Career
She was best known for being the only woman in the most famous television writers" rooms, the one that created Sid Caesar"s Your Show of Shows from 1950 to 1954. The Mystery Fancier discussed and reviewed her books, and one was quoted in English Historical Syntax and Morphology. Sid Caesar"s writer"s room has been fictionally recreated many times.
Neil Simon, one of the writers, memorialized it in his play Laughter on the 23rd Floor.
lieutenant formed the centerpiece of the 1984 film My Favorite Year, and most famously, it was the office in which Rob Petrie worked in The Dick Van Dyke Show. Kallen, composited with comic actress and writer Selma Diamond, the only woman writer on Sid Caesar"s follow-up show, Caesar"s Hour, was therefore the inspiration for Sally Rogers, played by Rose Marie.