RIP Legendary Comedy Writer Larry Gelbart
Some people accomplish so much that reading about their lives makes one feel as useless and lazy as a hippie with mono. Larry Gelbart, a man whose credits boggle my hippie-mono-ridden mind, died Friday at the age of 81.
Gelbart, who was diagnosed with cancer in June, died at his home in Beverly Hills, said his wife, Pat.
Damn you once again, cancer! You are almost as big an asshole as Kanye West!
At the age of sixteen, my greatest accomplishment was beating Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in just one sitting. At that same age, Larry Gelbart had already become a professional comedy writer working for a national radio show.
…[Gelbart's] 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.
After the war, Larry Gelbart was part of the legendary writing staffs for Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, working alongside such powerhouses as Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, Danny Simon, Mel Tolkin, Mike Stewart, and Sheldon Keller.
Gelbart also co-wrote the book for the classic Broadway musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. In the 70s, Gelbart helped develop and produce M*A*S*H for television. He wrote fifty-seven episodes of the seminal television series before departing after the fourth season.
If all that wasn't enough, Gelbart also wrote several great films, the most famous of which was Tootsie, starring Dustin Hoffman as the ugliest woman to ever appear on a television soap opera.
After the jump, a video of Larry Gelbart speaking about his own career.
If you want to read a particularly great remembrance of the man, you can't do much better than Erik Tarloff's piece for The Atlantic. Also, Mike Sacks's recent book And Here's the Kicker has a great interview with Gelbart. You can read the entire interview here.
Seriously, writing this post made me feel so bad about spending most of my morning watching aggressively stupid YouTube videos. From now on, I'm going to work twice as hard at everything! This resolution will probably last until the late afternoon when I decide, "Screw it. This joke about my penis taking a poop is good enough."
[Video via the Onion AV Club]
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