LOS ANGELES — Larry Gelbart, the award-winning comedy writer best known for developing the landmark TV series “MASH,” co-writing the book for the hit Broadway musical “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and co-writing the classic movie comedy “Tootsie,” died Friday at 81.
Gelbart, who was diagnosed with cancer in June, died at his home in Beverly Hills, said his wife, Pat Gelbart.
Comic actor Jack Lemmon once described the genial, quick-witted Gelbart as “one of the greatest writers of comedy to have graced the arts in this century.”
In 1955, Gelbart joined the fabled writing staff of “Caesar’s Hour,” Sid Caesar’s post-“Your Show of Shows” TV comedy-variety series. Among his fellow writers were Neil Simon and Mel Brooks.
Gelbart’s Broadway triumph came in 1962 with the hit Stephen Sondheim comedy musical “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” Gelbart and Burt Shevelove wrote the book, which they based on the comedies of the ancient Roman playwright Plautus. “Forum,” whose cast included Zero Mostel, ran on Broadway for more than two years and won a Tony Award for best musical, as well as a Tony Award for Gelbart as co-author.
But most famously there was “MASH,” the long-running series whose blend of laughter and tragedy made TV history.
Set in the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War, TV’s “MASH” grew out of director Robert Altman’s hit 1970 movie written by Ring Lardner Jr., which was based on the 1968 novel by Richard Hooker.
In writing the pilot, Gelbart recalled in his 1998 memoir “Laughing Matters,” he knew that it “was going to have to be a whole lot more than funny. Funny was easy. How not to trivialize human suffering by trying to be comic about it, that was the challenge.”
