Irving Pincus

Irving Pincus (Televison and film producer and scriptwriter of The Real McCoys)
Born	March 14, 1914 New York City
Died	May 13, 1984 (aged 70) Los Angeles, California
Religion	Jewish

Irving Pincus (March 14, 1914 – May 13, 1984) was a film and television writer and producer who created the ABC and CBS situation comedy, The Real McCoys, which aired in prime time from 1957 to 1963 and subsequently in rebroadcasts over many years. The principal star of The Real McCoys was the Academy Award-winning actor Walter Brennan (1894-1974), who filled in the role of the cantankerous but kindly Grandpa Amos McCoy. The series is the story of a farm family from West Virginia, who relocated to the San Fernando Valley in southern California. Though a comedy, it is known for inspirational themes.

Career

Though The Real McCoys did not air until 1957, Pincus had already coined the title and in 1955 was shopping the prospective series with NBC. Irving Pincus and his brother, Norman Charles Pincus (1906-1978), wrote many of the scripts for The Real McCoys, which landed two years later on the ABC Thursday evening schedule. Irving Pincus joined Walter Brennan, in the formation of Brennan-Westgate Productions, with filming of the series at Desilu Studio, then owned by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Pincus produced ninety-one episodes from 1957 to 1961 and wrote scripts of eighty-five segments spread throughout the duration of the program, from the third episode "The Egg War" with character actor Charles Lane (1905-2007) as the memorable guest star, to the series finale called "Pepino's Mama."

Hyman Jack "Hy" Averback (1920-1997), a former actor from Minnesota, was the principal director of The Real McCoys, but versatile co-star Richard Crenna (1926-2003), in the role of Luke McCoy, later assumed duties as a director along with two others.

Kathleen Nolan (born 1933), one of the last two living members of the cast of The Real McCoys, recalls how the Pincus brothers discovered singer and bandleader Tony Martinez (1920-2002), the Puerto Rican native selected to play the Mexican farmhand Pepino Garcia. Martinez was playing at a club in Hollywood, which the Pincuses visited. Nolan played housewife Kate McCoy in the first five years of the series; she was written out as "deceased" in the sixth season, which aired not on ABC but the CBS Sunday night schedule from 1962 to 1963. Nolan recalled that Martinez first failed to respond because he thought that the Pincus brothers' interest in his services was merely a joke, but the producers pursued Martinez and signed him to the cast. Nolan, who was also the president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1975 to 1980, called Martinez's selection as Pepino "a major breakthrough in terms of minority representation on television. It may not have been the representation that we are seeking now, but it certainly was a breakthrough to have a major character on television that was not white."

After The Real McCoys, Pincus did not produce again until the 1971 television movie Eddie and the 1972 theater film To Find a Man, starring Pamela Sue Martin, a retired actress born in Connecticut in 1953. Pincus's first directing had occurred in 1950 and 1951 in two episodes of the original DuMont television version of The Adventures of Ellery Queen, which aired from 1951 to 1956. He subsequently directed seven more episodes of the series. Even earlier, he was the creator of the 1940 musical comedy at the Schubert Theatre on Broadway, Higher and Higher, with music by Richard Charles Rodgers (1902-1979) and the lyrics of Lorenz Hart (1895-1943). The play was made into a film of the same name in 1943.

It is unclear how Pincus, a native of New York City, spent most of the remainder of his life from 1963 until his death in 1984 at the age of seventy in Los Angeles.