Jay Sommers

A classic comedy scribe, Jay Sommers enjoyed a long career in radio after getting his big break penning material for the iconic Milton Berle in 1940. He transitioned into television in the middle of the '50s, becoming an instrumental writer on such historically emblematic programs as "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," the very picture of mid-20th-century family ideals, and "The Amos 'n' Andy Show," a racially controversial farce about two lower-class business partners. Sommers went on to consistently mine comedy gold from his preferred milieu of simple country living. He wrote and produced the small-town-set "Petticoat Junction" and the fondly remembered Eva-Gabor-starring "Green Acres," which inherited its winning city-folk-in-the-country premise from a short-lived radio program Sommers developed a decade earlier. The TV maestro also penned scripts for such similarly idyllic-life-run-amok sitcoms as "The Great Gildersleeve," "Dennis the Menace," and "The Beverly Hillbillies." Sommers died in 1985 but was posthumously credited for the TV-movie reunion "Return to Green Acres" and the screenplay for "Gordy," the lesser known of two 1995 talking-pig movies.