“I should have said, `Does the name Joan Molinsky mean anything to you?’-and whipped out a gun and killed the son of a bitch.” My friend Kenny Solms said, “That’s a movie.” The Girl Most Likely to … went right into production starring Stockard Channing and Ed Asner. Its first showing was seen by 50 million people, a rating record then for a movie written for TV. I wrote the first draft by myself in eight weeks, and ABC had a writer rework it, and then I reworked what he reworked. It became the story of a fat ugly girl who gets thin and beautiful and kills every boy who ever slighted her. That script came right from the heart. After six months Edgar’s office had become an unnecessary expense, and he gave it up. At home, my office was in the tiny guest house, and Archie Walker, the maitre d’ from the Downstairs, had come west with us to be my secretary. There was room for only one desk, which Archie used, so Edgar created a setup to make his phone calls from an antique bench jammed in a corner.
