Irma Ginsberg (Kalish) served as treasurer and archon (president) of the Phi Sigma Sigma chapter at Syracuse University. She was also valedictorian of the December 1945 graduating class and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Irma Ginsberg was the chapter correspondent. This appeared in the March 1944 issue of The Sphinx.
Her writing career began early in her life. She created the Ginsberg Gazette when she was a child, and as she later commented that it contained all the news she could spell. She loved to write, but one of her Syracuse professors told her she would never be a writer. She refused to let his remarks come true and they became the impetus for her success as a writer.
After graduation, she headed to New York City where she was hired by a romance story magazine. Denise Austin was the pen name she used to write a few stories which appeared in the magazine. Later on, she wrote two mysteries with Naomi Gurian under the pseudonym Cady Kilian.
In 1948, she married Austin “Rocky” Kalish and they moved to California. Among their first gigs out west was writing for the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis radio show. When the comedy pair moved to television, so did the Kalishes.
Together they wrote more than 300 scripts. Among the shows the couple worked on were the Ray Milland Show, Gunsmoke, F-Troop, The Brian Keith Show, My Favorite Martian, My Three Sons, Gilligan’s Island, I Dream of Jeannie, the Bob Newhart Show, Too Close for Comfort, Maude, All in the Family, Good Times, Family Affair and The King and I. Irma was one of television’s first female producers. During her stint with Good Times, she took the title of first woman to serve as producer and then executive producer of a television series.
Irma Kalish was one of the first presidents of Women in Film and received its Founders Award. She was on the board of the Motion Picture and Television Fund for more than 25 years and also served as a vice president and longtime board member of the Writers Guild of America (West) and received the organization’s Valentine Davies Award and Morgan Cox Award.
In the late 1990s, Syracuse University awarded her the George Arents Pioneer Medal, its highest alumni honor. The University also bestowed upon her an Honorary degree in 2007.
The couple was married for 68 years until Rocky’s death in 2016 at the age of 95. On September 3, 2021, Irma died at the age of 96. She left Syracuse University a $25,000 gift to help support an artist-in-residence component of the Center for the Study of Popular Television. She also donated 14 linear feet of scripts and videos to the University libraries and special collections.
