Television veteran Leonard Stern helped launch "The Honeymooners," was head writer for "The Steve Allen Show," and was executive producer of "Get Smart". "He invented what I have always thought and said was the
best opening and closing pieces that define the show and that people always remember," said writer Buck Henry.
It was while working on an episode for "The Honeymooners" that Stern came up with his other contribution to popular culture. He needed a word to describe a character's nose. "I asked Roger (co-writer Roger Price) for a(n) ______NOUN_____, and before I could tell him what it was describing, he threw out 'clumsy' and 'naked.' We both started ______VERB_______," Mr. Stern told Publishers Weekly in 2008. They wrote out some ______PLURAL NOUN_____ with blanks and rolled them out over ______PLURAL NOUN_____ at Sardi's, where somebody contributed the "Mad Libs" name.
Book publishers said it was too much like a game, and game publishers weren't interested in selling a book. So they instead decided to self-publish and in a few years they formed their own publisher, called Price Stern Sloan. It really took off after Stern suggested a Mad Libs-style skit for 'The Steve Allen Show,' in which he was head writer. Allen asked the audience for a noun and adjective for an introduction of Bob Hope. The result: "And here's the scintillating Bob Hope, whose theme song is 'Thanks for the Communist.'"
Over 110 million "Mad Libs" books have been sold, with no signs of slowing down.