Emanuel Manheim; Writer for Radio, TV Comedians

Emanuel (Mannie) Manheim, a New York-born humorist who wrote three decades of radio and TV comedy for the likes of Groucho Marx, Frank Sinatra and Art Linkletter, and once presided as the “mayor” of Schwab’s during the drugstore’s Hollywood heyday, has died.

Manheim was 90 when he died at Santa Monica Hospital on June 26, according to family and friends.

In the mid-1930s, Manheim came to Hollywood from Syracuse, N.Y., for a brief vacation, but at the behest of a friend, composer Harold Arlen, he stayed--and stayed, for more than 50 years, writing first for the most popular radio shows of the time and then for television as recently as the 1970s.

“A very clever, very witty, very nice man,” recalled writer and playwright Arthur Marx, Groucho’s son and a fledgling writer when Manheim got him his first writing job, on Milton Berle’s radio show.

In Hollywood, Arlen introduced him to Marx, who gave him his first assignment: writing a Groucho-Chico sequence for radio, according to Manheim’s wife, Martha. Manheim’s most memorable one, an absent-minded bit known variously as “Hello Olive” and “The Thorndykes,” is a skit Groucho used repeatedly for years.

Groucho was performing with Bob Hope and ad-libbing his way through a Manheim script when he was spotted by a TV producer who cleared the way for “You Bet Your Life,” and Groucho wryly credited Manheim with helping to launch his TV career, said Arthur Marx.

Among his other radio credits were shows for Edgar Bergen, Frank Sinatra, Rudy Vallee, Jackie Gleason and, for several years, Al Jolson. He also wrote material for Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, and served as head writer for Milton Berle’s radio program.

Manheim’s daily calendar was consulted by everyone on that show, his wife said, and one day Berle caught sight of the notation “Book Mencken,” Manheim’s reminder to himself to pick up the latest copy of pundit H.L. Mencken’s work. “What the hell right have you got,” Berle supposedly snarled, “to book Mencken without my consent?”

Manheim wrote for television from its infancy. He wrote and produced “The George Jessel Show,” and wrote for “People Are Funny” as well as occasional scripts for “The Real McCoys,” “The Donna Reed Show” and, at the end of his career, for such shows as “My Three Sons.” But “he was at his best,” said his wife, “in those big musical comedy shows you don’t see any more.”

At Manheim’s request, there were no services.

He is survived by his wife and his brother, Het.