Mad Libs was first published back in 1958. Comedy writer Leonard Stern created the popular fill-in-the-blanks book series with the help of his friend and fellow humorist, Roger Price. Stern landed his first major TV gig five years earlier and was working on a script one day when Price dropped by his apartment. Had he been writing for any other show at the time, Mad Libs as we know it might never have existed.
The script Stern was working on that day was for The Honeymooners, which was still only a sketch on Jackie Gleason’s variety show in 1953—it would get spun off into its own half-hour series for the 1955-1956 network television season. As luck would have it, Price showed up just as Stern was trying to think of an adjective to describe Ralph Kramden’s new boss’s nose. Price was there to do some editing on a book project, and Stern apologized for having to delay things, assuring him that they’d get to it in a moment. “No, we won’t,” Price said. “You’re in your idiosyncratic-pursuit-of-a-word mode. I could be standing here for hours. Do you want help?”
Stern told him that he was looking for an adjective, and before he could get to what it was for, Price blurted out, “Clumsy and naked.” Stern couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the suggestion. “What’s so funny?” Price asked. Stern explained that because of him, Ralph Kramden’s boss now had a clumsy nose—or, even better, a naked one. That’s when the two realized they were onto something.
They abandoned The Honeymooners script and the book they were supposed to be polishing up and spent the day coming up with stories with certain words excluded. Their new game was tested out later that night at a party, and everybody loved it. It would take five years before Stern and Price came up with a name for it, however. As they were eating at a restaurant in the summer of 1958, the two overheard an actor telling his agent that he was going to “ad-lib” an interview; the agent told him it was a “mad” thing to do.
Just like that, Mad Libs was born. The books are still in print all these years later, and over 110 million copies have been sold to date.
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