Gelbart Takes His Acts Back to the Stage
As a boy, Larry Gelbart wanted to be a clarinet player. Alas, he says, “the job was already taken by Benny Goodman.” So he put down his reeds and his dreams of amazing riffs. He became a comedy writer.
That proved a good move. He has done OK in radio, TV film and theater. His dossier includes “Duffy’s Tavern,” “Tootsie” and “Oh, God!,” Broadway’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and the first four years of CBS’ “MASH.”
He has branch homes in Beverly Hills and London, and a sunny apartment on Fifth Avenue that overlooks Central Park. He gives a good impression of a man who enjoys life.
He is not one of those comedy writers who are dour, introspective, on a first-name basis with the dreads. He likes to meet people, to talk, to have fun with words and bounce them around.
Ask where he was born. Chicago, he says, and solemnly intones: “I was originally born in Chicago.” Then: “I love people who say they were originally born somewhere.”
This makes him recall an actor who said: “I really owe everything to my parents, namely my mother and father.”
He speaks of works-in-progress, then says: “Everything sounds wonderful--except I would love to be talking about all this in the past tense.”
Then he frets that talk of upcoming projects smacks too much of the Hollywood big-deal-cooking stories that litter the Tinseltown trades. His voice lowers. “ Yeah , he just signed a three-promise pact ,” he confides in the manner of a mogul.
True, he did visit the Soviet Union this summer to discuss co-production of a movie that would be filmed there. But he has no big deal cooking and only “half an idea” for a script so far.
Still tussling with the Muse? He nods. “Yes. And he has me on hold right now.”
This is not entirely correct. Gelbart, saluted in September by the Museum of Broadcasting here for his contributions to television, has three other ventures afoot. But none involve film or television.
All are in theater.
The first is a musical, “One Two Three Four Five,”with a score by Maury Yestin, composer of Broadway’s hit “Nine.”
Based on the first five books of the Old Testament, Gelbart’s new work started rehearsals Nov. 21 at the Manhattan Theater Club, with its first performance set for today amid hopes it could move to Broadway.
The Old Testament may not seem a likely premise for a musical, he conceded in a recent interview, but “I tend to be attracted to things that seem impossible--and many later prove to be.”
Work No. 2, bowing Feb. 3 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., with the possibility of a New York premiere, is “Mastergate.”
It’s a contemporary political comedy, a spoof of congressional hearings, “the mess that government can and has gotten into,” he says, and it has “TV as a secondary issue.”
Also in the wings, possibly on Broadway by next spring: “Death Is for Suckers,” a musical comedy with the Tony-winning composer Cy Coleman. The show is about a novelist in 1938, out in Hollywood, busy adapting one of his books for film.
This is a lot of theater, even though theater is said to be a sure cure for wealth. So why theater?
“I think I should do a play every 40 years, that’s why,” Gelbart says, having laughed and winced at the mention of his first, “My L.A.,” which didn’t do so well 38 years ago.
Despite the high flop rate and even higher costs of today, he says there’s still money about for plays and musicals: “There’s interest . . . and in theater you’re allowed to fail on your own or succeed on your own name.”
He means as a writer. Theater may be--as playwright Herb Gardner insists it is--the last place for custom work.
This is in marked contrast to Hollywood, at least for a writer.
Sure, the authorities in Hollywood will get a name writer for a movie, Gelbart says, but that’s how they get other name people, such as stars.
After that, he submits, the name writer is relegated to the Land of Past Tense. Gelbart commences a make-believe script conference with a name writer, posing as the kind of mogul who says:
“I’m sorry, Count Tolstoy, you’re too close to this. You did ‘War’ OK, but we’re going to have to have somebody else work on the ‘Peace’ part.”
Too many UCLA film school graduates cause this?
“Probably, that’s part of it,” he says. “I’m still amazed to pick up the New York Times and see the recommended films for the week, and find (only) the cast and the director” mentioned. He grins.
“I don’t know. I’ve gotten so much wine out of these sour grapes, I think it might be time to plow ‘em under and deal with something else.”
Raised in Los Angeles and a graduate of Fairfax High School, Gelbart, 63, learned the writer’s craft the old-fashioned way--by doing. His first sales were in radio, to Danny Thomas on “The Fanny Brice Maxwell House Coffee Time Show,” then on “Duffy’s Tavern,” where he was a staffer from 1945 to 1948.
The head “Tavern” writer was Abe Burrows, whose son, James, co-created NBC’s famed tavern series “Cheers.” Gelbart never got to work with Burrows senior on radio’s equally famous saloon series:
“I came on the show the day Abe left. I don’t think there was any connection.”
Still, it was the first hit show on which Gelbart worked. In 1962, he had his first Broadway hit in “Forum,” a collaboration with Burt Shevelove, with whom he shared a Tony award.
The long-running musical was an exuberant, slapstick caper based on the works of the Roman satirist Plautus. It was a difficult success. It took five years to get it to Broadway.
Part of the reason, Gelbart muses, was that the book was tough to get right: “We had 17 characters and six story lines crossing one another, avoiding one another and crashing into one another.”
That almost was the rule for work nine years earlier when he was a staff writer on television’s “Your Show of Shows,” starring Sid Caesar. There were 12 writers on staff, among them Neil Simon, Mel Brooks and, at one point, a young Dixieland clarinet player name of Woody Allen.
“It was an amazing kind of commune,” Gelbart says of that gang. When they went to work, it was akin to a jam session.
Verbal riffs filled the air, the better ones, he says, taken down “on the mighty Underwood” by Michael Stewart--later to succeed on Broadway as the librettist of shows, among them “Hello, Dolly!” and Coleman’s “Barnum.”
It was a time when Caesar & Co. would think nothing of doing a whole hour taking off on those old Hollywood “The Fleet’s In” musicals, the kind filled with happy young sailors dancing and singing and chasing Betty Grable.
Gelbart still recalls the big finale of such a Caesar show, in which the admiral said: “Men, as you know, before we go off to battle we always do one big production number.”
You do not see this nowadays. Not much sketch comedy, either, although Gelbart has kind words for a former comedy writer and comic turned star--David Letterman--and for the writers of Letterman’s late-night NBC show.
He has to be asked his views on the quality of sketch at NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” But he does not hesitate to boo:
“Quite honestly, I think it’s been downhill for a lot of years now. What the first one had--although I wasn’t uniformly crazy about their stuff--was that everything had a sense of danger, the possibility of surprise.
“But I really resented--that’s a mild word--the (show’s) casual attitude about drugs,” he says, meaning the early “SNLs.” “I thought it was almost an hour and a half commercial for drugs.”
Gelbart earned critical acclaim, as well as what some would call a bundle, as the developer, co-producer and often writer of the hit CBS series based on the movie “MASH.”
But he hasn’t ventured into TV much in recent years.
It is not that he quit television cold after leaving “MASH” in 1976. He did a sequel, “After-MASH,” that expired after a short run. There also was “United States” on NBC, which, while well-received, lasted only half a season.
That was in 1980. The box has not heard from him since, save for his solo authorship of an Oscar Awards show in 1985.
Is it that Gelbart has--to paraphrase a line Fred Allen once wrote about radio--concluded that television is a treadmill to oblivion?
“I’m not sure,” he says. “I just knew it was time to get out.”
Tired of Hollywood?
“No. It’s just that I have kind of a restless nature. I really like to surprise myself--and I suppose, by extension, others--by being in different places, doing different things at different times.
“It’s as simple as that. Four years on ‘MASH’ was a long time for me. It was that time because of my absolute devotion to it, and working with the people I was working with. But I just like to mix it up.”
Regardless of whether the effort is in literature, film, TV or theater, the works of all writers face persons whom many consider evil, malicious, dumb, untalented, and even awful. These persons are critics.
Yet Gelbart, whose work has been knocked, just like that of any other writer, has an oddly peaceful view of those who find fault with his efforts.
He doesn’t brood, get drunk or throw things at the wall on such occasions, as is the custom for most on such occasions.
“I don’t think I’ve ever done anything that I thought was good that got killed. I’ve never found myself able to disagree with those critics with whom I’d agreed--the day before they pasted me.
“I tend to think I deserve my good luck. And my bad.”