Allan Burns

Allan Pennington Burns (May 18, 1935January 30, 2021) was an American screenwriter and television producer. He was best known for co-creating and writing for the television sitcoms The Munsters and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Early life Burns was born in Baltimore on May 18, 1935. His father died when he was nine years old. Three years later, he moved to Honolulu with his mother after his older brother was assigned to Naval Station Pearl Harbor. He attended Punahou School and illustrated a cartoon that featured several times a week in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. He studied architecture at the University of Oregon starting in 1953, after being awarded a partial scholarship. However, he dropped out two years later and moved to Los Angeles, where he secured a job as a page for NBC. Career Before breaking into television and film, he started in animation, working for Jay Ward and collaborating on and animating The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, Dudley Do-Right, and George of the Jungle. Burns also created the Cap'n Crunch character for Quaker Oats. After his stint writing for Jay Ward, Burns formed a partnership with Chris Hayward. They created the series The Munsters (1964) and My Mother the Car (1965), and were later hired by producer Leonard Stern as story editors for the CBS series He & She, for which they won an Emmy award for comedy writing. The last project between Hayward and Burns would be as story editors for the sitcom Get Smart. During this time, Burns also co-wrote the unaired version of the 1965 pilot episode of The Smothers Brothers Show.