A female trailblazer who found humor in some of America’s most challenging issues throughout the 1960s has passed away at age 96.
Irma Kalish, a television writer who tackled abortion, rape, and other provocative issues in many of the biggest comedy hits, died from complications of pneumonia. Her son reported her death on September 3rd at the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement home in Woodland Hills, California. Helping usher women into the writer’s room, Kalish notably wrote for Norman Lear’s caustic, socially conscious sitcoms “All in the Family” and its spinoff “Maude” in the ’70s.
Writing for “Maude,” Irma and her husband Austin Kalish, who died in 2016, worked on the contentious two-part episode “Maude’s Dilemma” (1972), in which the title character, a strong-minded suburban wife and grandmother in her late 40s (played by Bea Arthur), had an abortion. When it was broadcast, Roe v. Wade had just been argued in the United States Supreme Court and would be decided within months, making abortion legal nationwide. Controversy over the episode rose swiftly; dozens of CBS affiliates declined to show it.
Kalish’s career spanned decades, beginning in the mid-1950s, and included writing credits for more than three dozen shows, many that would make up a pantheon of baby boomers’ favorite sitcoms, among them “The Patty Duke Show,” “I Dream of Jeannie,” “My Favorite Martian,” “F Troop,” “My Three Sons” and “Family Affair.” She also had producer credits on 16 shows, including “The Facts of Life” and “Valerie.”
Her last television credit was in 1998, for the comedy series “The Famous Jett Jackson,” which was produced by their son, Bruce. They wrote a script dealing with ageism.
Along with her son, she is survived by her sister and only sibling, Harriet Alef; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Her daughter, Nancy Biederman, died in 2016.
