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TV’s M*A*S*H creator, Larry Gelbart, died at the age of 81.
Larry Gelbart, the brilliant writer who moved effortlessly between theatre, television and film, passed away on Friday at the age of 81. The cause was cancer.
Already a Tony winner for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Gelbart, along with Gene Reynolds, helped to produce and develop M*A*S*H in 1972, based on the Robert Altman movie, then wrote and directed many of its first episodes. His association with the show lasted four years and 97 episodes.
M*A*S*H went on to become one of the longest-running series in television history, ending in 1983. It was also one of television’s most influential sitcoms, with its innovative use of an ensemble cast, multiple plotlines and mix of drama and comedy. “I am convinced,” Mr. Gelbart wrote in The Times in 1983, before the show’s final episode, “that we achieved a creative freedom unheard of in the medium before or since.”
Gelbart also wrote, with Murray Schisgal, what is for my money the best romantic comedy of the modern era, Tootsie. The film is the story of struggling, self-absorbed actor Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman), in a desperate bid for work, disguises himself as a woman, wins an audition for a part in a television soap opera and becomes a huge success. In the process, he learns about how the opposite sex gets treated and falls in love with his co-star (Jessica Lange won her first Oscar for the movie). Gelbart had previously received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay of the George Burns comedy Oh, God!.
Other movie credits include Blame It on Rio, Bedazzled, Movie Movie, and the HBO movie Barbarians at the Gate. He won an additional Tony in 1990 for the book of the musical City of Angels.
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