The Stan Burns Collection contains television scripts accumulated throughout his career as a comedy writer.

Stan Burns was an Emmy-winning variety comedy writer best known as a writer for Steve Allen. Burns was born on September 4, 1923 in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating high school, he joined the Marines and served in the South Pacific during World War II. After the war, he returned to New York and embarked on a four decade long comedy writing career. His first TV series work was in 1950 on Broadway Open House. In 1953, Burns met and became the first writer for Steve Allen on his local late night talk show. The show went national in 1954 and eventually became known as The Tonight Show. Burns remained with Allen throughout his years as host of Tonight [The Tonight Show] and subsequent variety and talk shows. Burns would expand the writing team to include Herb Sargent and Bill Dana among others. Burns followed Allen to LA in 1959 and worked with him until the mid-1960s. He went on to write for other variety shows and sitcoms such as The Carol Burnett Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Hour, Get Smart, and The Smother Brothers. He created, along with writing partner Mike Marmer, a short-lived Saturday morning children’s show Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp which filmed real chimpanzees and dubbed the footage over with human voices. Stan Burns garnered one WGA Award nomination for the Steve Allen Show as well as four Emmy nominations and one win for work with Steve Allen, Carol Burnett and Flip Wilson. Burns died of heart failure on November 5, 2002. He is survived by his wife Shirley, his daughters, Laurie and Bonnie, son-in-law, Martin Green; and grandchildren, Adam, Josh and Megan.

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