Craig Kellem, a onetime agent for comic legends George Carlin and Lily Tomlin who served as a producer on the chaotic first season of Saturday Night Live and on syndicated reboots of The Munsters, Dragnet and Adam-12, has died. He was 82.
Kellem died Nov. 24 at an assisted living facility in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, his daughter Judy Hammett told The Hollywood Reporter. She and her father were partners in Hollywoodscript.com, a boutique script-consultation company he founded in 1998.
After serving alongside Lorne Michaels as a producer and talent coordinator on SNL’s inaugural 1975-76 season, he and Michaels produced The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, a 1978 NBC mockumentary about a Beatles-like band that was written by, co-directed and starred Eric Idle.
As a senior vp with the MCA-backed The Arthur Co., Kellem worked as a co-executive producer for two seasons (1989-91) on The Munsters Today, which ran for three years and starred John Schuck as Herman Munster and Lee Meriwether as his wife, Lily.
He also helped shepherd The New Dragnet, starring Jeff Osterhage and Bernard White, and The New Adam-12, starring Peter Parros and Ethan Wayne. Both shows aired for two seasons, 1989-91 and 1990-91, respectively.
Craig Charles Kellem was born in Philadelphia on Jan. 24, 1943. His father was Milton Kellem, a popular bandleader, songwriter (“Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now”), restaurateur and orchestra conductor for network radio programs, and his mother, Judy Shinn, was a model and a weather girl for local TV stations.
Kellem started out as an assistant at a talent agency, then became an agent with Creative Management Associates — where he was known as the “Road Runner of Madison Avenue” — and General Amusement Corp., where as a junior agent in the late 1960s he took on Carlin when others at the firm weren’t paying much attention to him.
He and Carlin reunited when the comic hosted the first episode of SNL.
“We almost didn’t get on the air because dress rehearsal went so poorly,” Kellem said in James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales’ 2002 book, Live From New York: The Complete Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. “I remember Lorne seriously asking the network people — or having me ask them — to have a movie ready to go, just in case. And I don’t think he was kidding.”
Kellem had worked on the Sammy Davis Jr. syndicated talk show Sammy and Company and on NBC’s The Gladys Knight & the Pips Show earlier in 1975 before landing on SNL.
He later served as vp comedy development at Universal Television on such shows as Charles in Charge and Domestic Life and as a director of development for late night, syndication and daytime at 20th Century Fox Television.
His producing credits included the 1976 NBC special The Beach Boys: It’s OK, which featured concert footage from Brian Wilson’s return to the stage, and two more shows from The Arthur Co: the 1990-91 syndicated sitcom What a Dummy and the 1991-93 ABC reality series FBI: The Untold Stories, narrated by Pernell Roberts.
He and his daughter wrote the 2018 book Get It on the Page: Top Script Consultants Show You How.
Survivors also include his wife, Vivienne; son Sean; another daughter, Joelle; a brother; four grandchildren; and a niece and nephews. Donations in his memory can be made to the Alzheimer’s Association.
“Though Craig had many amazing traits, he was perhaps most known for his incredible sense of humor,” his family noted. “His ability to bring deep laughter into any room was a gift to all who knew him.”