Eventually Tony Randall (as Felix) and Jack Klugman (as Oscar) were hired; Klugman had replaced Walter Matthau as Oscar in the original Broadway production, and Randall had also appeared as Felix in other productions the play. Randall, who was hired first, had still wanted Mickey Rooney to play Oscar. Co-executive producer Garry Marshall, had to lobby hard to get Klugman successfully hired. Once the casting was in place, the show's writers (Marshall, Jerry Belson, Jerry Paris, Bob Brunner, Mark Rothman and Lowell Ganz, among others) came up with a multitude of situations for Felix and Oscar to be in, while staying true to the soul of the play, which always reverted to the human tensions between the two that created the comic situations.