Billy Van Zandt

Actor/writer/director/producer and one of the world’s most successful playwrights, Middletown NJ’s Billy Van Zandt met the late Jane Milmore at a high school drama competition. A month later they were cast together in Neil Simon’s Star Spangled Girl and worked together as playwrights, producers, and actors, for the next forty-six years. "These two people are a riot! Direct descendants of the Masters of the Madcap - Groucho and Lucy and even The Stooges - Billy and Jane brought farce to theater comedy in a way no others of their generation dared." Robert Strauss, New York Times Their 23 plays, which all debuted on local stages in Monmouth County, NJ, and are now published with Concord Theatricals, have been translated into multiple languages and performed in thousands of theaters around the world. Their Off- Broadway hit You’ve Got Hate Mail ran four and a half years at New York’s Triad Theater; Silent Laughter thrilled New York audiences with Billy’s silent-movie slapstick comedy performed live on stage; The Property Known as Garland, written for Adrienne Barbeau, broke house records at Off-Broadway’s Actors Playhouse; and Billy & Jane’s classic summer stock perennial Love, Sex, and the IRS continues on in multiple productions around the globe. His works have been directed by the likes of Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis, and film icon Burt Reynolds. "Fever-pitched one liners, puns, slapstick, pratfalls...There are probably no people more adept at conveying these comic styles than Van Zandt & Milmore, with their wacky anything for a laugh adventuring and willingness to toss all actor dignity out the window!" - Tom Chesek, Asbury Park Press Billy’s TV writing career began with Bob Newhart on Newhart. Since that time, he has written and produced countless hours of television comedy, including shows for Don Rickles, Richard Lewis, Jamie Lee Curtis, Andrew Dice Clay, the Wayans Bros., Brooke Shields, DL Hughley, Olympia Dukakis, Michael McKeon, Richard Mulligan, Jean Smart, and John Goodman. He received an Emmy nomination for his CBS special I Love Lucy: The Very First Show which unveiled I Love Lucy’s pilot episode and was the highest-rated program on network television that season; he developed and executive produced Martin Lawrence’s ground-breaking Martin, which won him a People’s Choice Award and an NAACP Image Award for "Best New Series;" and The Hughleys where he received a Multi-Cultural Prism Award, and was nominated for People’s Choice and NAACP Image Awards. In addition, he has been honored by the New Jersey General Assembly three times, the Red Cross, and Brookdale College where he put over 30 boys and girls through school with a Van Zandt/Milmore scholarship for technical theater students. In addition to starring in the 23 Van Zandt/Milmore plays along with his Van Zandt/Milmore Unofficial Repertory Company ("If you’ve never seen this clown at work, you should be ashamed of yourself" Asbury Park Press), Billy has performed with the likes of Lucille Ball, Sean Penn, Tom Cruise, Giancarlo Esposito, Karl Malden, Jamie Lee Curtis, Richard Lewis, Mrs. Maisel, That Girl Lay Lay, a shark named Bruce (Jaws 2), and the crew of the Starship Enterprise. Billy’s best-selling book Get in the Car, Jane, which chronicles his life making TV sit-coms, and Because It’s Funny!, which recounts the creation of the plays, were both #1 on Amazon ("briefly, for like a minute and a half"). Billy is married to actress Teresa Ganzel (The Toy) and father to street-wear designer Walker Van Zandt (Mine Until Mourning), platinum-record producer Will Van Zandt (Freddy Kreuger, Expensive), and step-father to composer Cody Carpenter (the Halloween movies). Billy and Teresa live in Los Angeles, when Billy’s not on the road with the final Off-Broadway Van Zandt/Milmore collaboration The Boomer Boys Musical, or visiting the Middletown NJ street he grew up on, which has been re-named Van Zandt Way.