I had a wife that really brought everything out of me.

Bill Derman, 71, was a 30-year-old laborer with the city of New York when he wrote his first skit for Sid Caesar. He is now retired from a varied career that ended in a long run of card tricks. Derman lives in Sherman Oaks.

When I came back to New York from the war in Africa and Italy, my brother was a writer for Milton Berle. I couldn’t believe that he was making about $500 a week.

I decided I was going to become a writer. Now this was an impossibility. I had no background, no education except high school. So I dedicated myself to studying comedy. I used to listen to Fred Allen and Abbott and Costello. I didn’t have a television set, so I’d drive to my friend’s to watch the Sid Caesar show. I would jot jokes down and figure out what the straight lines were.

I started to concentrate on Sid Caesar. I felt I could write that. Then I met my late wife, Anita, and we got married, and she backed me 1,000%. She did the typing, and I tested jokes on her. Then finally we sold my first sketch to Sid Caesar for $100. It was so little, but it opened doors for me. My butcher boy sketch was featured in Time Magazine.

I immediately went to the phone and sent a telegram to California. “Brother Lou, we now have two writers in the family.�

Then I got on with Jack Carter and then Milton Berle. This is very important in my life, see, he did card magic. It was live television, a year here, three months there, but I was making enough now to be recognized as a comedy writer.

We moved to California, and I went to work for Pinky Lee, a kids’ show on NBC. We used magicians on the show. And I became good with a deck of cards. It became an obsession with me.

Then comedy was not in style anymore. All the comedy writers were out of work. We went through a very bad period for about five years. We used up all the money we had saved.

Then game shows came back and my wife says to me, “Bill, you’ve got to come up with a game show.� I says, “What do I know about game shows?� She said, “You worked for Jan Murray on ‘Dollar a Second.’ � I said, “I only worked two weeks, and I was fired.�

I had a wife that really brought everything out of me, whatever talent I had. God bless her, I miss her very much. So anyway, I came up with a show called “Beat the Odds.�

Anita says, “Go out and sell it.� I said, “But I can’t sell, I’m not an agent.� But I went in, hit a station, KTLA, with a pair of dice, and they bought it. I’m a producer. And I own the show. And I’m making about two Gs a week. Everything was beautiful, just beautiful.

I produced several other game shows. Then we had a lawsuit and we lost. Now I’m out of the business again. I can’t get work, and the money we put away is gone. Finally, I’m going to have to sell the house. Oh God, it made me feel sick.

And then Anita says, “But you’re good with cards, Bill. How about trade shows?� She talked me into this. I watched a magician working a sales meeting, and I came up with a brilliant idea, a way to use “Beat the Odds� for seminars. I started to hit the magic business at the trade shows. I was 58 years old at the time, with a New York accent, meeting with all these corporate kids. I learned what rejection was. I must have made 30,000 or 40,000 phone calls.

After a year it caught on. I did one for ITT, Cannon, a liquor company. And I got $1,000 for one day at Caesars Palace. We’re in a $66-a-day room, my wife is up there, and man, I kiss her, “Honey, we’re back in show business, this time as a performer.�

The last 12 to 15 years have been magnificent. I do my card tricks, and nobody could tell me what to do, and I’m out of the stress and aggravation that you have in television.

Anita was behind everything. There was the woman that brought everything out. What I need now to make me the happiest man in the entire world is to find a woman that could fill in the void that’s left.