berle as to what was wrong, Kling said the joke wasn't told in the right way, and retold it in his own style. Upon Kling receiving the laughs of the entire party, Berle hired Kling on the spot to produce, head write and create the theme song for a new television show in which Berle would be starring. Called The Texaco Star Theatre Starring Milton Berle, the show was created by Berle, produced live before a New York audience on kinescopes owned by Berle, but with the scripts and music owned by Kling. The show’s theme song was the broadcasting creation of the modern jingle. The theme song, called "We Are the Men of Texaco", and written by Kling and Buddy Arnold, was the first time that a television program used music to promote a commercial advertiser's product.
In the decades that followed, "We are the Men of Texaco" and the way it was staged – sung by four gas station attendants (Kling’s idea) – would be licensed by Kling’s heirs to filmmakers wishing to depict the impact of television’s advent on the American family (like Barry Levinson’s 1990s film Avalon). The song also served as Milton Berle’s theme for personal appearances. In 1979, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi and Garret Morris recreated Kling’s staging and sung "We Are the Men of Texaco" live on Saturday Night Live in honor of Berle, its host that week. And in obituaries of Berle, the theme song's lyrics would be quoted.
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