In every article I've read about Larry Gelbart since I first became aware of his name as a teenager, it always said he wrote for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. In every TV interview I've seen with Larry Gelbert (excepting brief clips) he talked about writing for Your Show of Shows. Furthermore, I've seen TV interviews with people like Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, who remember Larry Gelbart writing for Your Show of Shows. So it was with complete confidence that when I posted "In Memoriam: Larry Gelbart 1928-2009" a couple of days ago, I included Your Show of Shows among his many credits.
Since Gelbart's passing, however, most of the obituaries listed Sid Caesar's successor show Caesar's Hour, not Your Show of Shows, as the program for which he actually wrote. Unsure myself, I listed both. Then yesterday, while skimming through The Huffington Post, I noticed a link to Larry Gelbart's final interview, for Vanity Fair, in which he states, unequivocally, that he never wrote for Your Show of Shows.
So that's my correction. Larry Gelbart wrote for Caesar's Hour, not Your Shows of Shows. As both shows aired before I was born, they're not even the reason I felt the need to honor him in the first place. I honor him for the first four seasons of MASH, and the screenplays for Oh, God!, Tootsie , and a few other things. I'd also like to honor him for the book to the stage musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, but I only know it as a movie. According to IMDb, it was written by someone else, although I have a difficult time believing that that someone else didn't use Gelbart's lines!
Next thing you know, someone will try and tell me Woody Allen didn't write for Your Show of Shows either.
Tootsie is probably in my top 10 all-time favorite movies. It never gets old. Plus I used to have a crush on Jessica Lange.
ReplyDeleteI thought Jessica was sexy in King Kong. Nothing against Fay Wray, but sometimes flesh looks better in living color.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the blog, Adam. You know, I have a brother with that name.
Gelbart collaborated on the book for the stage version which was later adapted to screen. I did the lighting design for this in college. Great fun.
ReplyDeleteFunny thing happened on the way to the forum. I forgot to type the the title of the script/book/movie/musical. Anyway Buster Keaton was fabulous.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there's a lot of Larry Gelbart in the screen version, even if he didn't write for it directly. There's also some great comic acting from Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, and Jack Gilford (don't recognize that last name? He's the timid guy who made too much noise in Cracker Jack commercials of many years ago)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Adam, if you're still out there somewhere, you're name is blue, which should mean you have a Blogger account. But your name is linking to Bessed. I thought that was on some other service. Did you somehow switch it over to Blogger?
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