Sol Saks | 'Bewitched' creator, 100

Sol Saks, 100, a veteran television writer and playwright who created the 1960s sitcom

Bewitched

, died last Saturday of respiratory failure at a hospital in Sherman Oaks, Calif. He was a longtime resident of the San Fernando Valley.

Although Mr. Saks wrote the pilot script for Bewitched, he never wrote another episode of the popular series about a witch married to a mortal. It ran on ABC from 1964 to 1972 and starred Elizabeth Montgomery and, originally, Dick York.

"That was it: He just sat back and took in the royalties," said Paul Wayne, a longtime friend and writer who freelanced on Bewitched for two seasons.

In writing the pilot, he was inspired by the movies Bell, Book and Candle (1958), and I Married a Witch (1942), Mr. Saks later recalled.

"He was pretty honest about the fact it wasn't a particularly original idea," Wayne said. "He came in with both of those thoughts and wrote the pilot, and sat back and just became a millionaire on Bewitched. It was absolutely marvelous. He was very open about just being hit by a lucky stick, so to speak."

In a radio career that began in Chicago in the late 1930s and continued after he moved to Los Angeles in 1943, Mr. Saks wrote for shows including Duffy's Tavern, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, The Baby Snooks Show, and The Beulah Show.

He moved into television in 1953 with My Favorite Husband, a CBS situation comedy based on the radio series.

Mr. Saks, who had a stint in the 1960s as a CBS executive in charge of comedy series, also wrote the screenplay for Walk, Don't Run, a 1966 comedy starring Cary Grant in his final film role.

Born in New York, Mr. Saks moved with his family to Chicago when he was about 2. While attending Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, he became a reporter for a local weekly newspaper and occasionally sold short stories before moving into radio.

His book, The Craft of Comedy Writing, was published in 1985.

- Los Angeles Times