Radio, TV, Mother Earth & Me

Master comedy writer/master plant guy/fish cookbook guru

Joel Rapp was raised in Beverly Hills, surrounded by show-business legends. His father, Philip Rapp, created The Bickersons and Baby Snooks, his godmother was Fanny Brice and his godfather was Eddie Cantor.

Joel inherited the writing gene and went on to write or co-write 16 motion pictures and over 200 sitcom episodes, among them Gilligan's Island, The Lucy Show, McHale's Navy, My Favorite Martian, The Patty Duke Show, The Joey Bishop Show, and The Donna Reed Show. In 1969 he quit his job as Vice-President in charge of Comedy Development at Universal Pictures and went into the indoor plant business, soon becoming known as "Mr. Mother Earth, Plant Man to the Stars," a persona in which he wrote 14 best-selling books on indoor gardening and cooking, spent eleven years with Regis & Kathie Lee as their TV gardener, and for almost ten years was heard weekly dispensing gardening advice on WABC radio in New York.

This memoir is filled with marvelous anecdotes from both his Show-biz and Grow-biz careers - stories of his friendships with Lucille Ball, John Huston, Ruth Buzzi, Elizabeth Taylor, Don Rickles, Ernest Borgnine, Lenny Bruce, Clark Gable, Dinah Shore, and many, many more.

"I really never knew the full extent of his incredibly exciting life until I read these memoirs. The story of the rise and fall of Mother Earth is fodder for a highly dramatic movie." - Roger Corman