For one miraculous week in the fall of 1977, Carl Reiner's Oh, God! knocked the George Lucas juggernaut Star Wars out of the Number 1 slot at the American box office. Based on the 1971 novel of the same name by Avery Corman (whose semiautobiographical book Kramer vs Kramer was then in development at Columbia), Oh, God! originated with veteran radio and TV writer Larry Gelbart. Gelbart had adapted the Corman book with a mind toward directing and envisioned the roles of an unassuming supermarket assistant manager and the Almighty who makes of him a reluctant prophet going to Mel Brooks and Woody Allen - Gelbart's former writing room comrades on Sid Caesar's old Caesar's Hour TV series. Brooks was agreeable but Allen demurred, then developing his own existential comedy, Stardust Memories (1980). The project ultimately fell into the hands of Warner Bros., who purchased Gelbart's first draft screenplay and assigned Carl Reiner (another Sid Caesar alumnus) to direct. Warners followed up on Gelbart's recommendation that God be played by 80 year-old George Burns and cast opposite the former vaudevillian singer-songwriter John Denver. A gentle comedy of character, Oh God! proved to be an unexpected smash, earning back nearly all of its $2.2 million budget in its first weekend alone and bringing in better than $60 million in rentals. The seventh most profitable release of 1977, Oh God! earned Gelbart an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Burns reprised his title role in two sequels, Oh, God! Book II (1980), and Oh, God! You Devil (1984).

By Richard Harland Smith