Mack and Myer for Hire was filmed at a breakneck pace, with cast and crew filming each episode in a single day. "Sandy Howard was a good guy but a lousy producer," said Mickey Deems. "He wanted to do
two episodes a day, which would have been impossible!" The actors needed time to stage the gags, and the technical crew needed time to shift the cameras, lights, and microphones after each take. New York-based character comedians
Danny Dayton,
Hank Garrett, and
Alan Oppenheimer appeared in multiple episodes, playing various comic foils for Deems and Faye. Some episodes had guest stars: doubletalk specialist
Al Kelly, character comedians
Al Lewis and
Dom DeLuise, character actress
Margaret Hamilton, and cartoon voice performers
Sid Raymond and
Kenny Delmar. Alan Oppenheimer described a typical working day: "They picked me up on Fifth Avenue and 50-something Street, standing in front of a building, at about six in the morning, and we'd drive down to Long Island to the studio there [in Hempstead, New York]. We spent the morning doing a table read and rewriting. Mickey [Deems] and Sandy [Howard] rewrote every script. And then we'd film a 15-minute script in the afternoon. We did one a day, that's it." Since each
Mack & Myer episode was approximately 12 minutes long, it was usually shown as part of a longer program. This was common at the time, as many stations across the United States would have weekday children's shows, often hosted by local TV personalities, which included short films such as
Mack & Myer,
Clutch Cargo and
The Three Stooges combined with station-produced host segments. Like many sitcoms of the 1960s,
Mack & Myer for Hire had a
laugh track, although some surviving prints did not. Much of the action was scripted and staged by Mickey Deems, who verified that the budgets were extremely low. The soundstage was very small and cramped, the breakaway walls were sometimes made of paper, and large-scale staging was out of the question (a theater crowd, for example, consisted of only nine people). "Some of my favorites are episodes we shot during one week when our budget was so low, they couldn't hire guest actors. So Joey and I, with the help of a great makeup artist and wardrobe guy, had to play
all the parts!" One of these was "Mack the Miser", with Deems playing
Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghostly visitors from
Charles Dickens's
A Christmas Carol.
Mack & Myer for Hire proved popular with children, which kept the show in circulation well into the 1970s. The basic visual comedy allowed the show to be exported around the world, to such countries as
West Germany,
Japan, and
Australia. ==DVD release and availability==