Witt/Thomas Productions was an American television and movie production company run by TV producers Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas. The company was consistently productive between its founding in 1973 and 1999, but is still active, producing an occasional film or TV series project. It has produced more than 25 American primetime television series, mostly half-hour sitcoms. Witt/Thomas is perhaps best known for producing the popular sitcoms Soap, Benson, It's a Living, The Golden Girls (along with its sequel, The Golden Palace), Empty Nest, Blossom, Nurses and Brotherly Love. Witt and Thomas have also produced many cinematic works, including the 1989 box office collection success Dead Poets Society.
Numerous Witt/Thomas television series were created and co-executive produced by Susan Harris, then Witt's wife. The shows that had involvement from Harris were produced under the modified title Witt/Thomas/Harris Productions.
History
Work with other creators and producers During the 1980s and '90s, Witt/Thomas continued their producing streak, with many of their shows still involving Harris, and several served by other creators. From 1979 until 1983, John Rich (later known for co-producing MacGyver with Henry Winkler) was a top-tier producer with Witt and Thomas on Benson, and later on the company's short-lived Condo. In 1991, Rich briefly returned to the company as an executive producer on the short-lived NBC sitcom Walter & Emily.
Witt/Thomas brought It's a Living to ABC's fall schedule in 1980, a comedy centered on four buxom waitresses who worked for a posh restaurant atop a Los Angeles hotel, and the fraternizing that went on between them. The series, created by Stu Silver, Dick Clair, and Jenna McMahon, ran on ABC for two seasons, with the second season airing under the modified title Making a Living. Syndication reruns, which aired a year after the series' cancellation (see below), brought the show a whole new audience; the series was revived under its original title for first-run syndication, and ran four additional seasons (1985–1989). Witt/Thomas also produced the short-lived 1983 ABC sitcom Condo, from creator Sheldon Bull. Although it had no involvement from Susan Harris, Condo featured elements of Soap, in which two families, related by marriage, were the focus, along with the in-fighting that went on between both sides. Other Witt/Thomas series during the mid-1980s that were created by people other than Susan Harris included the short-lived CBS sitcom Tough Cookies (1986), which starred Robby Benson as a young maverick detective, and One Big Family (1986–1987), a first-run syndication series which was the third (and final) Witt/Thomas comedy vehicle for Danny Thomas. The latter was the only series from the company in which one of the partners (Witt) had co-creation credit, in this case with David Pollock and Elias Davis.
In 1990, Golden Girls writers/producers Tracy Gamble and Richard Vaczy were hired by Witt/Thomas to create a sitcom pilot, which was ultimately not picked up for series status. In June of that year, their summer pilot We'll Take Manhattan aired, in which Jackée Harry and Corinne Bohrer starred as polar opposites—a sassy city girl and a naive Southern belle, respectively—who attempt to make it in New York City together. The cast also featured Joel Brooks, Fred Applegate, and Edan Gross (who had recently starred with Bohrer on the ABC sitcom Free Spirit). We'll Take Manhattan was NBC's second attempt to place Jackée in her own headlined series after her departure from the network's 227, on which she found massive fame. Her first starring vehicle, the 227 spinoff Jackée, had not been picked up the previous year. Gamble and Vaczy had previously worked on 227 before their hiring by Witt/Thomas.
In 1991, Witt/Thomas struck a development deal with the young Fox network, for a pilot created and written by Andy Guerdat and Steve Kreinberg, who had first worked for Witt/Thomas as writers on It's a Living from 1985 to 1987, among their numerous other credits. The pilot was Herman's Head, an irreverent sitcom starring William Ragsdale as a young publishing-company fact checker whose thought processes were explored through a "Greek chorus" of human emotions that lived in his head. The series developed a cult following on Fox upon its September 1991 premiere, and lasted three seasons.
Paul Perlove, who had served as an executive producer during the first season of the Witt/Thomas series Blossom (see below), created his own series for the company, Walter & Emily, which had a brief run on NBC from November 1991 until February 1992. It starred Cloris Leachman and Brian Keith in the title roles, and focused on the generation gaps they faced between their adult son and grandson.
Witt/Thomas launched their second series for Fox in the fall of 1992, which perhaps had the most unusual premise of all of their shows: Woops!, a comedy taking place in a postapocalyptic US, in which six adult survivors of the mysterious nuclear blast found themselves congregating in an abandoned farm house and living together, depending on each other for survival. The series was created and co-executive produced by Gary Jacobs, following his producing work on the successful Empty Nest, and featured Evan Handler, Fred Applegate, and Lane Davies (who had worked on Good & Evil in 1991) in the cast. The wild premise for Woops! was perceived as being somewhat limited in its development, due to the small Earth population in the storyline, but the series only had a few months to prove itself before getting axed in December 1992.
In 1994, David Landsberg (a former producer of Blossom and Herman's Head), and Brenda Hampton (another Blossom producer), had a Witt/Thomas pilot of theirs, Daddy's Girls, be picked up by CBS. Dudley Moore headlined this comedy, in which his character, Dudley Walker, a flamboyant Englishman whose deceased wife leaves him a clothing empire, tries to balance his empire along with fussing over his three attractive young daughters (played by Stacy Galina, Meredith Scott Lynn, and Keri Russell). Playing opposite Moore was Harvey Fierstein in a rare TV series role, as Dudley's prissy, overtly gay business partner. Critics lambasted Daddy's Girls even before its September 1994 debut, predicting it would not last until Christmas; CBS indeed only aired three episodes, before placing it on a hiatus from which it ended up never returning.
Later in the 1994–95 season, CBS picked up another Witt/Thomas pilot, The Office, created by veteran producer Susan Beavers (who had previously produced Nurses for Witt/Thomas) and Barbara Corday, co-creator of former CBS feminist-slanted police drama Cagney & Lacey. The comedy centered on the camaraderie of numerous executives and their secretaries at a packaging company, with the cast headed by Valerie Harper and Dakin Matthews. The series had a brief spring run during March and April 1995. It has no relation to the later British series The Office, or its American NBC counterpart (2005–2013).
In 1996, the last Witt/Thomas development deal with Fox resulted in the short-lived sitcom Local Heroes. Created by Frank Mula, a writer and producer of The Simpsons, the comedy was described as a "blue-collar version of Friends", as it depicted the close-knit friendship of several young men and women who were just getting by in a small town. Local Heroes notably starred Jay Mohr, along with three actors from previous Witt/Thomas series — Jason Kristofer, from the short-lived Heartland (1989), Ken Hudson Campbell of Herman's Head, and Kristin Dattilo of the previous year's The Office.
Keeping with the tradition of elevating producers within the company to creators, Witt/Thomas gave Mitchell Hurwitz, who had numerous producing roles on many Witt/Thomas series throughout the 1990s, the chance to create his own project, Everything's Relative, which turned up as a spring replacement series on NBC in 1999. A family comedy about an eccentric, slightly immature couple (Jeffrey Tambor and Jill Clayburgh) and their adult, upscale-professional, but equally immature sons (Kevin Rahm and Eric Schaeffer), it received positive reviews that likened the diverse, interlocking stories to that of Seinfeld. Nonetheless, NBC only aired the series four times in April 1999 before cancelling it. Hurwitz later teamed up with Ron Howard and 20th Century Fox to create and produce the Fox sitcom Arrested Development, in which he again cast Jeffrey Tambor as an eccentric patriarch of an equally quirky family. In 1998, Nina Wass joined the company as president. She later left to join her startup company at Disney in August 1999, eventually partnering with Gene Stein.
Although it was not immediately realized, the quick demise of Everything's Relative soon marked the end of Witt/Thomas Productions' 24-year television series producing streak. The company, however, remained intact, producing an occasional made-for-TV movie thereafter. Witt and Thomas came out of their TV series retirement in 2012, with the revival of their dramatic series Beauty and the Beast.
Don Reo In 1987, screenwriter Don Reo began his involvement with Witt/Thomas, writing for their NBC project Mama's Boy. Reo soon went on to create several series for the company, in conjunction with his nameplate, Impact Zone Productions. His first creation was the CBS sitcom Heartland, which starred Brian Keith as a cantankerous Nebraska farmer who moves in with his daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren. The series had a brief run in the spring of 1989, but Reo had other projects for Witt/Thomas that would soon hit the air. During the 1990–91 season, two more Reo series from Witt/Thomas premiered: Lenny, a sitcom vehicle for comedian Lenny Clarke, which debuted on CBS in September 1990; and Blossom, an NBC series starring Mayim Bialik whose pilot was previewed on July 5, 1990, and whose series premiere occurred on January 3, 1991. Lenny was a ratings failure, and was cancelled by CBS in March 1991; Blossom was more successful, enjoying a strong following among teenaged viewers on NBC's youth-oriented Monday-night comedy block (alongside freshman hit The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), and ultimately ran until 1995, lasting five seasons.
Following up his Blossom success for NBC, Reo acquired John Larroquette for a project soon after the conclusion of his long-running sitcom Night Court. This resulted in The John Larroquette Show on NBC's fall 1993 schedule. The first season of The John Larroquette Show specialized in dark, seedy humor unusual for network television. Despite critical acclaim, it was nearly cancelled by NBC at the end of its first season. The network ended up renewing the show on the agreement that Reo and Witt/Thomas would lighten the show's tone and introduce more upbeat stories. Larroquette went through two more renewal periods on NBC, until getting cancelled in October 1996, just five weeks into its fourth season. Reo created one more series for Witt/Thomas, the Rhea Perlman vehicle Pearl, which ran on CBS during the 1996–97 season, in which Perlman joined Reo, Witt, Thomas, and Gary S. Levine as an executive producer.
Gary S. Levine Witt and Thomas again took on a third partner in their production team, when they inducted Gary S. Levine as a top-tier producer in the company in 1994. He was president of that television division in 1993. Levine worked with Witt/Thomas for the next three years on five of their new shows, and was listed along with them on each show's top "executive producers" credit. His surname, however, was never added to the Witt/Thomas Productions names (similar to how former partner John Rich was never incorporated into the company name; Susan Harris, as Witt's wife, remains the only third partner to have her name included in the production marquee).