Sit, Ubu, Sit: How I Went from Brooklyn to Hollywood with the Same Woman, the Same Dog, and a Lot Less Hair

Goldberg, a TV scriptwriter and producer, fondly recalls his rocky, improbable route to Hollywood success, including the people who helped him along the way. Funny, dry and self-deprecating, Goldberg cuts swiftly through the years, from the mid-1950s growing up in a loving extended Jewish family in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, to his scruffy vagabonding in 1972 in Europe with his pregnant girlfriend, Diana, and their canny Labrador dog, Ubu. He sold his first scripts to TV shows in the 1970s, prompting his move from New York to California with Diana, who opened a day-care center. Goldberg took a class with scriptwriter Nate Monaster, who motivated him and helped submit his work to Los Angeles producers. Soon enough, Goldberg’s scripts for the Bob Newhart Show , the Tony Randall Show and the MTM empire gave him the clout to start his own company, UBU (named for the beloved dog he eventually gave away, by the by), launching such pilots as Family Ties for the networks. Indeed, Goldberg’s memoir is a kind of love letter to longtime partner Diana as well as to Michael J. Fox, with whom he later worked on Spin City . His professed guilt for making fistfuls of money while making people laugh renders this work effortlessly likable. (Feb.)