Max WIlk

Max Wilk (1920-2011) was interviewed for two-and-a-half hours in Westport, CT. Wilk briefly described his beginnings as a writer in radio, touring with Irving Berlin’s “This Is the Army” during World War II, and his entrance into writing for early television. He talked about writing for such anthology and variety shows as: The Ford Television Theatre (1948-50), The Victor Borge Show (1951), and The Imogene Coca Show (1954-55). Finally, he described working on the critically-acclaimed and long-running series Mama (for which he wrote from 1952-53), as well as the Emmy Award winning special The Fabulous Fifties (1960), a look at the decade. As a television historian and author of the seminal book The Golden Age of Television: Notes From the Survivors, Wilk also described the “live” era of television (and the actors, writers, and producers of the day) and the cloud of the 1950s blacklist and how it affected people he knew (including Zero Mostel). The interview was conducted by Michael Rosen on November 15, 2000.