This page uses content from the Selma Diamond biography page on the English version of Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This list of authors can be seen in the page history. Rotten Tomatoes disclaims any and all warranties as to the accuracy or reliability of the content.

Selma Diamond (b. August 5, 1920, Montreal; d. May 13, 1985, Los Angeles), a Canadian-born but Brooklyn-raised comic actress and radio and television writer, is known best for her high-range, raspy voice and her portrayal of bailiff Selma Hacker on the first two seasons of the NBC television comedy series Night Court.

Diamond graduated from New York University and published cartoons and humour essays in The New Yorker before making the jump to radio and, eventually, television. Her earliest radio writing credits included Groucho Marx, Duffy's Tavern, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. In 1950, she became one of the staffers hired by legendary comedy writer Goodman Ace for The Big Show (1950-1952), the ninety-minute radio variety program hosted by Tallulah Bankhead and featuring some of the biggest entertainers of the era weekly.

She moved on to television as one of the writers for Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca's groudbreaking Your Show of Shows. Diamond was reputed to have been the inspiration for the Sally Rogers character on The Dick Van Dyke Show (played by the similarly raspy-voiced Rose Marie), which centered around the head writer for a fictitious, mercurial television comedian. While writing for another Caesar vehicle, Caesar's Hour, Diamond earned an Emmy nomination. She also worked for Goodman Ace once again, writing Perry Como's successful television series.

Diamond wasn't always taken seriously by her writing peers, however. Bob Schiller, who had also written for Duffy's Tavern and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, told author Jordan R. Young (for The Laugh Crafters), "The jury is still out on whether Selma was a comedy writer. She was really a very interesting character---salty, and she was---exactly what you saw on camera is what she was."

By the 1960s and 1970s, Diamond was familiar as a frequent guest on The Jack Paar Show and with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, and she made numerous film appearances, including It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (as the on-telephone voice of Spencer Tracy's wife, Ginger Culpepper), Bang the Drum Slowly (as hotel switchboard operator Tootsie), and All of Me (as Margo). In 1982, she appeared in My Favorite Year with a memorable small role as wardrobe mistress for King Kaiser's Comedy Calvalcade, a fictional show which clearly echoed the time and venue of her work for Sid Caesar. She was also a semi-regular for four seasons of the Ted Knight comedy series Too Close For Comfort.

The diminutive, chain-smoking Diamond was one of the original cast of Night Court until she was stricken with and died of lung cancer and died at age 64. Her immediate successor, Florence Halop, also a chain smoker, also died of lung cancer while a member of the Night Court cast. Over a decade later, the gruff-voiced secretary "Roz" in Monsters, Inc., always hounding the lead characters about getting their paperwork done, was voiced by Bob Peterson in a strong impersonation of Diamond.

Diamond was the author of Nose Jobs for Peace, a 1970 collection of humour writings, some of which touched on her television work.

External links

References

• Selma Diamond, Nose Jobs for Peace (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1970; 229 pages)
• Jordan R. Young, The Laugh Crafters: Comedy Writing in Radio and TV's Golden Age (Beverly Hills, California: Past Time Publishing, 1999; 351 pages)

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