Sigaba
09-12-2009, 15:22
Source is here (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/arts/12gelbart.html?pagewanted=print).September 12, 2009
Larry Gelbart, Writer of Comedy, Dies at 81
By ROBERT BERKVIST
Larry Gelbart, the writer whose caustic wit was a creative force behind the enduring success of the television series “M*A*S*H,” Broadway hits like “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and film comedies like “Tootsie,” died Friday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 81.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Pat, who said the cause was cancer.
Achieving success in film, television and theater, Mr. Gelbart was in select company among comedy writers. He could boast of Tony and Emmy awards as well as Oscar nominations. And he was matchless at firing off one-liners, once summing up how much he had enjoyed readying a show for Broadway by noting: “If Hitler’s still alive, I hope he’s out of town with a musical.”
Along with Gene Reynolds, he helped to produce and develop “M*A*S*H” in 1972, then wrote and directed many of its first episodes. His association with the show lasted four years and 97 episodes, but “M*A*S*H” went on to become one of the longest-running series in television history, ending in 1983. It was also one of television’s most influential sitcoms, with its innovative use of an ensemble cast, multiple plotlines and mix of drama and comedy.
Mr. Gelbart’s aim was to put meaning as well as mirth into the story of a team of medical personnel who cared for the wounded during the Korean War as members of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. In a 1983 interview in The New York Times, he described the early episodes as “the Marx Brothers superimposed on ‘All Quiet on the Western Front,’ ” and added, “I wanted it to be more crazy than sad.”
The series, in half-hour episodes, was inspired by Robert Altman’s 1970 film of the same name and appeared on CBS, starring Alan Alda as the wisecracking surgeon Benjamin Franklin Pierce, better known as Hawkeye. He was abetted by a cast that over time included McLean Stevenson, Wayne Rogers, Mike Farrell, Harry Morgan, Loretta Swit and Jamie Farr.
It usually used a laugh track, but if the laughs were abundant, the grim cost of warfare was hard to ignore. “I am convinced,” Mr. Gelbart wrote in The Times in 1983, before the show’s final episode, “that we achieved a creative freedom unheard of in the medium before or since.”
A decade before “M*A*S*H,” Mr. Gelbart teamed with Burt Shevelove to write the book for the 1962 Broadway musical “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and directed by George Abbott, the show was a zany riff on the works of Plautus. The setting was ancient Rome, where a wily slave named Pseudolus (Zero Mostel) was busy dreaming up ways to win his freedom.
With a cast that also included David Burns, Jack Gilford and John Carradine, songs like “Comedy Tonight” and lines like “I live to grovel,” the show was a runaway hit, earning its creators a total of six Tony Awards, including those for best musical and best book.
“Tootsie” (1982) was Mr. Gelbart’s most successful film. The screenplay, written with Murray Schisgal, told the story of a struggling New York actor (Dustin Hoffman) who, desperate for work, disguises himself as a woman, wins an audition for a part in a television soap opera and becomes a huge success.
“Tootsie” earned Mr. Gelbart and Mr. Schisgal an Oscar nomination. It was Mr. Gelbart’s second visit to the Oscar pool. He had also been nominated for his screenplay for “Oh, God!,” a 1977 comedy directed by Carl Reiner and based on the novel by Avery Corman. It starred George Burns as a wisecracking personification of the Almighty and John Denver as the nebbishy supermarket worker he chooses to be his earthly messenger.
Larry Simon Gelbart was born to immigrant parents on Feb. 25, 1928, in Chicago. In the early 1940s, his family moved to California, where his father, a barber, was soon grooming Hollywood entertainers. When he mentioned to the comedian Danny Thomas that his teenage son had a knack for humor, Thomas, who was performing on a Fanny Brice radio show, gave him a tryout and promptly hired him.
Mr. Gelbart was soon writing gags for the Jack Paar, Eddie Cantor and Bob Hope radio shows. He then moved into television, working for Red Buttons and Sid Caesar, among others.
Mr. Gelbart married Patricia Marshall in 1956. She survives him, along with their two children, Becky Gelbart-Barton and Adam, and two stepsons, Gary and Paul Markowitz, all of Los Angeles; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Mr. Gelbart’s first try at writing the book for a Broadway musical came in 1961, with “The Conquering Hero.” Based on the Preston Sturges film “Hail the Conquering Hero,” it starred Tom Poston as a World War II veteran who is persuaded to pose as a hero of the battle for Guadalcanal. It was a flop, but “Forum” was waiting in the wings.
Mr. Gelbart had more luck with his first film, which he wrote with Blake Edwards, “The Notorious Landlady” (1962), a mystery with laughs that starred Jack Lemmon and Kim Novak.
His movie credits also included “The Wrong Box” (1966), written with Mr. Shevelove, in which Ralph Richardson, John Mills and Michael Caine battle over an inheritance, and “Movie Movie” (1978), written with Sheldon Keller, a takeoff on the corny formula films of the 1930s.
Mr. Gelbart scored his second Broadway success with the 1976 comedy “Sly Fox,” based on Ben Jonson’s “Volpone.” George C. Scott starred as Foxwell J. Sly, a wealthy rascal who pretends to be on his deathbed to trick his greedy associates into surrendering not only their fortunes but their wives. A 2004 Broadway revival starred Richard Dreyfuss as Sly.
The Iran-Contra scandal that rocked Washington in the 1980s was fodder for Mr. Gelbart’s biting 1989 satire “Mastergate,” which skewered double-talking politicians. The show closed after a brief run, but Mr. Gelbart was soon back on Broadway with a new musical, “City of Angels,” with a score by Cy Coleman and lyrics by David Zippel.
Mr. Gelbart’s script took theatergoers back to 1940s Hollywood, where a writer struggled with a screenplay about the noir adventures of his alter ego, a hard-boiled private eye. “City of Angels” went on to win six Tony Awards. For the second time in his career, Mr. Gelbart won for best book of a musical.
He also continued to write for television but was never able to repeat his success with “M*A*S*H.” In 1980, there was “United States,” a probing comedy about a marriage under stress. It was quickly canceled by NBC but briefly reappeared on A&E five years later.
Then came “Aftermash,” a 1983 sitcom about the postwar lives of several characters from the original “M*A*S*H.” It ran for two seasons on CBS.
Mr. Gelbart also wrote three major shows for HBO. One was “Barbarians at the Gate” (1993), a tongue-in-cheek teleplay from the book by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar about the corporate takeover battle for RJR Nabisco. “Weapons of Mass Distraction” (1997) focused on warring media moguls. And in 2003, Antonio Banderas played the title role in “And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself,” Mr. Gelbart’s retelling of the true story about how the Mexican revolutionary allowed a Hollywood crew to film him in battle.
“Laughing Matters,” a collection of Mr. Gelbart’s essays and reminiscences, was published by Random House in 1998. It included a Gelbartian observation about growing old. “Contrary to popular belief,” he wrote, “it’s not the legs that go first, it’s remembering the word for legs.”
Larry Gelbart, Writer of Comedy, Dies at 81
By ROBERT BERKVIST
Larry Gelbart, the writer whose caustic wit was a creative force behind the enduring success of the television series “M*A*S*H,” Broadway hits like “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and film comedies like “Tootsie,” died Friday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 81.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Pat, who said the cause was cancer.
Achieving success in film, television and theater, Mr. Gelbart was in select company among comedy writers. He could boast of Tony and Emmy awards as well as Oscar nominations. And he was matchless at firing off one-liners, once summing up how much he had enjoyed readying a show for Broadway by noting: “If Hitler’s still alive, I hope he’s out of town with a musical.”
Along with Gene Reynolds, he helped to produce and develop “M*A*S*H” in 1972, then wrote and directed many of its first episodes. His association with the show lasted four years and 97 episodes, but “M*A*S*H” went on to become one of the longest-running series in television history, ending in 1983. It was also one of television’s most influential sitcoms, with its innovative use of an ensemble cast, multiple plotlines and mix of drama and comedy.
Mr. Gelbart’s aim was to put meaning as well as mirth into the story of a team of medical personnel who cared for the wounded during the Korean War as members of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. In a 1983 interview in The New York Times, he described the early episodes as “the Marx Brothers superimposed on ‘All Quiet on the Western Front,’ ” and added, “I wanted it to be more crazy than sad.”
The series, in half-hour episodes, was inspired by Robert Altman’s 1970 film of the same name and appeared on CBS, starring Alan Alda as the wisecracking surgeon Benjamin Franklin Pierce, better known as Hawkeye. He was abetted by a cast that over time included McLean Stevenson, Wayne Rogers, Mike Farrell, Harry Morgan, Loretta Swit and Jamie Farr.
It usually used a laugh track, but if the laughs were abundant, the grim cost of warfare was hard to ignore. “I am convinced,” Mr. Gelbart wrote in The Times in 1983, before the show’s final episode, “that we achieved a creative freedom unheard of in the medium before or since.”
A decade before “M*A*S*H,” Mr. Gelbart teamed with Burt Shevelove to write the book for the 1962 Broadway musical “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and directed by George Abbott, the show was a zany riff on the works of Plautus. The setting was ancient Rome, where a wily slave named Pseudolus (Zero Mostel) was busy dreaming up ways to win his freedom.
With a cast that also included David Burns, Jack Gilford and John Carradine, songs like “Comedy Tonight” and lines like “I live to grovel,” the show was a runaway hit, earning its creators a total of six Tony Awards, including those for best musical and best book.
“Tootsie” (1982) was Mr. Gelbart’s most successful film. The screenplay, written with Murray Schisgal, told the story of a struggling New York actor (Dustin Hoffman) who, desperate for work, disguises himself as a woman, wins an audition for a part in a television soap opera and becomes a huge success.
“Tootsie” earned Mr. Gelbart and Mr. Schisgal an Oscar nomination. It was Mr. Gelbart’s second visit to the Oscar pool. He had also been nominated for his screenplay for “Oh, God!,” a 1977 comedy directed by Carl Reiner and based on the novel by Avery Corman. It starred George Burns as a wisecracking personification of the Almighty and John Denver as the nebbishy supermarket worker he chooses to be his earthly messenger.
Larry Simon Gelbart was born to immigrant parents on Feb. 25, 1928, in Chicago. In the early 1940s, his family moved to California, where his father, a barber, was soon grooming Hollywood entertainers. When he mentioned to the comedian Danny Thomas that his teenage son had a knack for humor, Thomas, who was performing on a Fanny Brice radio show, gave him a tryout and promptly hired him.
Mr. Gelbart was soon writing gags for the Jack Paar, Eddie Cantor and Bob Hope radio shows. He then moved into television, working for Red Buttons and Sid Caesar, among others.
Mr. Gelbart married Patricia Marshall in 1956. She survives him, along with their two children, Becky Gelbart-Barton and Adam, and two stepsons, Gary and Paul Markowitz, all of Los Angeles; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Mr. Gelbart’s first try at writing the book for a Broadway musical came in 1961, with “The Conquering Hero.” Based on the Preston Sturges film “Hail the Conquering Hero,” it starred Tom Poston as a World War II veteran who is persuaded to pose as a hero of the battle for Guadalcanal. It was a flop, but “Forum” was waiting in the wings.
Mr. Gelbart had more luck with his first film, which he wrote with Blake Edwards, “The Notorious Landlady” (1962), a mystery with laughs that starred Jack Lemmon and Kim Novak.
His movie credits also included “The Wrong Box” (1966), written with Mr. Shevelove, in which Ralph Richardson, John Mills and Michael Caine battle over an inheritance, and “Movie Movie” (1978), written with Sheldon Keller, a takeoff on the corny formula films of the 1930s.
Mr. Gelbart scored his second Broadway success with the 1976 comedy “Sly Fox,” based on Ben Jonson’s “Volpone.” George C. Scott starred as Foxwell J. Sly, a wealthy rascal who pretends to be on his deathbed to trick his greedy associates into surrendering not only their fortunes but their wives. A 2004 Broadway revival starred Richard Dreyfuss as Sly.
The Iran-Contra scandal that rocked Washington in the 1980s was fodder for Mr. Gelbart’s biting 1989 satire “Mastergate,” which skewered double-talking politicians. The show closed after a brief run, but Mr. Gelbart was soon back on Broadway with a new musical, “City of Angels,” with a score by Cy Coleman and lyrics by David Zippel.
Mr. Gelbart’s script took theatergoers back to 1940s Hollywood, where a writer struggled with a screenplay about the noir adventures of his alter ego, a hard-boiled private eye. “City of Angels” went on to win six Tony Awards. For the second time in his career, Mr. Gelbart won for best book of a musical.
He also continued to write for television but was never able to repeat his success with “M*A*S*H.” In 1980, there was “United States,” a probing comedy about a marriage under stress. It was quickly canceled by NBC but briefly reappeared on A&E five years later.
Then came “Aftermash,” a 1983 sitcom about the postwar lives of several characters from the original “M*A*S*H.” It ran for two seasons on CBS.
Mr. Gelbart also wrote three major shows for HBO. One was “Barbarians at the Gate” (1993), a tongue-in-cheek teleplay from the book by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar about the corporate takeover battle for RJR Nabisco. “Weapons of Mass Distraction” (1997) focused on warring media moguls. And in 2003, Antonio Banderas played the title role in “And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself,” Mr. Gelbart’s retelling of the true story about how the Mexican revolutionary allowed a Hollywood crew to film him in battle.
“Laughing Matters,” a collection of Mr. Gelbart’s essays and reminiscences, was published by Random House in 1998. It included a Gelbartian observation about growing old. “Contrary to popular belief,” he wrote, “it’s not the legs that go first, it’s remembering the word for legs.”