While working for years as an advertising copywriter, he wrote sketches for comedy revues and jokes for standup comics. In 1961, he was hired to write material for “Show Girl,” Carol Channing’s Broadway revue, and then joined the writing staff of “The Bob Newhart Show.” Though it lasted one season, Mr. Chambers was fired after a month when he disagreed with the producer over a rewrite of one of his sketches.
He recovered, writing for a 1962 special starring Mr. Kaye and Lucille Ball, and went on to decades of work as a television writer and producer. He was nominated for 11 Emmy Awards, including three for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.”
Mr. Chambers is survived by his wife, Veronica (Dee) Chambers, whom he married in 1971; their daughter, Ms. Mollica, and son, Christopher, a film director; Alison Chambers, his daughter from his marriage to Arline Rosenberg, which ended in divorce; and five grandchildren. His son Brian, an executive at 20th Century Fox Television, died in 2011.
During the run of the “Smothers Brothers” show, a sketch depicted President Johnson — played by Jim Backus, then a star of “Gilligan’s Island” — as concerned that the Soviet Union was 10 years ahead of the United States in barbecue sauce, an allusion to the missile gap between the two countries. Outraged, President Johnson called William S. Paley, the chairman of CBS, one night around 2 a.m. Mr. Paley then summoned Mr. Chambers and Mr. Ilson from Los Angeles to his Manhattan office.
Mr. Paley asked the producers to scale back the show’s mockery of the president and, in return, asked if could do anything for them in return, Mr. Ilson recalled. As it happened, Mr. Ilson and Mr. Chambers wanted to book the folk singer Pete Seeger, who had been blacklisted by the commercial broadcast networks since the early 1950s. Mr. Paley agreed.
Mr. Chambers told The New York Times that Mr. Seeger’s appearance would be “the most significant thing we’ll do all year.”
