R.I.P.

Jeff Cohen

It's strange to consider someone you've never met a friend. And yet, as technology marches on, I find that I have many friends with whom I've never actually shared a room. In fact, of the other eight bloggers here on DEAD GUY, I have met three. 

So when Larry Gelbart died on Friday, it was both odd and logical that I felt like I'd lost a friend. Because I had, even though Larry and I never met.

We did, in fact, know each other. I, of course, knew of Larry's amazing career: Writing for Sid Caesar in a room with Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Woody Allen, Neil Simon, Lucille Kallen and any number of other comic geniuses. Writing A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum with the late Burt Shevelove and some guy named Sondheim. Writing (with many other, uncredited hands) Tootsie, and the screenplay for Oh God! (directed by Reiner). City of Angels. Mastergate. Barbarians at the Gate. The under-appreciated United States. Weapons of Mass Distraction. The Wrong Box.

And then, there was M*A*S*H.

Larry developed the show for television after it had been a book and a movie. He wrote a great number of the episodes early on (the early, funny years) and was an executive producer and head writer for the first four seasons. He could create living, breathing characters and make them funny and sad and petty and generous and smart and stupid and... human, and he could do it all while making you care what happened to these people.

I went through a period when M*A*S*H was among the most important things in my life. I watched every rerun and memorized dialogue. I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about the situations and the characters. I wrote a sample script to use as a calling card in Hollywood (which could be why I'm the household-name screenwriter I am today). It was, to me, a TV show and a classroom. "Here's how you do it," Larry Gelbart would tell me through his work. "See if you can do as well." That was setting the bar pretty high.

And then, through the miracle of online communication (then in its infancy), I got to talk--through my computer--to Larry Gelbart. And he was funny and honest and witty and patient and all the things you hope your hero will be, and rarely is. Even when I was audacious enough to ask him on whom he blamed the failure of Blame It On Rio, Gelbart was self-effacing and rude at the same time, in taking the hit himself: "You can't masturbate and then yell rape."

We would email occasionally. I'm not saying I was Larry's best friend, but he did insist that I call him "Larry," when I could work up the nerve. And he called once or twice when he saw something in the newspaper that he thought I'd find amusing.

When I published my first novel, FOR WHOM THE MINIVAN ROLLS, from a publisher nobody (including me) had ever heard of, I was terrified to ask Larry if he'd take a look and consider sending a blurb. But I gathered my courage, convinced this was the thing professionals did, and asked.

"Sure, kid," came the response. 

The waiting was excruciating, but eventually, I got an email. And Larry Gelbart, my writing idol, had pronounced something I wrote as "warm, witty and wise." It's over seven years later, and I'm still grinning just thinking about it.

When my wife was hitting a birthday with a 0 at the end, it just so happened that A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was being revived on Broadway, with Nathan Lane as Pseudolus. Larry saw to it we got his house seats, fifth row center. When there was a slight problem with the tickets, he made sure (from 3,000 miles away) that it was resolved.

In short, Larry Gelbart was a good friend I never met, and now I never will. But he was that rare combination--a great talent who was also a very nice man. Considerate, thoughtful, and funny, he made many writers (I know a few who knew him) feel like they were special to him. He had the ability to recognize talent in others, and even better, not to resent them for it. He was gracious and generous with his time and his advice, but only when asked. And he was, at all times, a gentleman.

I will miss him. So will a great many other people.

Comments

[Lartonmedia]

Lovely piece, Jeff!

[Morgan Mandel]

I never had the fortune of corresponding with him. I know what you mean about online friends. I think I know some of them better than the ones I'e met in person.

Morgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com

[www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkGIYJZAoGIFGPAtq3j-nPjfQTgxPssg-U]

Fantastic write-up.

I was so saddened when I heard the news this weekend. I never met him, but I have enjoyed his work for many years. His memoir is still very inspirational to me. R.I.P.

--Austin Lugar
lugarslists.blogspot.com

[Patti Abbott]

MASH gave us an outlet for our rage at the time. I am sad you never met, but glad for your online correspondence.