Coslough Johnson, the Emmy-winning writer who worked with his late older brother, Arte Johnson, on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In and wrote for two variety shows toplined by Sonny and Cher, has died. He was 91.
Johnson died March 23 of prostate cancer at a nursing facility in the Thousand Oaks area, his wife, Mary Jane, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Johnson also worked on sitcoms including The Monkees, Bewitched, That Girl, The Partridge Family, Good Times, Flo, Operation Petticoat and CPO Sharkey and on cartoons featuring Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, The Flintstones, Voltron and He-Man.
He wrote on the first three seasons (1968-70) of NBC’s Laugh-In, the final three seasons (1971-74) of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour and the lone season (1976-77) of The Sonny and Cher Show, those last two for CBS.
Other variety shows on his résumé included The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show (which he also produced), The Sonny Comedy Revue and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour. He won his Emmy following the first season of Laugh-In and was nominated six other times during his career.
Born in Chicago on Nov. 8, 1931, Johnson attended the University of Illinois and served with the U.S. Air Force in the Korean War. He joined his brother in New York and wrote jokes for nightclub acts.
He then moved to Los Angeles and wrote, directed and edited industrial films for Hughes Aircraft (where he worked alongside Howard Hughes) and Douglas Aircraft. “And then just somebody said, ‘Hey, why don’t you write a TV show?’” he recalled. “And I wrote a speculative script, and next thing I knew, I was writing sitcoms.”
He got his first credit on a 1966 episode of ABC’s Bewitched and then penned six installments of The Monkees in 1967-68 during the NBC show’s two seasons. Later, he wrote for TV specials starring the likes of Dinah Shore, Jerry Reed, Monty Hall, Ben Vereen and John Byner.
Johnson co-wrote one feature, Bunny O’Hare (1971), starring Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine, and co-wrote a 1986 children’s book, American Rabbit: The Case of the Missing Moose.
He and Mary Jane were married for 48 years, and actor George Peppard gave them their wedding dinner at his home in Beverly Hills, his wife said.
Arte Johnson, who starred on the first four seasons of Laugh-in, died in July 2019 at age 90. He voiced characters in some of the cartoons that his brother wrote.
