When I saw Broadway and TV legend Larry Gelbart at a book signing at Fairleigh Dickinson University a decade ago, he told of how writers on his classic series, M*A*S*H, had stopped including the show on their resumes. It gave younger TV executives the impression that the writers were old and out of touch.
If you want a good description of why television—and, in particular, the delicious high art of the sitcom—is ailing, that’s as good a place to start as any: the mass abandonment of an art as old as the Greeks, written for a time but able to transcend it.
Gelbart, who died last week of cancer at age 81, used this old form to tell stories that only seemed new, so fresh did he make it all. It’s emblematic of his career that he looked to inspirations as diverse as Ben Jonson (Sly Fox, a reworking of the Elizabethan playwright’s satire on greed, Volpone), Plautus (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), and Raymond Chandler (City of Angels).
In a prior post about the final episode of M*A*S*H, I discussed Gelbart’s diplomatically expressed feelings about Alan Alda’s increasingly prominent role in shaping the creative course of the sitcom. It was clear that Alda's softening of Hawkeye Pierce after Gelbart departed was not one the writer would have chosen--but equally clear that Gelbart remained deeply grateful to the star for bringing the character to such brilliant life in the first place.
Longtime viewers of the comedy will remember its most prominent Irish character, Fr. Mulcahy. Gelbart himself was not of Irish descent, but he had his share of familiarity with the ethnic group—partly from one of his first professional writing jobs, partly through his marriage.
As the writer related in Laughing Matters, the series of picked-up autobiographical pieces he was promoting when I saw him at FDU, he got a job writing at age 17 for a popular NBC radio show of the Forties, Duffy’s Tavern. Like M*A*S*H, it was an ensemble comedy. Just as crucially, Gelbart noted, he learned that “there are an infinite number of comic variations in any single word.”
As I presented my copy of his book for signing, Gelbart asked my name. When he heard my rather unusual surname, he looked up and asked, “Irish?”
“How did you guess?” I asked, surprised. “Most people don’t have a clue.”
His eyes twinkled as he shrugged. “I married a dancer named Murphy,” he answered.
The “dancer” survives him, as do the hundreds of thousands of fans like myself he made over a 50-year-writing career of unsurpassed skill.
If you want a good description of why television—and, in particular, the delicious high art of the sitcom—is ailing, that’s as good a place to start as any: the mass abandonment of an art as old as the Greeks, written for a time but able to transcend it.
Gelbart, who died last week of cancer at age 81, used this old form to tell stories that only seemed new, so fresh did he make it all. It’s emblematic of his career that he looked to inspirations as diverse as Ben Jonson (Sly Fox, a reworking of the Elizabethan playwright’s satire on greed, Volpone), Plautus (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), and Raymond Chandler (City of Angels).
In a prior post about the final episode of M*A*S*H, I discussed Gelbart’s diplomatically expressed feelings about Alan Alda’s increasingly prominent role in shaping the creative course of the sitcom. It was clear that Alda's softening of Hawkeye Pierce after Gelbart departed was not one the writer would have chosen--but equally clear that Gelbart remained deeply grateful to the star for bringing the character to such brilliant life in the first place.
Longtime viewers of the comedy will remember its most prominent Irish character, Fr. Mulcahy. Gelbart himself was not of Irish descent, but he had his share of familiarity with the ethnic group—partly from one of his first professional writing jobs, partly through his marriage.
As the writer related in Laughing Matters, the series of picked-up autobiographical pieces he was promoting when I saw him at FDU, he got a job writing at age 17 for a popular NBC radio show of the Forties, Duffy’s Tavern. Like M*A*S*H, it was an ensemble comedy. Just as crucially, Gelbart noted, he learned that “there are an infinite number of comic variations in any single word.”
As I presented my copy of his book for signing, Gelbart asked my name. When he heard my rather unusual surname, he looked up and asked, “Irish?”
“How did you guess?” I asked, surprised. “Most people don’t have a clue.”
His eyes twinkled as he shrugged. “I married a dancer named Murphy,” he answered.
The “dancer” survives him, as do the hundreds of thousands of fans like myself he made over a 50-year-writing career of unsurpassed skill.
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