A TEI Project

Interview of Larry Gelbart

Contents

1. Transcript

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
June 20, 2005

COLLINGS
This is Jane Collings interviewing Larry Gelbart at his home in Beverly Hills [California] on June 20th, 2005.Good afternoon, Larry.
GELBART
Good afternoon, Jane.
COLLINGS
Thank you for coming, I should say, to your own house.
GELBART
That was on my way.
COLLINGS
Why don't we just start off with your early life and just sort of sketch in when and where you were born.
GELBART
I was born in Chicago, Illinois, on a wintry day, I guess. It was February 25th. It was 1928. There was a depression at the time, but I was hardly aware of that, having been in the dark for the previous nine months. I was born on Crystal Avenue on the Northwest Side of Chicago. Chicago then, that part of the city, was, I think, largely populated by or there were a great many immigrants. My mother [Frieda Sturner Gelbart] came from Poland, as did her family, and so I was born in that part of the city. My father [Harry Gelbart] was an immigrant, too, so he qualified for the Northwest Side. That's it. I guess I was born in the early hours. Most babies seem to be born in the early hours, or they were before TV.
COLLINGS
Your parents met in Chicago, isn't that right?
GELBART
My parents did meet in Chicago. My mother was from Poland, a town called Dumbrova, D-u-m-b-r-o-v-a. Quite recently someone sent me a— He had visited Dumbrova and he took some pictures in the local cemetery, none of my mother's family, but it was nice to have visual proof that the place really existed beyond just hearing about it at your mother's breast, although she didn't keep saying that as she was feeding me.My mother came to America when she was fifteen, and she was, like a lot of young women at that time, immediately put behind a sewing machine, and I don't know if it was slave labor or child labor, but it was heavy labor for her.
COLLINGS
Did she head out on her own?
GELBART
No. She lived with her family. She lived with her, I guess, her father and mother. She came from a rather large family, seven, four girls and three boys, all of whom, sad to say, are no longer alive.My father came from Latvia, from a town called Jakobstadt, Jacob's Town, I guess, and he apprenticed there from the age of twelve as a barber and was to continue in that work until almost ninety, so that's a pretty good run for a barber.
COLLINGS
Yes, sure is.
GELBART
They met somewhere. That's kind of lost or my memory doesn't really grab where it was or how they came to meet, but I guess there would have been a lot of inter-immigrant meetings. He was kind of a— In fact, I have a picture of him in a western costume. He was kind of a Jewish cowboy, and he was that way in life, too. He was by far the more sort of dashing character. My mother was— For many reasons. One, I guess he was just disposed to be that kind of personality with a personality, and was in the world more than my mother was; that is to say, when she wasn't at the sewing machine, it was because she was at home raising a child, two eventually, and had not that much contact with the outside world, whereas he was, as a barber, much more social.
COLLINGS
Sure, he'd have to be.
GELBART
Yes. So they met as teenagers, I don't think they were nineteen yet, and I think a year after they met or married, rather, I was born. There were not a lot of children known to be born out of wedlock in those days.I guess we continued living somewhere in that area with my mother's parents who spoke— Never did ever learn to speak English; it was either Polish or Yiddish. I lived with them, and until I was five, I did not speak that much English.
COLLINGS
Right, so the whole neighborhood was speaking Polish and Yiddish them, because—
GELBART
Polish or Yiddish or Russian. So those were the earliest, earliest, earliest years.
COLLINGS
What was it like when you did go to school?
GELBART
Well, first of all, they got my name wrong. My birth certificate, on my birth certificate I'm described as Larry Simon, which was the English translation of my Yiddish name— "Leib Shloima." Leib can be anything. It can be Lewis, it can be Lawrence, I guess. It could be almost anything that begins with an L. Shloima translated itself as Simon. It could also be Solomon.But my mother, as unsteady as she was with the language and certainly the written language, didn't dare take me to school because there might have been something she had to read or sign. So my Aunt Molly [Molly Pasco],who later insisted she be called Aunt Jean, she Americanized herself not knowing about Ulysses, James Joyce, that is, and so she— They must have said, "Larry. Is that Lawrence?"And she said, "Yes," and so I became Lawrence, right, and with the wrong birth date.
COLLINGS
It's like it's an Ellis Island story of a sort.
GELBART
Yes, exactly, you know those stories. So I was Lawrence Gelbart with the wrong birth date, a day too early, February 24th. I didn't like Lawrence. It was just—
COLLINGS
That must have been funny, like suddenly being called on by—
GELBART
I mean Lawrence of Poland?
COLLINGS
—this name, and it's not even your name.
GELBART
Exactly. I think at home they called me Shloima. Not very pretty, but more accurate.
COLLINGS
But if it's your name, then.
GELBART
That's right.
COLLINGS
There must have been a huge group of kids at the school who basically didn't speak English, right, because they were coming from your same neighborhood?
GELBART
By the time I was enrolled in kindergarten, we had moved to the West Side, and while, again, it was heavily peopled by immigrants, English was the language that everybody spoke, at least outside the house. So that was not a problem. Not so much not a problem, I don't think anyone else spoke only Yiddish. But I caught on quickly, of course.
COLLINGS
So why did your parents move?
GELBART
Well, I guess they wanted to be on their own. They wanted to be free of my mother's family, at least her parents. I'm assuming that. I think my dad began to work on the West Side in a barbershop, and so it was certainly closer to where we were.
COLLINGS
I wondered if this was sort of an upward mobility move.
GELBART
In a way it was. I mean, yes, getting out of the house, leaving your parents behind, for my mother, was an upward move, although I don't think she ever really left home in that sense. I think she always felt very close to her parents. She was not the youngest of the children, but she was very attached to her mom and dad. Mom and dad; it seems to strange to refer her parents as mom and dad. I mean, that's so Norman Rockwell, and they were so Mittel European, you know.
COLLINGS
Yes. So did you have a lot of cousins that you were growing up with at the same time?
GELBART
I had more cousins than I spent much time with. The two cousins I spent a good deal of time with were my Cousin Aaron [Aaron Ross], who died about four years ago, and his sister, my cousin June [June Ross], who died last year.After we moved to the West Side, we would make a Saturday pilgrimage, always, to my grandparents' home on the Northwest Side, and Aaron and June, or Archie and Junie, as they were called, still lived on the Northwest Side. They were the children of my mother's sister Becky [Rebecca Ross]. So I just, to this day, I smile inwardly when I think about that because it meant going to the movies and seeing, at a minimum, a double feature. We'd see triple features in those days, carrying huge smelly sandwiches into the theater and spending literally the whole day in a movie house seeing that many movies and cartoons and short subjects and the weekly serials and so forth. But that was a highlight of my week, to spend those with two other kids.Then when my sister Marcia [Marcia Ross] came along when I was seven, then she was, of course, part of the group of pilgrims. My dad didn't take part in any of that, because Saturday would have been a very busy day for him as a barber, everybody getting spruced up to go wherever they went on a Saturday night.
COLLINGS
So you would see like live acts between the movies, right, at the—
GELBART
It depended. On the Northwest Side, we would just see movies. When I was lucky enough to get taken downtown as a little child by one or both of my parents, I would see a first-run movie, rarely a double feature, because those big houses, like the Chicago Theater, the Oriental Theater, the State and Lake [Theater], they would show a first-run movie and a floorshow, which always or invariably consisted of a big band, ala Benny Goodman, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, thrilling stuff, just thrilling stuff, and comedians, live comedians, and frequently someone traveling or appearing that was in the motion picture itself, so you know that was such a treat.We're a little jaded out here now in terms of seeing celebrities, but then to see a live presentation of the film presentation that we just saw or the character that we just saw was kind of thrilling. But I know that that's where I developed a lifelong interest, and more than an interest, a passion for big bands, and I guess comedians, too.
COLLINGS
Were there any particular memorable Saturdays where you really said, "This is great"?
GELBART
I think every one. Every Saturday was a great Saturday. I remember comic routines that I saw when I must have been seven or eight years old. I still remember sort of key passages from them because they made such an impression. That and the fact that many of the acts that you saw live would return year after year.
COLLINGS
Oh, right. Interesting, yes.
GELBART
Pre-TV, of course, they could do the same half hour or twenty minutes of their routine over again, and you didn't say, "Oh, I saw that one." It would be like hearing a familiar bedtime story again.
COLLINGS
Right. That's a great way to really learn the craft, isn't it?
GELBART
Absolutely, absolutely. It was wonderful. My folks tell me that when I was, I don't know, under a year, we were downtown seeing a show and the band started playing, and either I got in the aisle or I stood on top of an armrest or something and started leading the orchestra. Just a little popular legend in my family. I'm the only one alive to remember.
COLLINGS
So you could just say that all you like.
GELBART
Yes, exactly. I could even make up a band that I led.
COLLINGS
Well, early on, you took all kinds of dance lessons.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
And clarinet lessons and so on. Were your parents just kind of encouraging where your interests seems to lie?
GELBART
I don't know whether they thought that's where my interests might be hiding, and some of them have remained hidden, or it was just the immigrant dream for their child to do better than they had done or were likely to do. So they did give me tap dancing lessons when I was, I think, about seven years old, and I still remember Mrs. Kravitz on the first floor. We lived on the third floor and I would practice my steps on the porch, so the whole building could hear them. I remember her yelling encouragement such as, "Break your legs, why don't you?" "Why don't you fall down?" and stuff like that.
COLLINGS
Well, this is good training for like possible rejection in the future.
GELBART
For reviews, exactly, exactly. I was well schooled in rejection by Mrs. Kravitz, anyway. Old, old lady, god.The building was such, there was a basement apartment, then there was a first floor, a second floor, a third floor, and we all shared a common back porch, and if you stepped out of my— There were two apartments on each floor, so it was almost like a play set. Everybody knew what everybody else was doing or yelling or tapping. Then, of course, they put me onto the clarinet because my dancing proved to be—
COLLINGS
Bothering the neighbors? [laughs]
GELBART
Bothering the neighbors. I was a prodigy in failure. At seven, I'd already abandoned a career. So I moved on to the clarinet. No, I think first my dad bought me a C-melody saxophone. Nobody plays the C-melody saxophone.
COLLINGS
That seems an unusual choice for a small kid.
GELBART
Yes, I guess so, but I think it tied into the era of bands and show business. My dad was always— He was intrigued by show business. A lot of his customers, you know—
COLLINGS
Yes. Well, I was just going to ask because, I mean, of course, there's the immigrant thing of wanting to get ahead.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
But why in show business in particular?
GELBART
Because it didn't require a lot of education. You could take lessons and learn how to be a musician, and I guess it was very American to be noticed in that way and, I guess, to make a lot of money, too.
COLLINGS
Also the lifestyle that was shown in the films of that era was like this was this incredibly luxurious lifestyle.
GELBART
Exactly, and even in Chicago, which was certainly not the show town that Los Angeles was, a lot of the people who my father catered to, cut the heads of and shaved the faces of, were people in show business, so he was at home with that, and my dad was— I don't know how he learned, but he did this kind of faux tap dancing around his own chair, literally tap dancing, and always telling jokes, so that he was in his own light, and by everybody else's, I guess, kind of an entertainer himself. So if I could make it that way, that would have been a—
COLLINGS
Was there any history of your father's family back in Latvia being sort of known as the ones in the village who were really wonderful in this way?
GELBART
No, no. No, show business did not run in the Gelbart family.
COLLINGS
Just like at home, around at a party or something?
GELBART
I don't think so. My Aunt Jean was kind of a character. She was funny. As a matter of fact, a couple of years ago, her husband, who outlived her by perhaps a dozen years, died, and I was one of the pallbearers. I had not been around when she passed away, and so I'd never seen the plaque on her gravesite. As I was helping to carry my uncle, my late Uncle Morris [Morris Pasco], to his grave, I saw next to his the place where my Aunt Jean was buried and her plaque.On my Aunt Jean's gravesite there's a plaque in color, the appropriate colors, "A Royal Flush."
COLLINGS
Really?
GELBART
Yes, "Of Hearts."
COLLINGS
Was that her choice?
GELBART
It was her choice, and the inscription says, "Just One More Hand." So they had their own sort of flamboyance. I looked a great deal like her. Everyone said I looked exactly like her, so, as you can see, she wasn't a very pretty woman. [laughs]
COLLINGS
That's a very unusual thing to want on your gravestone, that's for sure.
GELBART
Well, she had a great sense of humor.
COLLINGS
Yeah, it sounds like it.
GELBART
Yeah, she really did.His sister, my dad's sister Jean, and an uncle, Uncle Harry Druck, and another uncle (Morris), Asher, were, I think, the only relatives that got out of Latvia. Everyone else in my father's family died during the Nazi occupation. I don't know where, when, but it couldn't have been pretty. Whereas my mother's family, of course, all made it over.
COLLINGS
They had all left prior to that?
GELBART
Yes, right. But my dad was typical—
COLLINGS
It must have been tough on your dad.
GELBART
Yeah, it was tough. It was tough. It was tougher on him, of course, because I never— It's hard to miss people you never saw.
COLLINGS
Right.
GELBART
But typical of the period, he was always sending money home from his very hard-earned money to help them.
COLLINGS
So I suppose he started losing touch with them in late thirties, early forties?
GELBART
I don't know that they lost— Yes, when it was over, in terms of their lives it was over. But I remember post office orders going out all the time, and clothes. But there must have been a period, I'm not aware of it precisely, when they were not there to receive it.
COLLINGS
Right. Did that cast a pall over the family that you can— I mean I'm sure it did, but sometimes parents hide things from kids.
GELBART
I don't know. When you're a little kid, nothing casts a pall, you know. I'm not aware of it.
COLLINGS
Your dad probably did a good job of—
GELBART
Well, my dad literally did tap dance. There was a lot of denial.
COLLINGS
So what were your experiences at school like with your friends and in the neighborhood and games and activities?
GELBART
Well, the closest friend I had was a boy named Marvin Klinger, and Marvin's still alive. He's up in the Northwest somewhere. He became a major engineer, associated with some large government TVA-type projects, and he's the one, of course, from whom I copied all my homework, because I didn't have Marvin's brainpower or discipline.
COLLINGS
Well, that was nice of him.
GELBART
Oh, it's terrific.
COLLINGS
He was a good friend.
GELBART
He was a great friend. He was a great friend, and I repaid him by calling the character Klinger, which was no way to repay an old friend.
COLLINGS
It's a good way to repay him.
GELBART
Well, yeah, I thought he would be angry about it, but it was kind of a badge of, if not honor, at least a little bit of fame.
COLLINGS
Yes, absolutely.
GELBART
There were a lot of kids, a lot of kids, a lot of kids that were just the same. They all came from families that were— They were probably first-generation American. There was a public park named Franklin Park where we all played, and I almost drowned because they said the only way to learn how to swim is to be thrown in the water.
COLLINGS
Who said that?
GELBART
The guy who threw me in and then held me under.
COLLINGS
Oh, my god.
GELBART
Yes, it was terrible. I was so bad that— I'm seventy-seven now, about three years ago I took swimming lessons for the first time and learned how.
COLLINGS
Jeez, I can understand. God, that must have been terrible.
GELBART
It was terrible.
COLLINGS
He was like holding you under the water?
GELBART
Not "like." He was holding me under the water.
COLLINGS
Oh, my god.
GELBART
I can still fight for air if I think about it.
COLLINGS
Jeez. See, everybody talks about how wonderful it used to be when the kids ran free and they were so unsupervised, but a lot of this other stuff went on, too.
GELBART
Kids have always been mean little bastards, we know that.But the barbershop was a big part of my growing up, because invariably I'd find myself going there either on the streetcar— Probably on the streetcar. It was close enough to the school, but not walkable. I'd go there and just hang out or play the clarinet for my father's clients.
COLLINGS
Was your dad kind of counting on you to help out a little bit at the—
GELBART
No. You mean money-wise? No.
COLLINGS
No, no, I mean just playing clarinet or—
GELBART
No. He was always showing me off once I could do something besides say, "Can I have a quarter?" But he was always very generous with me in terms of a quarter or a dime, and attention. He told a lot— He knew more jokes, stories.
COLLINGS
Did he make them up, or did he hear them from people?
GELBART
No, no, he would hear them and he'd repeat them, and he knew every one. I mean no one knows every one, but if anyone could have known every one, he would have known everyone. Then I started telling them when I was about five, and if they had a dirty word in them, all the better. I still remember a couple of jokes I told when I was five years old.Then my dad, to make more money, he would have customers to the house on a Sunday, and so he'd work Monday through Saturday and then on Sunday, people would come by for haircuts and shaves, and he would do that in the bathroom, throw a cloth over somebody and go to work on them, and I would be sitting on the edge of the closed toilet playing invariably "In the Mood," Glenn Miller's "In the Mood," or "Frenesi" or "Perfidia."
COLLINGS
Oh, boy. It sounds like you were pretty good on the clarinet.
GELBART
I was wonderful. I was really good. I was great for a while. I had the privilege—it was a privilege—of studying with the man who taught Benny Goodman at a place called the Hull House. It used to be, basically, places called settlement houses.
COLLINGS
The Hull House, yes.
GELBART
Yes. You know Chicago?
COLLINGS
Well, sort of. But I know about that.
GELBART
Right. So his name was Duke— I don't know what his real first name was, but he was known as Duke Rehl, R-e-h-l. The highest compliment he could pay you as a student was— There's a famous set of clarinet studies called the Lazarus Book, and I think there are at least two volumes, and they're clarinet solos and clarinet duets. If I came in on a Saturday, this would be a place called Lyon and Healy Music Company on Wabash Avenue in Chicago, and his office was on the level with the elevated, the famous El, the elevated railroad. With a select few students, he would take out his clarinet and play along with you. If it was a duet, he'd play the bottom line, you would do the top, or vice versa, and that meant you really rated with Mr. Rehl. That was the most thrilling part of my week to meet his expectations, his standard.Then I started walking girls home from school and practicing less and less, and then one week we were playing along, and he stopped and I stopped. He said, "Keep going," and I kept going, haltingly, and he "broke" his clarinet. He opened it, he turned it and made it two pieces, which you can do with a clarinet, of course. Actually, there were five, but— And he opened his drawer and put the pieces in and he said, "Continue," and I knew that I was going to have to do some serious work if I was ever going to get him to take his clarinet out of the desk again.So I decided to major in girls, but otherwise, I mean, I had a really— I had a wonderful technique. I was very, very fast. I didn't have what they call a legitimate tone. I'd been so influenced by Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw that my tone was more popular music than it was classical, and I would never have gone anywhere as a serious musician. But when you learn the clarinet, saxophone becomes very, very easy, and so pretty soon I was playing the baritone saxophone and the tenor saxophone and having a good time being kind of a half-assed musician, instead of knuckling down and becoming a really, really wonderful musician.
COLLINGS
What were you planning to do when you grew up at that time?
GELBART
I didn't have a clue. I didn't know what I would do, because I was not a very good student. I was a terrible student. In high school, I flunked Algebra I twice and Geometry II once. I was not very good at Spanish. So then the clowning began, to take the heat off the discipline and the—
COLLINGS
Would you actually get in trouble at school and that kind of thing?
GELBART
I could. I could. Not terrible trouble, but once we had a substitute teacher and I faked a lisp, and it turned out she was there for about two months.
COLLINGS
Oh no.
GELBART
Yes, the homeroom teacher. But I was very— But if it came to putting on a show or writing something for the paper, that was my out, sort of sanctioned showing-off.
COLLINGS
So they were doing shows and things at the school.
GELBART
Yes, and invariably, it's not so much— I didn't write much in grammar school. I was a slow starter. I did in high school. But I would go to a movie such as, say, The Great Dictator jumps to mind, Charles Chaplin's movie, and I would memorize whole speeches and then do the movie for kids back on the block.
COLLINGS
So was it easy for you to memorize this stuff?
GELBART
Yes, it was, extremely, extremely, because I wanted to. I didn't want to know where Abyssinia was, but I wanted to be as funny as any comedian that I saw downtown.
COLLINGS
So you were particularly attracted to the comedians.
GELBART
I was particularly attracted. It was Rand McNally that I didn't have much passion for. I liked history. Math, to this day, I can't give you— Or I'm liable to give you two tens for a five.
COLLINGS
Oh, well. [laughs]
GELBART
People like me.
COLLINGS
What can you do? [mutual laughter]What does your sister— Did she go into show business or anything?
GELBART
Well, she ruined it all, my sister, of course. No, she didn't get into show business. My sister was born when I was seven, and I remember to this day running up and down Kolin Avenue, K-o-l-i-n, in Chicago, jumping on running boards and saying, "I have a sister! I have a sister! I have a sister!" And she was gorgeous. She was really beautiful, ala Elizabeth Taylor, dark hair and just perfectly put-together little face.Then, of course, I became number two, I think, and I think— I don't think, I know, I didn't dwell on it and it didn't turn me into anything, it didn't handicap me, but I know to her dying day that I was jealous of this switch. God help me if I ever did anything after my parents left, or I thought they left, for some dinner date or something and I would tease her or be mean to her, the door would fly open and I would be the next thing that flew. I mean they really— They were from time to time a bit generous with their hands.Marcia was funny and self-deprecating, and that's a rare combination in a beautiful woman.
COLLINGS
Yes, it is.
GELBART
But she was less serious about school than I was. I don't know how it happened. When I say I don't know how it happened, I mean she should have been dissuaded. I wasn't in a position to do so. I wasn't even in this city. But she quit high school way early, married someone, that didn't work out, and her next marriage was a disaster in terms of her choice. She just never lived up to the promise, I think, that we all expected, not just because she was so extraordinarily pretty, but because she was so bright and witty and seemed to be equipped to do better.
COLLINGS
That must have been hard to watch.
GELBART
It's still hard. It's still hard.
COLLINGS
Did she come out to Los Angeles with your family?
GELBART
She was born in Los Angeles.
COLLINGS
Oh, she was?
GELBART
No, she was born in Chicago, of course. What am I talking about? She did come out, of course. We came out in sections. My sister and my mother came out first, I believe, by train, and then I came out by— It was sort of an exodus, a mass exodus. People were coming west, west, west. I came out with someone who was driving out, so I shared the ride with him and a couple of women and passengers, or possibly more. I don't know. I was very young. Then my father came, and he brought something that we'd never had in Chicago; he brought a car. He brought a two-door Plymouth, and that to me was like a twelve-door Rolls-Royce. We had a car.But then the early years were very tough, because— Shall I just go on?
COLLINGS
Yes, why don't you.
GELBART
My dad, who was a very, very skilled barber, had to pass the California test.
COLLINGS
Oh, I didn't realize that they— Yes.
GELBART
Yes, very difficult and purposefully difficult because they didn't want a lot of people passing it, I guess, or competing with existing—
COLLINGS
Oh, I see, they're sort of protecting the economy.
GELBART
Yes. So he had to study. The test, there was a practical test, there was an oral test, and there was a written test. My dad, who really was very poor with English at that time, he had to remember Latin phrases, had to spell them, write them, pronounce them, and so he flunked the first two times, and it was tough. My dad, although he didn't have a license, he was able to and took advantage of the fact that he could cut hair in nonunion situations. Or maybe it wasn't a union thing. It was a license deal. He was a barber at Santa Anita, the racetrack, which was then an ordnance base.
COLLINGS
Oh, really?
GELBART
Yes. So he was cutting the hair of GIs. It was twenty-five cents a haircut and fifteen cents for a shave, suppose—
COLLINGS
Shave a haircut, two bits [singing].
GELBART
That's right, exactly. My dad, it was sweet, these kids would tip my dad a nickel or something, and my dad couldn't take it. He would give it back to them.But he finally did pass, and when he passed, it made him. It made him. He was able to do to work at a place called Drucker's in Beverly Hills, and it was the shop. I made a list of the celebrities that he worked on over the years, and it's extraordinary. It's extraordinary. It guess the most extraordinary thing about my father, to give you an idea of the range, was that he was JFK's [John F. Kennedy] barber when JFK used to come out here as president, because he was Peter Lawford's barber, so it was natural, and then years before he had been barber to a man in Chicago named Sparky Rubenstein, who history remembers as Jack Ruby. So he cut two of the three principals.
COLLINGS
That is incredible.
GELBART
Isn't it?
COLLINGS
Wow. It's amazing. How did he run into all these people?
GELBART
Well, in Chicago they sort of ran into him. I mean, he was in a small local neighborhood, but the West Side was very active. There's a wonderful book called The Old Bunch, I forget who wrote it now [Meyer Levin], but it's about Chicago in those days. He'd have people like Barney Ross, who was the welterweight champion of the world and Jewish on top of it, which is amazing, and he'd have show business acts, as I mentioned. I remember the first ones I met were Nick and Steve Condos, who were tap dancers. One of them later married Martha Raye and was with her for years and years.I remember going with him once to a place called the Croydon Hotel, which is where the acts stayed, and there was this strange smell, which I found out later was marijuana. So that was the first time I had kind of a contact high.
COLLINGS
Was that common at that time?
GELBART
In show business it was. Musicians, yes.
COLLINGS
Marijuana in particular?
GELBART
Marijuana, marijuana, weed, shit, Mary Jane, a joint, and maybe not even a joint. Reefers.But then out here, he went to work in this particular shop which was frequented by just the biggest, biggest, biggest stars, and he was wonderful. He's one of those barbers that would give you a haircut, and you didn't look like you'd had a haircut, which is important to actors, especially if they're—
COLLINGS
Well, he must have had a certain kind of demeanor and style.
GELBART
Fantastic, fantastic.
COLLINGS
Because those places don't just hire anybody.
GELBART
Well, no, there are barbers who just give you a haircut. But my dad was really entertaining. First of all, he did know all these jokes, and he just made people look great. There again, he had everybody from David O. Selznick to Bugsy Siegel, from Mickey Cohen to William S. Paley. I mean, this incredible variety.
COLLINGS
Did he cut your hair?
GELBART
Sure, he cut my hair. When he first cut my hair in Chicago, people made fun of the way he cut my hair because he cut my sideburns to a point, so that I looked like a little Rudolf Valentino. [mutual laughter] He used to love to cut my hair, and I used to love to have him cut it. His tip was always a big kiss, of course.
COLLINGS
So, I'm sorry, you came out to Los Angeles, but in terms of your growing up, I forgot to ask, did you have like religious education in your family?
GELBART
Religious education. My family was the kind that while they spoke a lot of Yiddish, did not practice a lot of Hebrew ritual. My dad went to what seemed like the obligatory Yom Kippur services. The house was not kosher, although I don't think we ever did bacon and shrimp and stuff like that, or ham, but I made up for that, and shellfish.When I got to be about eleven, I guess, or maybe even younger, about eleven years, maybe a little bit younger, I started going to Hebrew school. The Hebrew school was situated directly across the street to the elementary school that I went to.
COLLINGS
That was convenient.
GELBART
It was convenient. So at three o'clock I would go across the street and learn to read from right to left instead of left to right.I went there for a couple years, and then it was time to begin my instructions for my Bar Mitzvah. So they hired a rabbi who came to the house, kind of a dandy guy. I remember him always smelling my mother's perfumes, because he was teaching me in my folks' bedroom. My sister and I would—
COLLINGS
Really? He would go over and—
GELBART
Yes, he would go and just take a little sniff or two and put it down.The apartment at 1210 South Kolin Avenue was very small. There was a kitchen, there was a dining room full of this elephantine kind of furniture that immigrants seemed to think represented solidity, terrible, terrible, with glass fruit that lit up from underneath—I haven't thought of that in years—and these chairs, each one weighing a ton. Then in the living room, which was called a "fron troom," not front room, the "fron troom," in the corner there was this big wooden—[recorder turned off]

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
June 20, 2005

GELBART
So in the "fron room" was this huge four-legged radio and, again, this wildly overstuffed furniture, and then a little hallway, bathroom, and my folks' bedroom. My sister and I slept on a daybed in the dining room, which made out, you know, which opened up at night.So my instruction took place in the bedroom with the rabbi planted at the vanity table. So he instructed me in my Bar Mitzvah routine, which I performed. I still remember the blue herringbone suit. I could draw the necktie for you.
COLLINGS
Wow.
GELBART
We had a big Bar Mitzvah, and the big kick for me was that there was like a three-piece orchestra and the guy let me play the clarinet with the orchestra, so in one night I went from playing in the toilet in my apartment to playing onstage.
COLLINGS
Wow, that's great.
GELBART
That was great. Well, even greater, even greater was a few years later my dad, again to augment his income, used to work on Saturdays. After finishing work— The place was called Woolf's barbershop, Charlie Woolf, two Os. He would go downtown across the street at the Sherman Hotel and work in another barbershop, work very late into the night. There was a— I say a shoeshine boy, he was probably fifty, there who gave me the opportunity to come with him to the South Side of Chicago to play with a jazz group at a black dance. That's one of the most memorable nights of my life. I was probably awful, but you couldn't prove it by me. I was in heaven.
COLLINGS
So did you ever do that again, or was it just the one time?
GELBART
That was just that one thing, and then they found out I was white and it was over. No. No, I just did it the one time, and it was fantastic. I had some interesting musical experiences which we'll talk about later on.
COLLINGS
Okay.
GELBART
But where was I? What was I talking about? My father?
COLLINGS
Yes, actually we were talking about how your dad, when you'd come out to Los Angeles, all of the clients that he had and—
GELBART
It was something to come by after school to borrow a buck now instead of a quarter and have him say, "Larry, say hello to Mr. [Gregory] Peck," or Mr. [Frank] Sinatra or Mr. [Frank] Capra or Mr. God-knows-who. So I met all these people at a very early age, which was a good thing, because I think when I got older and started doing this a lot, I could still be impressed by what somebody did, but I was not necessarily impressed with who somebody was.
COLLINGS
Right, right. That would be a tremendous advantage.
GELBART
It was. Then later, later, later, later, to find myself as a grownup playing poker with Gregory Peck and playing poker with Kirk Douglas and to remember that I met them as a high school kid.
COLLINGS
So you were a senior in high school at that time, when you came out to Los Angeles?
GELBART
No, I was a junior. Right. I was fifteen.
COLLINGS
What year was that?
GELBART
I think '43.
COLLINGS
Do you have any memory just before that of Pearl Harbor?
GELBART
Yes, I do have a memory of Pearl Harbor. You know, I said yes, and what I really am remembering is hearing about the H-bomb dropping, because it was Marvin Klinger, my friend who happened to be in California at the same time, and we both realized that the war was over.Pearl Harbor, I guess— In '41 I would have been in Chicago. I don't know where I was when I heard that Pearl Harbor "died." I put that in with Franklin [D.] Roosevelt. I don't know where I was when I heard about it.
COLLINGS
So it sounds like that kind of thing was just not really on your horizon much as a kid.
GELBART
Well, I mean war certainly was, the notion that the country was at war. But what did that mean to anybody? There hadn't been any war movies yet. There was no television, clearly, and we didn't know what war meant.I do remember as a kid reading and seeing pictures, countless, in the rotogravure. I remember the pages and the colors were sepia of— They were still featuring stories about the dead of World War I. But we really had no— We couldn't hear war. We didn't know what it—
COLLINGS
It just wasn't on your horizon.
GELBART
That's okay. We didn't even ask.
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
No, it wasn't. No, it certainly wasn't in our consciousness. Then I started keeping a list for my dad of people, young men that went into the service and there were—
COLLINGS
You kept a list for your dad?
GELBART
For my dad.
COLLINGS
Why is that?
GELBART
Just of the guys who went off to war, and there were hundreds of them, really, like three, four hundred guys.
COLLINGS
You mean people from your neighborhood or—
GELBART
People from the neighborhood, mostly his clients.
COLLINGS
I see.
GELBART
There had been a lot of activity in Chicago before the war. The Bund was very big, the German-American Bund, and these guys, including Sparky Rubenstein, who became Jack Ruby, these guys used to get into cars and seek these people and groups out and hit them with baseball bats and bricks and really break up some of these fascist rallies. These were the days of Father Coughlin on the radio and Lindbergh saying, "You know we haven't got a chance."So I was aware, and a lot of people that I knew in the barbershop and my Uncle Shima, Uncle Simon, who was my Aunt Becky's husband, was a communist, an avowed communist. It was okay to say you were a communist then. So I was mildly politically aware of labels.
COLLINGS
So a lot of people were just kind of talking about whether the U.S. would get into the war and whether they should and that kind of thing?
GELBART
Yes. Well, when we went to war, I guess everybody knows this, I mean America was something like the eighteenth military power in the world. I remember seeing pictures and newsreels of our trainees marching with broomsticks.
COLLINGS
Right. Why We Fight and that kind of thing.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Yes, that's a different—
GELBART
And should we fight? Extreme isolation, I mean.
COLLINGS
Yes, that's right.Okay, so you're out here in Los Angeles and the war has started, but it's just kind of a distant—
GELBART
Well, you were more aware of the war here because it's the West Coast and they have painted out the signs on the streets in Beverly Hills.
COLLINGS
They painted out the signs?
GELBART
They blacked out the—
COLLINGS
The streetlights?
GELBART
The names used to be on the curbs instead of the signs, street signs, and they didn't know but that there might be a Japanese invasion.
COLLINGS
So this was so the people wouldn't be able to find their way around?
GELBART
That's right. That's right. That they couldn't use the tourist maps.
COLLINGS
Their Maps of the Stars.
GELBART
That's right, yes. [mutual laughter] Yes. Of course, the airplane industry. I thought of this the other night because I was driving down toward Vine Street on Melrose, and I had a saxophone teacher and he had a shop. He taught saxophone in the front, and in the back he made bullets for the U.S. Army, so he'd come out with his work apron and his welding mask, give you a lesson on the sax, then go back and start making—
COLLINGS
Well, you certainly don't think of that as being a cottage industry, do you?
GELBART
No, you don't, but people did a lot of things to stay out of the army, too.Of course, the internment camps and the whole Japanese background here. You were much more aware. Chicago, they didn't black out any street signs in Chicago.
COLLINGS
You didn't have Japanese students at your high school, did you, at Fairfax?
GELBART
I don't think so.
COLLINGS
I wouldn't think so, yes.
GELBART
No, mostly Jewish. No, no, there were no Japanese. There would have been probably around Sawtelle and probably downtown L.A.
COLLINGS
Yes, around Sawtelle, for sure.
GELBART
But they weren't in the general population the way they are now.
COLLINGS
Yes, that's right. Was that something that you had an opinion on at the time?
GELBART
No, I didn't have an opinion about almost anything except girls and maybe the odd pimple or something.
COLLINGS
Did your parents ever talk about politics at home?
GELBART
No, my parents did not talk about politics.
COLLINGS
What was your dad's view of the war?
GELBART
I don't know that he had one. I mean, we were all rooting for America. We all know that World War II was the last good war. There were no debates about whether or not we should be there.
COLLINGS
Right, and the stuff about the camps hadn't come out yet.
GELBART
The Nazi camps.
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
No.
COLLINGS
So your dad wasn't— Your parents weren't aware.
GELBART
No, they weren't. No one was aware. How we weren't or whether it was just denial, I don't know, but nobody talked about it. I think as the war went on, we learned more and more about what was happening, or what had happened, and we were horrified then.But there was a lot of activity out here, mostly from the Left. There were many, many organizations promoting a second front to help take the pressure off Russia, and then too, I mean, I've never believed, and to this day I don't believe, that there was a great amount of Leftist propaganda that worked its way into films. The whole country was against the extreme Right, both homegrown and foreign. And I knew a lot of people who were very, very outspoken and dedicated to the communist cause, who paid for it dearly later.
COLLINGS
This was during the period of World War—
GELBART
Not during, after.
COLLINGS
Just a little bit after.
GELBART
After, yes.
COLLINGS
So when was it that you started— You started working for Danny Thomas in your senior year of high school, is that right?
GELBART
Right.
COLLINGS
Also a second-generation immigrant.
GELBART
Exactly. I'd never seen Danny Thomas work. He was from Toledo, but he made his first mark really in Chicago at a place called— I think it was called the 5100 Club, and I think my dad saw him work there. But somehow— Not somehow. As it evolved, my dad began— Wait, I'm backing into this.One of the first really big opportunities Danny Thomas had in Hollywood was not in motion pictures or television. Certainly there was no television outside of that little set in Hyde Park at the Roosevelt Residence in Hyde Park, New York. No, he was signed to do something called the Maxwell House Coffee Time show, starring Fanny Brice as Baby Snooks, and he had a segment on the show, a seven- or eight-minute segment, in which he played a character that had nothing to do with the show, called Jerry Dingle the postman or the mailman. That show was broadcast live from CBS at Sunset and Gower. Actually broadcast twice. We're talking about pre-audiotape, so you know that situation. You would do the show at five o'clock for the East Coast, being eight o'clock there, and then you would do it all over again at eight o'clock here for the eight o'clock here.
COLLINGS
That's quite a schedule.
GELBART
Right. There's some stories about that, too, about the people who relaxed and had a few drinks in between.
COLLINGS
So that the versions differed. [laughs]
GELBART
Absolutely. I can tell you from Duffy's Tavern, that experience. So my dad would groom Thomas before he went out there, and I really— If anybody had said, "You're going to write for a living," I would have thought that preposterous, because it never entered my mind. But my dad, quite on his own bat, was shaving Thomas every Sunday, as I said, and trimming his hair. I've also referred to my dad as a combination of Sweeney Todd and Mama Rose. He started boasting about my ability to write funny material. The funny material—
COLLINGS
Were you actually writing the stuff?
GELBART
Well, I did for school. I worked with a guy named Jack Mauck, M-a-u-c-k, who unfortunately passed away, a-w-a-y, just a few weeks ago or months ago, and we would do— It's a word I hate now, but it's skits. We would do funny exchanges, man on the street, or whatever, whatever, for high school productions, auditorium-type shows.I never, never, never dreamt that my father would say this— Well, he didn't ask me in advance, but he came home and told me that, "I told Danny how talented you are." I was playing with a band. I had my own band, Larry Gelbart and his Esquires, ‘sophisticated rhythm, Wyoming-5443'. I was in show business but not in writing. So he said, "Danny said write something for him."So can I take one second to go to the loo? Because this Arrowhead water is—
COLLINGS
Sure. Yes.[recorder turned off]
GELBART
I should amplify that. The Danny Thomas character, Jerry Dingle, was a mailman, and each week in the course of his rounds, someone would insult him, and then he would— It was like Walter Mitty; he would imagine himself to be that person or have that person's job and say how much better at that he would have been at it. So I, taking my cue from the most obvious, I had a barber insult him, and then I had him say what kind of a barber he would be. So from the earliest work, I was autobiographical. [laughs]So Thomas saw it, and he said, "Pretty good," I guess, and he assigned me to a man, or recommended me to a man named Mac, M-a-c, Benoff, B-e-n-o-f-f, who was the head writer for the Fanny Brice Show, and he said, "Why don't you let the kid sit in with you?" So I did sit in with Mac three or four times, after Fairfax High let out, and then the show went off the air for its summer hiatus and Mac gave me forty dollars and said, "Here, kid, buy yourself a sport jacket," and I guess I did. In those days, you could have bought two and two pair of pants.So that's how it started. There was a man named George Gruskin, G-r-u-s-k-i-n, who was with the William Morris Agency, and he said, "Would you like to do more of this kind of thing?" No, I wouldn't like to do more of this, you know. I was very young. I mean, now I look back and I think it was remarkable. Then it just seemed, yeah, sure, why not? But sixteen, when I look at sixteen-year-olds now, I think—
COLLINGS
Did you run into other kids like you?
GELBART
No, no.
COLLINGS
So how did this happen?
GELBART
That's how it happened. It's not as though chance favors the prepared. I was not prepared at all.
COLLINGS
Well, it sounds like you kind of were with all that hanging around the barbershop and—
GELBART
Yes, you know, I guess so.
COLLINGS
—skits at school.
GELBART
You know what, who said, real life is like high school with money, or something?
COLLINGS
It's a good point.
GELBART
It's just another kind of sketch for another kind of person.But Gruskin really made my life, because he signed me to the Morris office; that is to say, he signed my father. I was too young to sign the authorization.But from there I went to work on a show called Duffy's Tavern. In radio, at the height of radio, two shows really stood out for their articulation, their sophistication, their use of the language. One was the Fred Allen Show and the other was Duffy's Tavern. So I really had a couple years of my kind of college, you know.
COLLINGS
That's right. What would you say, were there any differences between Duffy's Tavern and the Fred Allen Show that you could put your finger on?
GELBART
Yes. Duffy's Tavern would, I guess, be called a situation comedy these days.
COLLINGS
But I mean in terms of like the themes or anything like that?
GELBART
Those were, yes. They would vary. There were regular characters, weekly characters on Duffy's Tavern, always played by the same actor, always in the same role. Usually the program would be predicated on whoever the guest star was, and it there was always a top-flight talent, celebrity. At one time they were one and the same; they're not anymore. Whereas Fred Allen was more of a kind of a radio revue.
COLLINGS
Like a variety show?
GELBART
Yes, yes.
COLLINGS
Do you think they were pitched to different kinds of audiences?
GELBART
No, the same. If you liked Duffy's, chances are you'd like Fred Allen and vice versa. But if you liked Fibber McGee and Molly you might not like Fred Allen, and Fred Allen was— Not strangely, there's a reason, I know, but women didn't seem to like him a lot. He had a very nasal sound like this, and people just didn't like it. They were very put off by him. He sounded very dyspeptic. He was dyspeptic. Whereas Archie, the bartender, played by Ed who owned, literally owned the show Duffy's Tavern, was a kind of a— Not a kind of, very Damon Runyon and a favorite comic type, the poseur, the pretender, the thing Bob Hope used to do so well, someone who aspired but was always falling on his ass, you know. Limitations were no limitation for these kinds of guys. Whereas Allen sounded like a very experienced, knowledgeable man, and people usually like to laugh down at their comics, not laugh up at them.
COLLINGS
Now, this was being taped in Los Angeles, right?
GELBART
Duffy's was, but it wasn't being taped.
COLLINGS
I mean, excuse me, performed.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
At a certain point, I read that they moved to Puerto Rico to evade the taxes.
GELBART
They did move to Puerto Rico. Ed did, yes. He was guaranteed a million dollars clear for thirty-nine shows if he did the show in Puerto Rico, so he did the show in Puerto Rico and all but killed it, because I don't know who the live audiences were and it lost its flavor, it lost its— You've got to be a little bit hungry to be a comic. You can't be so that secure.But Duffy's reminds me, though, when you say was it broadcast from here, or taped, prior to the tape, invention of tape, in which Bing Crosby had a huge share of Ampex, which was the company.
COLLINGS
Oh, did he?
GELBART
Yes, he did very well, and in fact, the first day that tape was used, it was used on a Bing Crosby show, Kraft Music Hall, it was called. The Brown Derby on Vine Street was the famous watering hole for all of the broadcast people. Movie people, too, but largely at that time radio personalities. The place was filled with perhaps three hundred pictures, caricatures of famous people on the walls, all signed by those people. On that day when you went in, every single picture was of Crosby, every caricature was of Crosby. It was exciting.But I remember once we were doing a show, Duffy's Tavern, and we broadcast at five o'clock in the afternoon so it could be heard at eight o'clock in New York, and then we had three hours to kill because they were going to do it again, same script, same cast, live at eight o'clock when it would be eight o'clock in Los Angeles. Ed, the star owner of the show, and that week's guest Monte Wooley, famous actor, raconteur, they tied a few on. They got so pissed, they were so drunk, that when they came in at eight o'clock, during the broadcast it was traditional for actors, radio actors, to stand up and read into a microphone, Wooley fell down. He fell down on the stage, drunk. Ed, being a thoughtful host, lay down on the floor next to him, so the two of them—
COLLINGS
So the techs brought the mics down to floor level.
GELBART
That's right. That's right. And they did the show lying down on their sides reading the script. Radio was a terrific thing for actors, no makeup, no rehearsal, hardly strenuous, no memorization, and a lot of money.
COLLINGS
What did the invention of tape mean to you, if anything?
GELBART
I don't know. It didn't mean a lot. You still had to have a script ready within a few days of having broadcast the previous. Well, it meant I could go home earlier. After a five o'clock airing, if it was an eight o'clock show in New York, you were free at five-thirty, instead of having to hang around and watch the actors get drunk until eight o'clock. So it meant I got to go out and do whatever I did in those days, and I guess I did everything in those days.
COLLINGS
So you were drafted?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
That's how you left Duffy's.
GELBART
I left Duffy's because in February of 1946, I turned eighteen and the war was over, but the draft was still on, and so I was drafted and I was sent to Marysville, which is north of Sacramento, in California, for two weeks of not boot camp, not basic training, but relocation. It's got a more technical name, but that's what it was all about. I just kind of hung around for two weeks. I wasn't assigned anywhere.Meanwhile, my mother and father were saying to everybody— Mostly my father to everybody he knew, because he knew so many influential people, "Is there any way my son can get located back here in Los Angeles?" I didn't think anything was happening. In fact, I was rather enjoying the kind of military life that I'd suddenly—
COLLINGS
What were you enjoying about it?
GELBART
I don't know. It was different. Actually, I wanted to get back home because by the time I went away at eighteen, I'd been working as a comedy writer for two years and I was anxious to go back and make that fifty and seventy-five dollars a week. I wasn't making a lot of money, but I was having a lot of fun, certainly more glamorous than the typical draftee.Then I was shipped to a place called Camp Polk, Louisiana. It's now called Fort Polk, Louisiana. But then as now, it's considered one of the worst places you can get sent to. The climate is terrible and everything else, and the food and everything. Then one day someone called me into their office and said, "You're taking the next train back to Los Angeles."
COLLINGS
Oh, good.
GELBART
I said, "What happened?"They said, "You've been assigned to the Armed Forces Radio Service." What had happened, happily, behind my back, was a man named Irving Yergin, Y-e-r-g-i-n, who's son is a Pulitzer Prize novelist— Not novelist, a writer. Daniel Yergin writes about oil in the world.
COLLINGS
Oh, yes, I think his name is sort of familiar.
GELBART
He's Professor Yergin. He's a terrific young boy, and I literally knew him in his diapers. But then I knew me in my diapers. I know a lot of young people.What happened was Irving Yergin, who had been a publicity man at Warner Bros., arranged, asked Peter Lorre, a very, very good friend of his, if he could help me. And Lorre picked up the phone and called a man named Tom Lewis, Colonel Tom Lewis, who was at one time married to Loretta Young and had been in charge of Armed Forces Radio Service, which sent out disks with entertainment for our armed forces throughout the world, could I be assigned to work for AFRS in Hollywood? They were located on Santa Monica Boulevard by the cemetery.And they said, "Yeah, sure, fine."So I was on a train and in L.A. in two or three days. First thing I did was I went to an army supply store downtown and bought a uniform that made me look like an air force pilot. I was in gabardines, had a soft crushed hat, cap, and they made me sergeant in about three days, literally, and I stopped them there. I didn't want to be a lieutenant. I mean it was kind of a travesty of military life.I lived at home, in my own bed, and I co-wrote a program called Command Performance. Now, in its heyday, Command Performance was a show that was performed by every major star in Hollywood. Guys would write in, invariably guys, "I'd like to hear Betty Grable grill a steak." "I'd like to hear Judy Garland sing a duet with Jimmy Durante." Some of them were real. Some of them were faux letters that just led to interesting entertainment.So by the time the war was over, there were still enough stars that wanted to entertain everybody that was overseas, so I wrote some of the requests. I wrote a lot of the scripts, and it was fantastic, and I was able to have a civilian job at the same time, so I had the best of both worlds.
COLLINGS
Yes, you certainly did.
GELBART
I spent one year and eleven days.
COLLINGS
You were discharged after that, is that—
GELBART
I was discharged after that. If I hadn't had those eleven days, I'd have been draftable again when the Korean police action broke out.
COLLINGS
Oh, because you had gone over one year, yes.
GELBART
I had gone over one year by eleven days.
COLLINGS
So you were discharged because it was all over, is that what—
GELBART
Because a year, that was it. They didn't need me anymore.
COLLINGS
So that worked quite well.
GELBART
That worked out fantastically. A friend of mine who had not those eleven days was drafted.
COLLINGS
So by this time you're definitely thinking of yourself as a writer, I presume.
GELBART
Yes. Yes. Well, I'm definitely thinking of myself, and I'm being paid as a writer.
COLLINGS
Yes, but it's not like, oh, this is just sort of fun for now?
GELBART
No. This is what I'm doing. This is what I'm going to do. I didn't realize how much I was learning. On average, the next person up from me would have been ten years older, and so I was working with really experienced people who never said, "This is a that and that's a this, and if you want to get to that, you mix a little of this." They just did it, and I absorbed it.
COLLINGS
Did you ever think of performing at all?
GELBART
Yes, I thought of performing at all. When I got out of the army, I worked with, among other people, a man named Laurence Marks, L-a-u-r-e-n-c-e M-a-r-k-s, and he and I wrote a monologue for me, and I delivered it to an audience at a Command Performance taping. It was a nondescript monologue. I mean, anybody could have done it, including me. Time magazine covered it, but something important happened that week in that department, so I got bumped. But I think even if I'd made Time magazine, I mean, I'm a very sort of shy extrovert, and it's so fulfilling to do what I do, that I didn't really need that other thing.
COLLINGS
Yes. I could think of them as being very different activities, actually.
GELBART
Yes, but now I mean so many performers are writers. But years, years, years later we were doing a M*A*S*H episode and somebody said, "Why don't you play the part of that supply sergeant."I said, "Oh, okay, fine," for a lark. I got down on the floor and rehearsed the scene and said, "You know, I'm very uncomfortable. I don't know how to be me on camera in someone else's clothes and makeup." So I backed off.
COLLINGS
Oh, that's all right. You can't do everything. [laughs]
GELBART
No. No.
COLLINGS
So after you finished with Command Performance, that's when you started—
GELBART
I went back to Duffy's Tavern, because I had been working on Duffy's Tavern anyway. No, this was while I was still in Command Performance, working in Command Performance. I teamed up with a fellow named Sid Dorfman. The two of us were a team. Sid was making about two hundred and fifty— Oh, before I went into the— I don't know, maybe you know the story. I have told it before. But when I got my draft notice, I was working for Ed for Duffy's Tavern, and I was making fifty dollars a week, maybe I was up to seventy-five, I'm not sure, and I said—
COLLINGS
Which is not bad for those days.
GELBART
Not bad, yes, not bad indeed. And the credit was worth ten times that.So I said, "Ed, I have two weeks before I have to report for military duty. Could you just give me a hundred dollars a week for those two weeks? I'd like to say that when I went in I was making a hundred dollars a week."He said, "I'd love to help you out, kid, but it's just not in the budget. I'll tell you what, don't ask me again, and I'll give you a nice set of military brushes." So I didn't ask him again, and he didn't give me the military airbrushes, either.But when, still in the service, Sid and I went to Ed and we said, "We want a raise."He said, "What were you thinking of?"So we said, "Five hundred a week."
COLLINGS
Whoa, that's a big raise.
GELBART
Each, each. So he said, "No, no way."So we said, "Well, then we have to leave."He said, "Okay," and he then went off to rehearsal. When we hadn't shown up, never owning up to the fact that we had had a meeting, he said, "Where are those guys? They're late. They're fired." Well, that was it.But we did, we went to work for Eddy Cantor at the salary we wanted, except Sid got sick and we only finished one of two weeks, and then we went to work, I think— It doesn't matter. I just went back to civilian work. I went back to work and worked for Joan Davis, who's not with us anymore; Jack Carson, who's not with us anymore. Most of the people I went back to work for aren't.
COLLINGS
Did you find that you had to write different kinds of material for Joan Davis as a female comic?
GELBART
Yes, yes. Well, not as a female comic so much as a Joan Davis, as opposed to somebody else. That's one of the things that made radio writers desirable and at the same time kind of put a crimp in their development, because you would have to change your style for whatever comedian you worked for. You were kind of— You were not kind of, you were— We were mechanics. So you never really just found your own voice, ala Woody Allen, say, or Mel Brooks, you know. You were always trying to write bespoke material. That didn't come until way, way later.
COLLINGS
Then you started working for Your Show of Shows?
GELBART
No.
COLLINGS
No. Okay, all right. I've got a whole list of your shows, your radio, but I haven't memorized it.
GELBART
No, that's okay. A lot of people make that mistake. No, that was Caesar's Hour.
COLLINGS
Jack Paar?
GELBART
Caesar's Hour came way later.
COLLINGS
Oh, really?
GELBART
Before that came the Jack Paar radio show, his first series on the air replacing Jack Benny one summer. The summer of '47.
COLLINGS
Oh, and Bob Hope.
GELBART
And Bob Hope for four years. That was a really, really intense learning experience, very profitable, and delivering material under all sorts of conditions and writing for radio, writing for television, his first television shows, writing for his movies, writing for his personal appearances. The key word is writing, writing, writing. Larry Marks and I were partnered on that show for four years and we had an immense falling-out and we didn't work together anymore after that.Then I went to New York to work, first for Red Buttons, then, of all people, Pat Boone—it's called paying the rent—then, Patrice Munsel.
COLLINGS
Now, did you always work with a partner at that time?
GELBART
Up until the end of the Hope days, yes. When I went back to New York, Buttons, Caesar eventually. While I didn't work with one other person, I would be part of a staff or heading up a staff.
COLLINGS
So would it be a kind of a thing where you're like sitting with the other person and you're just kind of throwing a few ideas out and—
GELBART
Right, right, and somebody says, "That's good," or someone throws out something and you say, "That's bad, but how about this?" Yes. I don't know a working combination that I haven't been part of, just—
COLLINGS
Would you be sort of like taking notes at the same time?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Or would there be a secretary, writing, dictating, taking—
GELBART
Rarely, rarely a secretary. I don't think I really worked with a secretary—secretary—until Caesar's Hour, and then the secretary was another writer named Mike Stewart, and he typed everything everybody said because there were a lot of people all talking at once. How he did it—
COLLINGS
So you would have like typed notes that was sort of a long draft of what you were doing?
GELBART
There wasn't time, really, in weekly radio or television for drafts. Usually, the thing was the thing. There was just no time.
COLLINGS
Yes, so it was kind of like first draft, you—
GELBART
Yes, you served it when it was hot.
COLLINGS
That sounds like fun.
GELBART
It was fun and tremendous training. Tremendous training. I mean, you wrote some garbage, but some stuff was wonderful because it had that raw energy and even wrongness that it was vital.
COLLINGS
So what would you say that was sort of like the major thing that happened after that? It was definitely you went off to England, but you were sort of working on a few shows, radio shows.
GELBART
Well, Bob Hope was great training because while every show, starting with Duffy's, required that you come up with it, that you deliver it, that you were on time, and that you would fix it if it was not good, that was more or less true of all the radio shows. The Hope experience was much more intense, because you were doing that much more for him, those different media. There was kind of a relentlessness about it. You could, in one week, work on the radio show, work on a television show, work on a motion picture, and work on it at home or be on tour, in a Quonset hut in Alaska, all at the same time. It really taught you to not think that it had to always be quiet, think that you always had to have a certain space, to think that you had to have a certain kind of typewriter or even a ribbon. You just fucking did it.
COLLINGS
Had you been that way before?
GELBART
Well, no, because I'd never been tested that way, but I think what I had and had to do before got me ready to do that.
COLLINGS
But before, did you feel like it had to be quiet, that you had to—
GELBART
Well, it was more or less quiet. If you and I were writing a script now, this is about the way it would be. You'd say something, I'd say something, maybe the guy raking the leaves would have been a terrible annoyance. But later, when I worked on M*A*S*H, for four years my office was situated next to the sound department, and one of the shows that they were always editing for sound was SWAT. So I heard nothing but screeching brakes and car doors slamming and machine guns and sirens, and it just couldn't matter. I don't say it didn't matter, but it couldn't matter, which stands you in good stead when you've got a lot of kids and family and stuff around.But where, where did this start?
COLLINGS
Well, you were talking about something about your experience—
GELBART
Learning.
COLLINGS
—with Bob Hope, yes, how it was a real learning curve.
GELBART
Yes, a learning curve and almost hairpin turns, not so much curves, and something that was to prove really invaluable was the experience of visiting a lot of different service areas, including Korea. So when M*A*S*H came around, I could really smell Korea. For four years working on M*A*S*H, there was the aroma of kimchi in my head the whole time, because I had been there. So that was an invaluable service.

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
June 20, 2005

GELBART
Four years before, I was working for Hope, I was doing my homework, my high school homework, listening to him on the radio. Now he was my homework.
COLLINGS
Isn't that amazing?
GELBART
I mean I wasn't unaware of this kind of— And I like clothes.
COLLINGS
You always liked clothes?
GELBART
I always liked clothes. I think I got that from my father. I got some of my clothes from my father, too, some shiny blue pants. I liked cars. I liked the good life, and here I was at eighteen being able to enjoy it, I mean really making four figures a week and—
COLLINGS
This must have been staggering.
GELBART
—incredible lifestyle, incredible. So that was that. I mean, I was aware. I wasn't sitting back and saying— I don't think I've ever learned to be blasé, but anyway.
COLLINGS
Your parents must have been just bowled over.
GELBART
I think they were. I think I certainly exceeded my father's braggadocio, and my mother was very proud of me, that I wrote, since she couldn't write anything but Yiddish. But I think she was—
COLLINGS
She could write in Yiddish?
GELBART
She could write in Yiddish, and my dad did take lessons to write in English. It was touching. He always wanted to push the fact that he had assimilated, you know.But to my mother, the fact that I had been or was, by the time she passed away, a producer, that was it because that meant a boss. That was like the foreman of the sewing—
COLLINGS
Sewing factory.
GELBART
—factory, right, because a writer— Although she liked writing. My mother was very witty. I talk about how funny my dad was, but she had real acid and she was cruel. She was really cruel and funny, and funny.I'll tell you a story. I'll leave this in because I think it's fascinating, because one thing that people have said to me, and I'm aware of it, but I mean I'm not so self-aware that I wear it as a placard or anything, but people say, "How can you go from comedy to tragedy so quickly?" But I know, I do know, because I said, "How do I do that?" because it's— I remember when I was about six years old. My mother was, I can't think of any other word for it, hitting me. She wasn't abusing me. She was punishing me for something I did, maybe like not eating a banana, I don't know.
COLLINGS
Oh yes. [mutual laughter]
GELBART
Asking for it, wasn't I?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
No, no, I had misbehaved or something, or she thought I had, and she was really lacing into me. I said, "Ma, I'm not made of rubber."And she said, "Sometimes I wish your father had used one."
COLLINGS
Whoooooo.
GELBART
So I could see how you could take— That you could be funny or wry or something, at the height of what was really a very traumatic experience.
COLLINGS
Yes. Did that change the tone when she said that, or did it—
GELBART
No.
COLLINGS
It wasn't like she didn't throw it off, toss it off?
GELBART
All I can tell you is it's seventy years later and I remember it. And we both knew she had said something really good, but that was so out of character for my mother to use the word "rubber." I had never heard my mother use a four-letter word.
COLLINGS
Yeah, I was thinking that.
GELBART
Here she is with a six-letter word. Is it six? Yes. It was very uncharacteristic, but that's how she thought, and fast.
COLLINGS
Did your parents continue to speak Yiddish at home after you went to school and were speaking English?
GELBART
Somewhat.
COLLINGS
But they didn't speak it with you, right?
GELBART
No. I think as Jews become, as any group perhaps, but I know with Jews for sure, having been one all my life, that you drop it as conversation, but your speech is peppered with it, because there's just some words that don't go away.
COLLINGS
I mean today there's such an emphasis on people preserving the language at home.
GELBART
Right.
COLLINGS
But I think in these previous generations people tried to assimilate.
GELBART
Assimilate, absolutely, absolutely, and I think that's healthier. You're not betraying your native land or your native tongue by— I think especially— Oh, I don't know what I think especially.
COLLINGS
But your parents did speak English at home after a certain point?
GELBART
They did. It was over, over, over.
COLLINGS
That was all over.
GELBART
Yes. But my mother would continue to write, and when she wrote letters, they was always in Yiddish. She read a lot. She read— There was a newspaper called the Daily Forward, which was a Jewish daily, and there was a daily column in there called "A Brintela Brief" [Hebrew phrase], Letters to the Editor. "My husband is killing me," I this, I that. She loved that. Ann Landers.
COLLINGS
Did she come from a fairly educated family back in Poland?
GELBART
No. No. They were not educated. As I said, it was a dairy farm, so—
COLLINGS
But I mean they just that they taught the kids how to read and everything?
GELBART
They taught, yes, but not much. Of her brothers, one became a barber and was partnered with my father. One became first a house painter and came to California early enough that he could take advantage— Was smart enough to take advantage of real estate out here.
COLLINGS
That's nice.
GELBART
Did very well. One was nothing. I don't know what he was. I don't mean to downgrade him or put him down, but I just don't know what he did. And the sisters were all very pretty. My mother was beautiful, my mother was really, really beautiful, kind of Louise Brooks looks, very exotic. But with that, I think she was uncomfortable with her— With sexuality. I think she was.
COLLINGS
So your mother was beautiful and your dad was a snappy dresser.
GELBART
A rake.
COLLINGS
They must have been quite a couple.
GELBART
I think they were. They used to tell me— One of the stories that persisted in my childhood was that the first time he tried to kiss her, she ripped a silk shirt off his back. I can believe that she ripped it and I can believe that it was silk. [mutual laughter]
COLLINGS
Well, why don't we leave it there for today.
GELBART
Sure, absolutely.[End of June 20, 2005 interview]

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
July 12, 2005

COLLINGS
This is Jane Collings interviewing Larry Gelbart at his home in Beverly Hills on July 12th, 2005, and this is tape three.
GELBART
I'm looking at a picture of the Duffy's Tavern cast, the cast of the radio show Duffy's Tavern. Sandra Gould is there as Miss Duffy. The original Miss Duffy was portrayed by Shirley Booth, who was Mrs. Ed, more correctly Mrs. Ed Poggenberg, and she originated the role, and she was a prominent radio actress for a lot of years and then, of course, she went on to have a very big career in pictures. I think she won the Academy Award for Come Back, Little Sheba. She originated that role, the starring role on Broadway and then made the movie.Then there's Eddie Green. Eddie played the waiter, and one of the few— As I look at this, I see now, in hindsight, that this was one of the few sort of mixed racially shows, racially mixed programs, because it's not that— I don't think there was a racist policy, but there was so little crossover, and at that, a black would have always been a servant, as in Rochester with Jack Benny and later on Louise Beavers played some famous role. I can't even think of it. But Eddie Green has another kind of asterisk to his name in my memory, because he wrote what became a wonderful Les Brown classic, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. He wrote the song, which is a terrific song.Then it says Charles Cartin as Finnegan. This man is not Charles Cartin, this man is Charlie— Oh, god, having said that, I can't remember his real name. But it was not Cartin. They're thinking of Sydney Cartin of The Tale of Two Cities.
COLLINGS
That's important to correct.
GELBART
Yes, it is. It's Charlie, Charles, oh—
COLLINGS
It will come to you.
GELBART
It will. Very, very, very, very successful radio actor, and it's killing me now. By the time we finish—You know the two blind brothers who have a thing called— It's a weird anagram, it's like SPERDVAC [Society To Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety and Comedy]. Actually, Hy Averback put me on to them. They are probably America's greatest radio historians. SPERDVAC, it's called.
COLLINGS
Was one of them working at the UCLA Archive for a while?
GELBART
It could well be. It could well be.
COLLINGS
Because I met the radio archivist many years ago, and he was blind.
GELBART
That was probably him. I'm sorry, this Charles is— Charlie Cantor, Charlie Cantor. He became Charles Cartin for posterity.At any rate, then of course, there's Ed. Ed was a former— Did I tell you last time about how he assumed the role of Archie?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
He created the show with probably one of the best radio writers, then later theater writers around, Abe Burrows. Abe Burrows is the father of Jimmy Burrows, who is now probably the most successful half-hour comedy director in the industry, as we're so fond of calling it. Well, we can't call it the artistry. But Abe and Ed came up with this show, this very Runyonesque show, about a barely literate barkeep called Archie, who ran Duffy's Tavern. He ran it because Duffy never actually appeared.
COLLINGS
Yes, Duffy always calls at the beginning of the show.
GELBART
Duffy, at the beginning of the show, yes. "Hello, Duffy's Tavern, where the elite meet to eat. Duffy ain't here. Archie the waiter speaking. Oh, hello, Duffy." Ed had this very nasal kind of delivery. The most wonderful guests from all parts of the business, movie stars and theater stars and literary stars and classical music stars loved to appear, because they could literally let their hair down with him.At any rate, when they were casting for the part of Archie, the manager, they listened to person after person. I say "listened" because it wasn't a matter of— It wasn't visual. It didn't have to be visual. And nobody seemed to fit the bill that their imaginations had created. Then Ed, in instructing an actor on how to read a certain speech, an actor who was auditioning, it's almost like a cheap Broadway musical, everybody turned around and said, "Ed, you're the guy." So he did it. He was the guy, and so he took over the role.He was also a terrific— Most comedians who enjoyed long successes generally in that time they would have started in vaudeville, then radio, then maybe they'd do some motion pictures, but they were terrific editors of their own stuff. They knew what was best for them, and Ed certainly did, too. He was very, very, very sharp that way.I was a novelty. I mean I was six years old— Sixteen years old. I could have been six. I was like a puppy on that show, you know. And he was very smart. I mean, here's this kind of freaky kid who can come up with jokes, and I only cost them fifty dollars a week. I told you the draft story. So I was a bargain, you know, and I stayed with him for two years, finally getting up to a couple of hundred, anyway, I think.
COLLINGS
Did the performers work with, edit the material at all that you guys wrote?
GELBART
No. The performers just— It was a dream job for actors. They came in and we talked about that, didn't we?
COLLINGS
Yes, yes.
GELBART
No, they didn't. They didn't edit.
COLLINGS
They didn't ad lib at all?
GELBART
No, they didn't ad lib. No, you couldn't ad lib in radio because it was very censored, and this show had a lot of— Ed had his battles with the censors because he was always trying to slip double or triple or quadruple entendres into the script, and so you had to fight for those. So that no one could take a chance and just improvise on the air. It would have been unthinkable.Fred Allen was famous. He was the only other show really on radio that compared to Duffy's, or we compared to it, because it was so word-conscious, and Fred used to love to engage the censors. He created an act or there was an act, a vaudeville act, that he referred to constantly, the Muckenfuss sisters. They were always on tenterhooks waiting for the slip of the tongue.There was very little blue material on the radio. I remember one— When you did hear it, you were bowled over, because I mean, this just didn't happen. The radio was in the living room or in the kitchen and came right into the home.
COLLINGS
Right, mixed company.
GELBART
Big companies and you had to mind your p's and q's, and you probably couldn't even say "p" then.I was listening to a program called— It was the Rudy Vallee Show. Rudy Vallee was a former orchestra leader who became the star of his own radio variety show, and a regular on that show was John Barrymore, who in his later not— Kind of lousy days, and one of the guests on a particular program was John Barrymore's brother Lionel [Barrymore], who was, in fact, although he looked like John's older brother, was the younger of the two. In a prepared script, John had this speech that he read. It said he remembered as children they would play until it was time to come up and get ready for— Get into their pajamas, and then he said, "And then my big brother Lionel would tuck me into bed," and then there was a pause, and he ad libbed, "Mmm, looks like a typographical error." [mutual laughter] There wasn't a lot of that.
COLLINGS
Yes. I happened to hear one of the episodes of Duffy's, and it was—
GELBART
I have four little half-hours, if you want them.
COLLINGS
Oh, that you wrote?
GELBART
I'm not sure.
COLLINGS
Oh, okay, yes, I'd love to hear. I actually, have to say, I really, really loved the show.
GELBART
Wasn't it— Isn't it good?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Who was on it?
COLLINGS
Well, this was an episode, it was from October 19th, 1943, and it was Duffy's Tavern versus Grogan's Bar and Grill.
GELBART
It could have been. I could have been there.
COLLINGS
When Eddie is going to leave and go over to Grogan's.
GELBART
Over to Grogan's?
COLLINGS
Yes. There's some lines in there like, "Okay, speaking of getting out of jail, Eddie the waiter is thinking of leaving us." Then so Duffy needs to hire somebody else, so he calls the Bowery Bum Personnel Service. [mutual laughter]Then there's something about a letter that they write, and he signs it, "You are nothing but a crook and a swindler and an all-around like other things. I remain the same." It's just like it just comes, it just keeps coming, and you just kind of like laugh and giggle and you just get weaker and weaker. It's just so funny.
GELBART
Yes. It was a wonderful program.
COLLINGS
Yes. I mean the effect of it, just listening to it and for the first time ever, I'd never heard it before, it was just— You just felt sort of light and carefree and it was just constantly just kind of funny and it didn't stop.
GELBART
Yes, and bubbly.
COLLINGS
Bubbly, exactly. It was just kind of effervescent.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
It must have been a great thing to work on.
GELBART
Well, on a page of script, say a script would have maybe fifteen or twenty speeches on it, almost every other speech would be a punch line.
COLLINGS
Right, right, right. And the wife, Duffy's wife, is always just such a—
GELBART
Oh, that's Duffy's daughter, Miss Duffy.
COLLINGS
Duffy's— Oh, Miss Duffy. Yes, I'm sorry. Yes, that's right, his daughter, she's always— She kind of vacillates between sort of setting up straight lines and doing her own punch lines, which are just always so funny.
GELBART
Yes. Well, she was— That's kind of a carryover from what they called in burlesque "the talking woman," the woman that you did a sketch with.You can't imagine the number of— As a matter of fact, a few years ago at Sotheby's— Archie wore an apron. That was the only concession to kind of a visual effect, because it was unnecessary. He wore an apron tied around his waist, like a barkeep, and he would have— Ed would have— Incidentally, Michael Eisner now lives in Ed Gardner's old Bel-Air mansion.
COLLINGS
Oh, really?
GELBART
Yes. Whatever that means. But Ed's mother— I was thinking of the leap from a radio comedian to this kind of media emperor. Ed was funny. He still— He was a very cheap man, mean, as the British say.
COLLINGS
Careful, careful.
GELBART
Careful, yes, right, exactly, careful with a buck. I remember one week one of his brothers wrote and said that their mother had been dead for some time now and they were thinking of putting— They wanted to put up a stone, a headstone in the cemetery, and each of the surviving children were going to put two hundred dollars. I was there when Ed dictated a letter to him. He said, "Two hundred dollars, two hundred bucks is a lot of money. I'll be very happy to send it, but I expect at least a page of jokes from you."
COLLINGS
Wow.
GELBART
So the guy said he had to earn the grave money.But now I've forgotten completely. Oh, the apron. So when any guests would appear, Edward G. Robinson, Gregory Peck, Dame— I mean just, I can't—
COLLINGS
Peter Lorre was on the show that I heard.
GELBART
Peter Lorre. They would autograph his apron, and then Ed's mother, who later wound up under a tombstone, she would embroider the name, each one in a different color, so he had this kind of rainbow of names, and it was quite beautiful. A couple of years ago, it came up for auction at Sotheby's.
COLLINGS
I was just going to say where is it?
GELBART
I said, "I have to have this," and so did Jimmy Burrows.
COLLINGS
Oh, okay, never mind.
GELBART
So Jimmy Burrows got it. He said there was no way anybody was going to outbid him. So that's one of the rare pieces of physical memorabilia. Somebody might have a microphone, but nobody had props.
COLLINGS
Did he always wear this hat?
GELBART
Always had that hat, yes.He was sick for years, he was quite a drinker, and in his last years he was sober. I had dinner with him and his second wife, Simone. It was spelled Simone, but pronounced Sim-uhn. She was very French. She was French, which is to say she was very French, and I think he liked that. I think he liked that, being a kind of "dese, dem and dose" guys, yes.
COLLINGS
He really was that?
GELBART
He really was. He talked like that, you know.All these guys wore hats. I mean, that's the first thing I thought of when I stood as a teenager, literally, in the hallways at NBC, and these guys would come in with their fedoras. I mean, they were wearing gray fedoras, and neckties, of course. You did not not wear a necktie.Writers came and went. Ed was notorious. He would hire a bartender if the guy was funny while he was making Ed a drink, and the guy would show up the next day. I once kept a kind of gold star list of people who came and went.
COLLINGS
Oh, that's interesting. And so he would just have them come on like for the day and then that would be it?
GELBART
Well, he hoped it would be for more than a day, but he did cruel things, too. Each writer would do an act or a section of the following week's script. So you'd have four or five to pick from and assemble a show, and frequently we would read our material to Ed in his dressing room at NBC, which no longer exists. The building is gone and everybody in it, almost. And we would laugh or not laugh.So one week there was a guy, I remember his name, his name was Al Johansen, a sweet man, and he said, "Okay, Al, let's hear your stuff." So Al started reading, and behind his back Ed gestured to the rest of us, "Nobody laugh. Nobody laugh." So, like the paid monkeys we were, we didn't, and this guy thought he was laying a terrible egg, and then we told him at the end.But he could be perversely funny. One week the writers were sitting around the table and he said, "I got a new writer coming on today. He's a very good comedy writer." And he was. "His name is Larry Marks. Now, he's very sensitive because he weighs over three hundred pounds, so nobody, nobody mention his weight or do anything funny about it."So we said, "Of course. Well, who would?"So at the appointed moment Larry Marks appears, walks into the room, and Ed says, "Take a seat, you big fat tub of shit."
COLLINGS
Oh, my god. [mutual laughter]
GELBART
You knew it was coming.
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
He was funny. I can say it now, because I felt it then, I mean he really did love me because I was such a departure from the kinds of guys he was used to all his life. One week he said to me, "Kid, you like boats?"I said, "Yeah."He said, "Come with me," and we went down to— He had a boat in some harbor somewhere, and we sailed across to Catalina and he served me breakfast in bed. He said, "You've got to tell people about this," and I am. Ed Gardner serving a— If you'll notice, and you did hear the shows, there were no writer credits for a long time.
COLLINGS
Well, I didn't even know if the heads and the tails had been cut off or anything.
GELBART
No, there was no— There were no credits. In a few years there were, but somebody as decent and liberal and generous as Jack Benny would not give writers credits, because the general feeling among comedians was that out there in America in radio land, the people thought the actors were making it all up. But the [Writers] Guild prevailed and we did get credit.
COLLINGS
Oh, when did they enforce that?
GELBART
You could look that up. I don't know. But that was a big thing.
COLLINGS
Yes, I'll bet it was. Good for the Guild.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
When did you first start getting involved with the Writers Guild yourself?
GELBART
In the forties as a radio writer. There was a Radio Writers Guild. I remember Abe Burrows got up at a meeting and he said, "We can't keep taking this crap. Say there's somebody from an advertising agency like Lay, Back and Whackit." [mutual laughter]
COLLINGS
Yes, for example.
GELBART
For example, for starters, because they were all Young and Rubicam and somebody and somebody. [mutual laughter]Abe— Did we talk about Guys and Dolls?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
Abe got kind of the break I always envied, and later, I think, got my own form of it. When Guys and Dolls the musical was trying out, they were in trouble with the book, the libretto.
COLLINGS
Okay, for censorship reasons.
GELBART
No, no, not for the stage then. You have to rely on good old self-censorship for that.No, they were trying it out out of town. The score was terrific. It was Frank Loesser. The cast was wonderful. But the book was weak, and so they cast about to find somebody to, as they used to say, doctor it. Somebody had the bright idea of calling Abe Burrows. Duffy's was the nearest thing to Damon Runyon, which, of course, is what Guys and Dolls is based upon. So he was just in the right place with the right experience at the right time.I say I had somewhat of a mirrored experience, because when M*A*S*H came around, the combination of having been in Korea and in many army and naval and marine situations with [Bob] Hope, of that all played in a sense to my strengths. If not my strengths, my experience.
COLLINGS
So when you were writing the parts for these sections for Duffy's, did each writer take a certain part, or would everybody write for everybody?
GELBART
Well, it would go like this. Generally, the staff was comprised of five, six, seven, eight writers or maybe nine if he hired the bartender that night, and one night he actually did. I would see him reading somebody's material and saying, "Jesus, this is great," and he'd call the guy up and say, "I love this, I love this. This is wonderful, terrific. Yeah, thank you," bang. Then he'd read the second page, he'd say, "This is shit," and he'd call the guy back up and fire him.
COLLINGS
Oh, my gosh.
GELBART
He once— I'll remember where I was. Where was I, about— What the different writers did. But he called me once. He was always talking about the budget, there was no money, there was no money, there was no money. In the meantime, he's living in a house Eisner's living in now, so you know how little money there was. But he said, "Kid, I've got to fire somebody. I've got to fire somebody."I said, "Well, Ed, if you have to, you have to."
COLLINGS
"It can't be me because I'm hardly making anything."
GELBART
No, no, that's the kicker. He said, "Tell me the truth. Are you any good?" He wanted me to rat on myself.I said, "I'm terrific. I'm probably the best buy you've got."Anyway, the writers. Say the guest coming up was Edward G. Robinson, okay? That was the guest spot. First of all, you sat around and you pitched ideas. Edward G. Robinson is coming, "Oh, great. I wrote a play, he'd be perfect for it, so when he gets here, nobody tell him that I stole this from Little Caesar," or something. I'm making up a premise now. But so that would be the thing.So there would be the section of the show that would lead up to the appearance of the guest, then the guest's spot. I think it was two acts, that's all. So half the team, say, would do the buildup to the Robinson thing, then maybe somebody would write the Robinson standup, which would consist of "Welcome to Duffy's." I remember one joke, "Welcome to Duffy's." I think this was John Garfield, the actor, he said, "Welcome to Duffy's," and Garfield said, "Were there many survivors?"Ed said, Archie said, "Jeez, you haven't been in the place thirty seconds, and you've insulted it and you've knocked it already."Garfield said, "What's the record?" [mutual laughter]So you could hear the characters as they came. So at the reading of the new script, which always took place at Ed's house in Bel-Air, each guy would read his assignment, so to speak. Duffy's Tavern, the opening monologue, "Tonight, Duffy, Deems Taylor, is dropping by. Deems. As in Deems, dem, and dose. Yes, he's the music cricket" or whatever, whatever.
COLLINGS
The music cricket.
GELBART
Did I tell you about the malaprops, what they used to do at NBC at the stenographic pool?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
Well, these were the old days. Obviously, there were no computers, but the script would get typed or even sometimes submitted in longhand to the steno pool, and then young women, invariably, would type out the script. But they used to correct our malapropisms.
COLLINGS
Oh, really?
GELBART
Because, yes, they thought we had screwed up. So they were always— Fortunately, we remembered.But anyway, we would each of us read our assignment, and then there was always one or two people who functioned as what we called head writers. They would take the stuff and piece the best of it together, and there would be a script. Then Ed would do the final, with the writers or the head writers, do the final run-through of it.I remember one night he showed up to read a script, and he was really plotzed; he was drunk. He sat down to read it, we gave him about ten pages, and he started to read it and he loved it and he loved it and he loved it, and he got to the last page and then he looked at the next page and he said, "This is great, but you start the second act like you started the first act."We said, "Ed, that is only the first act. You're reading it a second time through without knowing it."Everybody for whom it did any good was on Benzedrine because we were always up late, late, late working. It didn't do anything for me, it put me to sleep.
COLLINGS
Oh yes, sometimes those— You never know with that stuff.The show was on every night?
GELBART
No.
COLLINGS
Once a week?
GELBART
Once a week.
COLLINGS
But it took all of this to get it.
GELBART
To prepare it.
COLLINGS
To get it in shape.
GELBART
Yes. And at that, it was always last minute. There's just something about the job expanding to the time you have to do it in.
COLLINGS
Right, it always does. Another episode that I heard had Peter Lorre in it, and he was going to be doing a— Well, he and Duffy were sort of working together on a children's reader, Duffy's First Reader.
GELBART
Uh-huh. What year was that, do you remember?
COLLINGS
This was 10/19/1943.
GELBART
'43.
COLLINGS
And Peter Lorre is going to do a children's book. He's going to be the character of Uncle Jack, your Uncle Jack the Ripper.
GELBART
I knew that. You know something, that was lodged back in there.
COLLINGS
The story is about a little boy and girl who fell into a concrete mixer. [mutual laughter]
GELBART
Good stuff, huh?
COLLINGS
It's just so not the kind of coddling kind of PC [political correctness] stuff that you find today.
GELBART
Absolutely, well, of course, of course.
COLLINGS
You just couldn't have a story about a boy and girl that fell into a concrete mixer.
GELBART
Today, no. They might try it themselves.
COLLINGS
Yes, you'd be sued.
GELBART
Well, don't forget, these were the days of W.C. Fields, too, you know, where W.C. Fields, there's a scene in one picture where he's in a hotel room with a child and he's on the second floor and he has to go someplace. He says to the kid, "Stay in this room and do not fall out of the window unless it's absolutely necessary."
COLLINGS
Yes. Well, his whole running thing was that he hated children.
GELBART
He probably did, too, but then a child played a tragic terrible role in his life. He lived in the Griffith Park area, and Agnes— Not Agnes. Katherine de Mille and Anthony Quinn, she was the director's adopted daughter, and their child lived quite close to Fields. They were his neighbors, and the kid wandered over one day.
COLLINGS
Swimming pool?
GELBART
Yes, duck pond. Field had it drained and he never did fill it up again.You know, they have all the scripts at UCLA. All the Duffy scripts are there.
COLLINGS
The scripts are?
GELBART
The scripts, all the ones from my two years, three years, I don't know, how long I was there, however.
COLLINGS
Oh, I didn't realize that. I thought it was just some of the radio stuff. That would be in the Arts Special Collection thing.
GELBART
Yes, Julie Graham.
COLLINGS
Yes, Julie's got them.
GELBART
They're all there. Not "they're all." That very script might be there.
COLLINGS
Okay. Well, good. I'll Xerox off a couple pages and we can kind of go through them a little bit, too.
GELBART
Okay. They were fun. They were fun.
COLLINGS
So when you were at Duffy's, who were your friends? Were these the guys that these guys that were like ten years older than you?
GELBART
Yes. I learned some bad habits, too. I mean, I was witness to some bad habits. I would be around when married guys were calling call girls, or I could be around when the call girls showed up. But I guess I was absorbing a lot. I was learning how to smoke. I was learning how to dress.
COLLINGS
Did you smoke in your life?
GELBART
I started smoking on Duffy's. I was eighteen, and I remember I bought a pack of Parliaments because they looked so good, they were in very hard box, and I got myself a gold Dunhill lighter, and I tried to give myself a cancer, you know, because that was the thing.Again, while I wasn't making the kind of money I would later make after I left Duffy's, it was pretty good money. So I could treat myself to a lot of things that teenagers didn't have the ability to treat themselves to, cars and clothes, and I think that was it, and girls.
COLLINGS
Would you like take it home and like show all this stuff to your high school friends, or were you sort of divorced from—
GELBART
No, there was one— I had a very close friend, we're still close, we're still alive, missing one or two senses, but he and I were very close in high school. It was very hard to say, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" because I was doing something and I hadn't even grown up yet, you know. I was able to be in both places, because emotionally I was a high school kid. I couldn't leave that behind. Of course, my studies went, which were never sterling to begin with, got even more tarnished.
COLLINGS
I'm surprised you'd even find time to even go to school with this schedule at Duffy's.
GELBART
Well, I would go to school. I lived on 624 ½ North Genesee, which is right across the street from the side gate to Fairfax High School. I was in the ROTC, so I always skipped that. I was in that because that meant I didn't have to go to gym, and that was always— That was an early talent, not going to gym. So I wouldn't get there until the second period, and then I had subjects like band and harmony, radio, acting, nothing, nonsense classes. I don't know how I graduated, but it wasn't with honors, I can assure you.So Emil and I kept in touch, were in touch, we lived within a block or two of one another, and I think he was quite proud of what I was doing.And I had a girlfriend.
COLLINGS
Oh, you did?
GELBART
Yes, of course, I had a very long-time romance with a fellow student at Fairfax, so that— I won't say it kept me grounded because, well, anyway, dot, dot, dot.
COLLINGS
Yes. Well, like I think that it probably gave you— Sort of kept your youth alive a little bit and probably helped, contributed a great deal to your success at Duffy's because this is—
GELBART
Might have been. But I used to go to work with a fellow named Bill Manhoff, who lived on Fuller off Melrose, and that meant I walked, which was nothing terrible. Eight blocks in those days was a breeze. But I would go over there in my ROTC uniform, take my overseas cap off, loosen my tie, and start working on Duffy's. A lot of it was— I mean, I didn't do it on purpose. I didn't mean to listen, but you listened, you listened. You had to listen to what other people were saying. When you're writing comedy, when you're writing anything in conference, you have to pay attention to what other people are teaching you, telling you, about that episode or that page or that speech. No one sits around and gives you lessons.
COLLINGS
Right. In terms of when you mentioned the idea of listening, I mean how do you sort of grab these ideas? I mean, do you ride around on the bus listening to conversations?
GELBART
No.
COLLINGS
Where would you hear things that sort of sparked your—
GELBART
I don't think I was consciously using life as a well or a stockpot for what I was doing. No, that was strictly confined to this show, these characters, or that star, in the case of a Bob Hope or someone. And so much of that was kind of stereotypical cliché, that, you know, I wasn't trying to emulate authentic dialogue or true conversation. I was trying to do very what the British called bespoke material for the particular personality I was working for. So I really wasn't interested in what— Anyway, I wasn't on the bus a lot because I was able to buy a car very quickly. [laughs]
COLLINGS
No, I just sort of threw that out as a random example.
GELBART
No. Later in life, when I found out that the real show business is in real life, not up on the stage, in terms of all the world being a stage, then it's not as though you say, "I must really listen and use some imaginary filter to collect," something someone will say something and, boom, you know you want to repeat that or you want to get something like that or you want to know why somebody like that would say something like that. But that comes later. This was basically just Jokes 101. This was just delivering the kind of things you hear on Duffy's Tavern, somebody says, "Were there any survivors?" and you say, "What's the record for insulting this place?" You just thought in chunks of one, two, three, four, word combinations. And rhythm, rhythm was important.
COLLINGS
Rhythm, rhythm, yes, absolutely.
GELBART
Yes. It's not by accident that so many musicians— Abe Burrows played wonderful piano, funny piano. Woody [Allen] plays clarinet. Mel [Brooks] plays drums, which is not really an instrument, but he's very musical. Sid Caesar is a recovering saxophonist. A lot of people have that experience because it does give you a sense of tempo.I read a piece the other day by Alan Ayckbourn, and he talks about wanting to write. We can't have an orchestrater or a composer's notations, but as much as you can you try to say where the accent is, where the rise is, where the inflection rests, where you leave off the question mark on purpose, even though it looks like a question. Those are craft things, and you learn those.
COLLINGS
Yes. The Duffy's that I listened to just definitely had a sort of a staccato—
GELBART
Rhythm.
COLLINGS
—tempo that was a really important part of keeping everything rolling.
GELBART
Yes. It was also eastern, which was unusual. I mean, Fibber McGee and Molly were Midwestern. Jack Benny was Hollywood. They talk about living in Beverly Hills. Bob Hope was just really a monologist, peppering an audience with one-liners. But Duffy's was urban and, more specifically, New York.
COLLINGS
Yes. You could sort of picture it down on the Lower East Side or something.
GELBART
Yes, exactly. I wonder if we ever, if they, we, ever gave it a location, at the corner of where and whatever. But obviously, it was the Bowery, because it was a—
COLLINGS
Right, Bowery Bum Personnel Service.
GELBART
Yes. But what goes around, etc., etc., etc. I'm writing a script now with one of my sons [Gary Markowitz], and it's about a very Bowery-type place.
COLLINGS
Well, we can talk about that— It's not ready yet, I can see.
GELBART
No.
COLLINGS
Okay. So would you like to talk a little bit about working with Bob Hope? We sort of touched on it last time. Just sort of fill it in a bit?
GELBART
Right. After Duffy's I did a number of shows, not for great periods of time, and then in '48, I guess, came this offer to my then partner and I, Larry Marks, of the "Sit down, you big fat piece of—," fame. We were asked if we wanted to be, or we were sold by our agents to, I don't remember it exactly.
COLLINGS
By then you and he were a writing pair.
GELBART
We had decided to become a pair, yes. We had worked together on Duffy's, but not as a pair. We worked together on the first Jack Paar radio show, but not as a pair, on which Hy Averback was the announcer.
COLLINGS
Oh, really?
GELBART
Yes. Yes. That's, I don't know, the summer of something, '46, maybe.So we presented ourselves as a team, Larry and Larry. He was called Fat Larry, unfortunately, and I was the kid. I was the kid for years, until last year, actually.
COLLINGS
Fat Larry and the kid.
GELBART
Fat Larry and the kid, right. Sounds like a Butch Cassidy thing. Right. So Hope wanted us for four years.
COLLINGS
A contract for four years?
GELBART
A contract for four years, and he said— He said or his representatives said, "We'll give you—." And a year meant thirty-nine weeks.
COLLINGS
Thirty-nine weeks of material?
GELBART
Thirty-nine weeks of radio broadcasts. That was eventually to include a number of television series per year, specials, as they were called then, and some work on his motion pictures, punching up scripts, adding jokes to them.
COLLINGS
He was the most famous successful box office figure ever, I think.
GELBART
Of everything, everything. I think so. He was iconic, to coin a new cliché.It was quite a thing, and for a comedy writer, the epitome. Although for years he did not enjoy a very good reputation with writers he hired, far too many of them, and not very generous towards them.
COLLINGS
He didn't know what he wanted at that point?
GELBART
No, he knew what he wanted, but he wanted more, always more. So we negotiated. I think it was for— I know it was for four years, and the terms they offered were something like a thousand for the first year and then eight-fifty for the second year.
COLLINGS
Why?
GELBART
Well, because if you only had one year of it, you'd have made a lot of money. I guess that was their thinking. Or it was also bait on the hook, you know. Then it went to eleven or something. Then it went to twelve-fifty.
COLLINGS
Interesting.
GELBART
Yes. So we said, "Give us—." Eight-fifty per person, not for the team, which is pretty good money.
COLLINGS
Yes, but it's just strange.
GELBART
We said, "Give us the least money the first year. We know you're going to want us back, and we want to get raises, not cuts." So that's how it worked out. They did do it that way, and for that then princely sum, which that's not bad today either, we were assigned to the radio shows. The radio shows were somewhat similar to Duffy's Tavern and similar to all shows of the period in a way. There were four writers and two junior writers. I'll leave the junior writers out of the equation. It's simpler to do it the other way. Each writer or each writing team, there was another fellow writing by himself called Norman Sullivan, and I thought it would be great if we teamed up and we could be Gelbart and Sullivan, but it didn't work out that way. [laughs]
COLLINGS
Yes, there you go.
GELBART
So all of us had to write a monologue, jokes for a monologue.
COLLINGS
His opening monologue.
GELBART
His opening monologue, because Hope was, first and foremost, and to the very end, primarily a monologist. That's where he came from in the theater, that's what he loved doing the most, and that's what he spent the most time perfecting. First we'd have a general meeting.
COLLINGS
His timing was just great.

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
July 12, 2005

GELBART
Speaking of Hope's timing, while he wasn't a musician, you know he was a tap dancer, a very good tap dancer, and that helped all kinds of rhythm in terms of acting and jokes. So we would— I forget just amongst us or with him included, I'm not sure, the monologue, for each week's monologue we would select, say, five topics: Santa Anita's opening, he's got a new picture opening, the baseball season is opening, or Congress just did this or Bing Crosby just did that. It could be any number of things, but we limited it to five topics.
COLLINGS
Now, would he tend to touch on those kinds of political things?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
In the Jay Leno sense?
GELBART
Much milder.
COLLINGS
Okay. That's what I thought.
GELBART
Hope never drew any blood.
COLLINGS
Yes, because when you mentioned Congress did something, I just couldn't picture that as well.
GELBART
He made Will Rogers-type jokes about Congress. They were needles, but, as I said, they didn't—
COLLINGS
They just sort of upheld the values of the democracy.
GELBART
Yes, I mean, it was probably the same jokes that the Romans made about their senators. It was just, yeah, that's right, we're so democratic we can joke about how corrupt we are or stupid or arrogant or whatever. Hope became more political toward the end, but in the beginning he was very, very careful to be neutral.
COLLINGS
He became very, very anti-communist.
GELBART
Hawkish, yes. Yes, I know, somebody reminded me that he called M*A*S*H a "sit-commie" but—
COLLINGS
A sit-com in the sense of communist?
GELBART
Yes. "Sit-commie."
COLLINGS
A "sit-commie," okay. Yes.
GELBART
Yes. But I mean, with all his criticism of what I was doing and the some of the criticism and I extended in reverse, that was all forgiven or forgotten when I was asked by his family to deliver one of the three speeches at his mass when he died.So we'd get the topics. Then we had a rule, no more than twenty jokes on each topic. As we separated to go to our different typewriters, no more than twenty jokes. Let's not compete ourselves into the ground here, you know. And so we would do that. Hope he didn't know that, I'm sure.
COLLINGS
That's interesting.
GELBART
Yes. There was the opening monologue, then probably a commercial, then exchanges very much like Duffy's with the regulars on that show, Jerry Colonna or Brenda and Cobina (played by actresses Blanche Stewart and Elvia Allman); or Skinnay Ennis the bandleader, or Doris Day the singer or whatever, whatever, whatever, and the guests would come on. There was always a guest star. Then you would either do a sketch, primarily a sketch, although there might be a duet. There was certainly no dancing, it being radio. We divided that, too. "You guys do this, you guys do this, you guys do that."Then we would all assemble at Hope's house in North Hollywood, and we would read the material aloud to him. The first thing was, he would look at the monologue jokes that we had submitted, and he would read them to himself or out loud, if he felt like it. If he liked the joke, he would put a check next to it. Do you know this process?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
Okay. I've described it in other places, so I didn't know. He'd go through all the jokes and do that. Then he'd go back to page one, knowing he was going back to page one, and if he still liked that checked joke, he didn't bother to read the unchecked jokes, he would strike through a slash on the check, meaning this is worth a second or third look, and he'd go through all of those check marks.
COLLINGS
This is very methodical.
GELBART
Yes. Some did make that cut, literally, and some did not. Now he went back to just the checks and the slashes, and if he really liked it still, he would circle it.
COLLINGS
Wow.
GELBART
So that by the time he got back through reading, oh, I don't know, sixty, eighty, a hundred jokes, there would be enough jokes to use for a six- or seven-minute monologue. Then those— I'm sorry.
COLLINGS
Whatever happened to the unchecked and uncircled that's left jokes?
GELBART
No one knows.
COLLINGS
I mean you never resubmitted them in another context?
GELBART
Sure. Of course, you'd change the name, change the name of the president. Now then, someone with a scissors would cut out the circled, checked, and slashed jokes, put them on a table, and essentially routine them. "This is a good one. This can follow that. No, this should be one, that should be three, this should be two." And they were stapled and Scotch-taped together, and then a secretary would transcribe them, and that was the monologue.Then with the material for the rest of the show, he would say, "I like that. I like that. That could be better. That could be better, I think it just needs a bigger kid at the back," meaning a bigger joke to pay the whole thing off, and that's what we did.
COLLINGS
Did he offer sort of commentary on why he did or didn't like things, or did he keep that to himself?
GELBART
It was just yes or no, given the volume, to make a case for or against any particular joke. You didn't quarrel. I mean, we guys, we were like fountains. "You don't like that? Here's another one. You don't like that one? Here's another one."I remember he was riding in a car once with a comedy writer named Jay Burton. Was that him or was that Hope or Milton Berle? It doesn't really matter, but Jay had— Jay was a geyser, and he gave the comic page after page after page of stuff, and the guy said, "I don't like this." Jay threw it out the window. And I'm sure he didn't have a carbon. It's just, "You don't like it, I'll give you another five hundred."So then you did the show.
COLLINGS
So would you all sit at your typewriters just thinking?
GELBART
Different places, different, not in the same room. There was no staff headquarters. Larry [Marks] and I worked at his place, primarily. Two other guys worked somewhere else, and two other guys worked somewhere else.
COLLINGS
Would you think about jokes while you were walking down the street or taking a shower, or was it always while you sat and did the work? "Now it's time to work and come up with these"?
GELBART
No, I think you think about them all the time. It's like once you've decided on a topic, the mind goes to work, working even though you don't know it is, but certainly working when you want it to work, saying, "Santa Anita, Santa Anita."The only time Hope got angry at me, and he only got angry at me once in four years, I wrote some terrible jokes on purpose. It was for Santa Anita.
COLLINGS
Oh, really, why?
GELBART
I don't know. I just— You get tired. I wrote these jokes about him betting on a horse that was so old, people were betting him to win, place and live.
COLLINGS
I don't think that's terrible. [laughs]
GELBART
Well, I thought it was, and I put that down. And then I did another one. A horse he bet on had a bad break, he stumbled at the starting gate, he tripped over his hearing aid.
COLLINGS
Okay, that one's not okay.
GELBART
He picked them. He picked them. He checked them, he slashed them, he circled them. I said, "You're really going to do these?"He said, "Yeah."I said, "It's going to sound like a Hope monologue."And he said, "What's wrong with that?"
COLLINGS
Ooooh. You're living dangerously.
GELBART
Yes, well, in the fourth year. Oh no, he got angry one more time. Not angry but curiously snappish, and you'll know what I mean when I tell you. It wasn't even a good joke. I made some reference to his nose, and he said, "That's some hooter you got." What's so odd is that we would always do jokes about his nose, but that was in a professional way; ski nose, that kind of reference.
COLLINGS
I know, and his nose is like a— Exactly.
GELBART
Ski snoot, all of that. But in a personal context it took on a whole other thing. His vanity was hurt.
COLLINGS
So what kind of person was he, just to be around?
GELBART
Exciting, very exciting. I mean, you were always going somewhere, even if it was only to the Valley to deliver your material. You were always traveling and always— He was just magnetic. There was a crackle about him and a—
COLLINGS
So just people working for him just felt charged?
GELBART
You were charged. You were charged.I remember we were somewhere in the Orient and we were recording a radio show, and of course we couldn't travel with a—
COLLINGS
A radio studio.
GELBART
So we needed an actor to play a role, or somebody to play a role in a sketch, and I said, "I'll do it."So he said, "Okay, great."So I was standing on-stage with him at one microphone and he was at another microphone, and I'll never forget the power that he projected almost knocked me over. I mean it just— I couldn't believe how strong he was.
COLLINGS
Oh, it's so interesting.
GELBART
Yes. I thought, "Wow, that's a great clue to why he is so successful. He gets you." He got me.
COLLINGS
So you hadn't really felt that before you were in his presence while he was performing?
GELBART
Yes, you're listening to the joke, "Did he do it right?" and of course he always did. "I could have done it better," or, "Next time I'll—." You know what I mean? You're listening as a writer. I was there as a performer and wasn't paying attention to what was being said, but rather how it was said, and it was tremendous.He was exciting. He was full of surprises, and what's better than surprises? The surprises were usually— I think I'd say it in the book. You'd call up on a day like this, just an average day, a nothing day, a working day, and he'd say, "Your passport valid?"
COLLINGS
Time to go.
GELBART
"We're going to Russia," we're going to any place, and you did.
COLLINGS
So this was the first time you had done a lot of traveling.
GELBART
It was my introduction to traveling.
COLLINGS
How'd you like it?
GELBART
Well, I never stopped for over fifty years. I loved it. I love traveling when you don't have to write a monologue for somebody at the other end of the plane ride.
COLLINGS
Yes. So you'd be sitting on the plane writing and—
GELBART
You'd be sitting on a plane, you'd be sitting in a jeep, you'd be sitting in a tent, you'd be sitting in places you never dreamed you'd ever be, but you were writing because you had to and you delivered when you had to, and it was tremendous training, tremendous. On any variety of subjects too.
COLLINGS
I don't want to interrupt you, but do you think he was energized by the war, the World War II and the Korean thing? Was this an important context for him?
GELBART
I think he was born energized. I think he sprang out and heard that slap on his ass and thought they were applauding and took a bow.
COLLINGS
[laughs] Okay. You said last time that it was a really, really intense learning experience.
GELBART
It was.
COLLINGS
So was this just the pace of the work and the travel, or was it everything?
GELBART
It was constant. You were on a train. You were working on a radio script, maybe, and also on a television script, and you were working on some lines for the next town where he was going to do a concert.There was a confluence of events at that particular time, at one time, within that time. Les Brown had like the number one record out, "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm," and Doris Day was the singer and she had the number one record out, "It's Magic," and it just felt like the number one experience. It was just— Another nice thing for me, another thrilling thing for me, was that Les Brown, who was a darling man and a very, very good friend of Hy's [Averback]— They're buried side by side in the Westwood Cemetery. It just worked out that way; they didn't plan it.
COLLINGS
Oh, in the Westwood Cemetery as in Westwood?
GELBART
Yes. Amazing coincidence. Maybe there are no coincidences.But Les would let me sit in with the band. He'd let me in rehearsal play the clarinet parts, so I mean I was in heaven.
COLLINGS
Yes, on top of the world.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
So you decided to leave after four years?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
That was enough?
GELBART
It was enough for several reasons. One, my partner and I, Larry, things had gotten very acrimonious between us.
COLLINGS
You just had different visions?
GELBART
Different everything. Different beat, different—
COLLINGS
Different beat?
GELBART
I had an ulcer by the time I was twenty-one. I remember my— I lived alone, and my milk bill was forty dollars a month, you know. [laughs] I was tearing myself up, and I can't blame the other people, I'm blaming myself for behaving under that kind of stress in the way that I did, punishing myself rather than addressing my antagonist.So we were going to break up, and we did. I didn't want to— I wanted— I was going with a girl who had moved back to New York, and that was part of it, but not the greatest part of it. I wanted something outside the experience I knew here, another show.
COLLINGS
Here in Los Angeles?
GELBART
Yes. Here in Los Angeles, here in radio, here in, what, just sort of being this trained monkey, you know, who turns out jokes and jokes and jokes and jokes. So at that time, Red Buttons had done a successful— What did they call them? They didn't call them pilots. Yes, I guess they did call them pilots. It doesn't matter. No, he didn't even do a pilot. He had been given an airtime on CBS, and the William Morris office said, "You want to go back there and do that show?" It seemed perfect, and so I did.
COLLINGS
You were working not in— Now you were working on your own. You didn't have a kind of a team?
GELBART
There was no team. There were other writers, but I was the— It was me, basically. I mean, there were other writers, but I got to do the hiring and I got to do the organizing. I resist the term "head writer," because I think it's so terrible, but that's what I was.
COLLINGS
How old were you at that point?
GELBART
1952. I was born in 1928.
COLLINGS
Oh, so you were thirty-four.
GELBART
Was I thirty-four?
COLLINGS
Yes, 1952—
GELBART
1928 to 1940, no, I was twenty-four.
COLLINGS
Twenty-four?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
How can that be? Jeez.
GELBART
Why not? Everybody can be twenty-four.
COLLINGS
Yes, I know, I know, but this just seems like a lot.
GELBART
No, I'm joking. No, no, 1928 to 1948 is twenty years, plus four is twenty-four.
COLLINGS
Right, right, right. Wow, that was a position of great responsibility for someone of that age.
GELBART
I didn't do too well in the beginning, I really didn't, because Red was a— By the time I got there, he was a performer, an entertainer, a standup by himself, solo performer, that is, but he had gotten his early training in burlesque as a comedian. And in burlesque there was not a lot of standup. You didn't tell jokes to people sitting out there who wished to hell you'd get off so they could get on with the real thing, but a lot of sketches, a lot of sketches; short sketches with a middle, with a beginning, a middle and an end, and I didn't know how to construct one of those. I did not learn that with Bob Hope. With Bob Hope it was joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke.
COLLINGS
Right. It didn't have the narrative development.
GELBART
That's right, none, of even something as primal as a burlesque sketch, and Red did, and I learned. I learned how to start, go somewhere, and finish.
COLLINGS
Although Duffy's had a bit of a story.
GELBART
Indeed, it did. But there again, you were more concerned with a line-by-line writing of it rather than any kind of an arc.
COLLINGS
The arc of the whole thing.
GELBART
None at all. If someone had said "arc" to me in those days, I would have looked for two animals. Sorry, sorry, sorry. [laughs]
COLLINGS
So after that, when was it exactly that you started with Caesar's Hour? Was that directly after Red Buttons?
GELBART
That was '55. That was '55. No, after Red. I left Red after the first year and a half of his show, and then I did anything. I had to pay the rent. I was married.
COLLINGS
Oh, you had gotten married by this point.
GELBART
Yes. I got married in '56, I think.
COLLINGS
How did you meet your wife?
GELBART
You want Sid Caesar first or my wife first?
COLLINGS
Okay, your choice, whichever you think comes first.
GELBART
I'll get back to my wife.
COLLINGS
Okay.
GELBART
Incidentally, in this current issue of Vanity Fair on page 142, there is a Photoshop assembly of the writers of the Caesar's. They keep saying the [Your] Show of Shows, but it's more than that. But anyway, there's now, present day, there's Carl [Reiner], there's Sid [Caesar], there's Mel [Brooks], there's Woody [Allen], there's Neil Simon, there's me, there's Aaron Rubin, there's Mel Tolkin, there's Joe Stein, and there we are. Did I say Mel Brooks?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Well, he's bigger than life, so I said him twice. But it's kind of interesting, terrible. I mean we look like our representations at Madame Tussaud's.
COLLINGS
No Botox, huh?
GELBART
No. Sid. Oh, so I did some fast work. I worked for Pat Boone, if you can believe it, for thirteen weeks. I did his variety show. I did some work at CBS as staff.
COLLINGS
So you left the Red Buttons show because you just didn't feel like it was a good—
GELBART
Because he fired me.
COLLINGS
Because he fired you.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Why did he fire you?
GELBART
Because the network wanted some changes, and so that was one of those changes. [laughs] Then we didn't talk for about twenty years.
COLLINGS
Oh. So you sort of, for the first time ever, you were kind of casting about trying to figure out where you were going to be working, because before this everything had flowed pretty—
GELBART
But this flowed, too. I mean, I was always desirable because I could deliver and I wrote good stuff. So it was not a question of having to look around long.Oh, and the other show I did was Patrice Mansel. Do you remember Patrice Mansel?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
She was a very popular entertainer. She was operatic, actually, but very attractive and accessible, and she had her own variety show on the air for a while. So I mean, to do those shows only really speaks about how few shows were being done in New York that I could work on.Then '55, I got a call to play with the Yankees. Sid had had his own show then. I was not on Your Show of Shows ever, but I was on Caesar's Hour, which was his version of it, and I was there for two years.
COLLINGS
I saw a— They had something from Caesar's Hour at the Archive, and it was from '55, 10/10/55.
GELBART
Right. What's the show?
COLLINGS
Well, there was a really, really interesting segment in the beginning where Sid and his wife have some friends over, and the friends are— It's eleven o'clock, the friends are leaving, and the wife offers everybody coffee, and then there's a whole thing about one wants cocoa, and the other one wants tea.
GELBART
I don't remember that.
COLLINGS
Then somebody comes into the kitchen, and then they somehow all end up in the kitchen making these elaborate meals.
GELBART
I don't remember that.
COLLINGS
The place just gets like messier and messier, and it's absolutely fascinating because it's one long take where people are just kind of revolving around in this space, cooking.
GELBART
Really, 10/10/55?
COLLINGS
Yes. By then it's two o'clock in the morning and the friends all leave, and Sid says, "Oh, boy, it's great having all these friends in? Isn't it wonderful? Well, go ahead and get all these dishes taken care of. I'm going to bed," and the wife starts yelling at him.
GELBART
Flips.
COLLINGS
Which is just amazing in 19—
GELBART
Was the wife Nanette Fabray?
COLLINGS
The wife was— Oh, I had it. No, it wasn't. It might have been Sandra Deel.
GELBART
I don't think I was on that show then, or that— I couldn't have been there and not on that, but I can't remember. Sandra Deel? I don't know.
COLLINGS
Because she does sing. She does sing.
GELBART
I know she does.
COLLINGS
Yes, later on in the show.
GELBART
My favorite moment in that kitchen was—
COLLINGS
They used that kitchen a lot, the kitchen set?
GELBART
Yes. The show was always somebody always eating, or we were doing eating things, because we were all such— The Yiddish word is "noshers". Gluttons, I guess, is the English word for it. [laughs] But there's a scene where Sid, as the host of the dinner party, goes into the kitchen to check the lamb chops, and he pulls out the drawer in the broiler and the lamb chops all fall on the floor. Carl [Reiner] has come in beside him and looks down, and Sid looks up, and Sid says, "Are you going to tell?"Carl says, "No, I'm not going to tell. I'm not going to eat, but I'm not going to tell." [mutual laughter]We did some wonderful— I don't know. I don't know why I don't remember that episode that you're talking about, or that sketch. But that was a wild place to work.
COLLINGS
There also on that show, there was an opera spoof called Gallipacci, that's the one where Sid Caesar is putting the—
GELBART
The broken pencil.
COLLINGS
Yes, exactly. He's putting the—
GELBART
I know.
COLLINGS
What do you call that?
GELBART
Mascara. No, eye— He's working with a—
COLLINGS
What the heck is the name of that game?
GELBART
The what, sweetheart?
COLLINGS
You know, where you make the crosses and the—
GELBART
Oh, here's exactly what happened. Have you seen it?
COLLINGS
Yes, that's this episode.
GELBART
When people ask if there was ever any improvisation on that show, and I always quote this example, because there was little or no improvisation. What happened was— What is this called? Eye liner.
COLLINGS
Right. Eye pencil or—
GELBART
There's a word for it. Not mascara, that's this, right?
COLLINGS
No, the mascara is for the eyelashes.
GELBART
That's right. Right. Okay. This is a pencil, grease.
COLLINGS
A grease pencil.
GELBART
Right. Sid was supposed to— And as he sings, he was painting a tear.
COLLINGS
Oh, he was supposed to paint a tear.
GELBART
That's right. But the pencil broke. Now, what you see next is total improvisation. With a live camera, with a live studio audience, with a several million live people out there, Sid does this [draws tic tac toe figure on his face], then he does this, right, and finishes on the beat and stays in character. It was brilliant, just brilliant.
COLLINGS
Yes. Because I had read, you had talked about that in your book—
GELBART
Oh, you know it then.
COLLINGS
I had read that, and then so when I saw that segment, I was really prepared to watch it, and it did seem to me like he kind of like glanced at the camera just for like a moment, like a sort of, "Well, you know, I gotta do something," kind of look, like.
GELBART
Yes. It was in that moment, the seed got planted. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you'd read it. I wouldn't have told it over again.
COLLINGS
No, it's okay.
GELBART
I can't remember the kitchen scene, though. Because I was there for that, so I would have been there for that. But Sid—
COLLINGS
I'm surprised to hear that you say that those particular scenes had no improvisation at all, because this was like a five-minute-long take in the kitchen.
GELBART
That would have been worked out to the move, to the moment, to the turn, to the line, absolutely. I mean, think of it. The show ran an hour, which means in those days there would have been six minutes of commercials, so it's fifty minutes. You had to plan everything. You can't say, "We'll wing it here, we'll wing it there, we'll do this, we'll do that."
COLLINGS
I sort of felt like the scenes with Sid and Sandra Deel and the other couple, kind of reminded me of the [Jerry] Seinfeld show.
GELBART
Probably reminded them, too.
COLLINGS
Yes. And I think that they've actually done some— They did kind of an opera spoof in that show, too. I was wondering if they were playing even off of—
GELBART
They might have been. I mean, the people who do those shows went to school on those shows. That was their pre-K. I mean, I've said this before, but I mean when we did our show, even by then it was hard, though, but when we did those shows, there were no footprints in the snow. We didn't have to say, "Did somebody do this last night?"
COLLINGS
That's right. That must have been great.
GELBART
It was.
COLLINGS
Well, you also said about that show, "I don't think there was ever a group so aware of their own psychological problems and others." You said that the writers dealt with their psychoses, neuroses, and I just wondered why is it that those writers were so concerned to sort of explore these issues? It's very different than the kind of humor in Duffy's.
GELBART
I don't think they were so much interested in exploring them as they were aware that they contained all of this dramatic/comedic material, that life was the best research you could do. And forgive me if I repeat myself, because I know, I mean, by this time, I think I told you that I once made a vow that I would never repeat myself, but I didn't know I was going to live this long.
COLLINGS
Darn it! [mutual laughter]
GELBART
This was the first generation of comedy writers who were, one, maybe first-generation Americans, and, two, certainly that had been or were in and some still are in therapy. So we were very interested in what made us tick. So maybe I shortchanged your answer, maybe this was a wonderful way to explore our own hang-ups, hang-downs, whatever, whatever.The sitcom started in 1950 with the first Goldbergs.
COLLINGS
I Remember Mama.
GELBART
I Remember Mama, right. But this was kind of the first real sort of hard comedy take on domestic situation comedy, the husband and the wife and the friends and suburbia. Sid, as soon as he got to the top of his career, was living in King's Point, Carl was living in upstate New York, a number of the writers were all upstate, so they were aware of the commuting, and also the commutation from Odessa to—
COLLINGS
The city.
GELBART
—the city and then beyond the city.
COLLINGS
So did the writers tend to be in therapy? You said that the writers on Duffy's were all taking Benzedrine.
GELBART
Well, the Benzedrine suggests, with today as a reference, suggests a kind of a high life or addictive or romantic Toulouse Lautrecian kind of thing, only with Benzedrine. It was just to stay awake. It was not to get kicks or to get high.The therapy, was that the other part?
COLLINGS
You were saying that many of the writers tended to be in therapy and then take material from that.
GELBART
Yes, because they were in therapy. They would have been in therapy if they weren't on Caesar's Hour or Your Show of Shows. They were in therapy because everybody was in therapy at that time.
COLLINGS
Right. The psychology was very big in the United States in the fifties.
GELBART
Very big. But for some people, it didn't go away. My guess is that Woody Allen is still in therapy. I know Carl's been in for years and years. I'm not outing them, it's just it helps them in whatever way it helps them, and to be aware of yourself or to become aware of yourself is to perforce become aware of other people and know you're not alone in these experiences or these emotions.
COLLINGS
So did everybody feel like they needed to go and find themselves a therapist, otherwise they kind of weren't doing what everybody was doing?
GELBART
I didn't have a therapist. I did not have a therapist until I got to England many years later. No, I felt I was too busy doing my life to try finding out why I should be doing it in some other way than I was doing it. There were those people, maybe I was one of them, I don't know, I don't remember the me of then that well in these terms, in this instance, who thought I don't want to screw around with myself. I am what I am, and if I get better, if in fact I am screwed up, maybe I won't be as good as I am.
COLLINGS
Right. It's like if it's not broke, don't fix it.
GELBART
That's right.
COLLINGS
This is a sketch that you drew of the floor plan of the writers' room.
GELBART
Oh, for Neil Simon.
COLLINGS
Oh, is that what that was for?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Because I was wondering why you would have needed to draw a floor plan.
GELBART
I didn't need to. He was working on this show called Laughter on the 23rd Floor, and we were not on the twenty-third floor. We were on the seventh or eighth floor, but he said twenty-third sounds better. And he said, "What did it look like?"So I said, "You don't remember?"He said, "Wasn't the couch here? Wasn't this over there?"I said, "I'll draw it for you." So I did. I drew it and I gave it to him.
COLLINGS
You've got Caesar's chair in there.
GELBART
Caesar's chair. Sid sat in the middle, very, very— In a very regal fashion. The first thing he did, he would come in the morning, wearing a hideously but beautifully tailored suit, very wide shoulders, shoes made especially for him, huge cufflinks, keychain. He would take off his pants and hang them up because he—
COLLINGS
You know what? That happens in Seinfeld. They do that.
GELBART
Well, there you go.
COLLINGS
There you go, yes.
GELBART
There you go.
COLLINGS
I'm going to have to change the tape.
GELBART
Go ahead.

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE
July 12, 2005

GELBART
So this drawing indicates the position of Caesar's chair, and he sat there and we all sat around him and he sat facing the desk, and at the desk was a young man named Michael Stewart, who later went on to write Bye Bye Birdie and Hello Dolly! and lots of successful shows. He was just considered kind of an amanuensis/writer, and for that job he got seventy hundred and fifty dollars a week, which was pretty good money, especially for somebody who wore Thom McAnn shoes.At any rate, one Christmas my wife and I decided to give Sid, who not only had everything but probably a dozen of them, a new throne. So we got him this very, very golden-looking fabric chair for him to sit in, and he loved that. I mean it just seemed to suit him as he sat there unsuited, and that's why the chair is there.But, you know, memory does what memory does, as we know, as we think we remember it. When Neil was writing Laughter on the 23rd Floor, he said, "I'm doing a thing where the writers have a— They're trying to pitch funny names for an actress. Do you remember any of the ones that we ever did, you know?"I said, "Well, the funniest one, the really funniest one was we talked about an actress and her name was Angela Jonesela."He said, "Oh, that's great. Can I use it?"I said, "It's yours. I'm not giving it to you. That's your joke."He said, "I thought that was your joke."I said, "No, no, no, no. You thought of that. I've always admired it, but take it, it's yours.""Thank you."
COLLINGS
Yes. The commercials in Caesar's?
GELBART
Commercials in Caesar's.
COLLINGS
I mean your memory of them. I'm sure the commercials were not meant to be kind of humorous and ironic at the time.
GELBART
Right.
COLLINGS
Right?
GELBART
You mean the actual commercials?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
No, they were meant to—
COLLINGS
Okay. Because there was one at the end for Helene Curtis Super Soft Spray Net that was just so silly.
GELBART
Funny enough in itself?
COLLINGS
Yes, that I just really had to ask whether there was supposed to be any note of self-deprecating humor that perhaps was to blend with the program.
GELBART
If that was the case on any given commercial, then it was the decision of the advertising agency.
COLLINGS
Right. I was just wondering if what your memory—
GELBART
No. That was a separate country. We never went there. They might have thought, but my guess is that they meant every word of what you think is now so silly.
COLLINGS
Okay. Because they had ladies in gauzy dresses kind of leaping through space with their, you know— The hair is set.
GELBART
The hair stays in place, right.
COLLINGS
I was just wondering if it was pitched to kind of blend in with the tone of the whole show.
GELBART
No, no. [mutual laughter]
COLLINGS
I did also want to also ask you about the writing room, because you mentioned it is a room.
GELBART
There were two rooms with an accordion-type folding partition in between, but it was generally open, so it was two rooms, about the size of the one we're in right now.
COLLINGS
So that was different than the situation where you would go and sit around at Larry Marks' house, for example.
GELBART
Yes. This is the first time I was ever in sort of a gang-writing situation since way back on, say, Duffy's Tavern, when we would assemble in one room. No, this was there from page one, you were together. Sometimes we would split up. A couple of us would go off and do a totally self-contained segment or someone would go off and write a special song. But by and large, we were all thrown in the hopper together.
COLLINGS
So you'd all come in in the morning, kind of like an office situation?
GELBART
Totally.
COLLINGS
You'd all come in in the morning and just—
GELBART
Except for Mel Brooks. Mel made it a point to be late, and then he made it a point to deride us for being—
COLLINGS
Early?
GELBART
No. On time and being so— It was demeaning to him to have to come in on time, like some kind of worker ant. Once there, he would read the Wall Street Journal for a while and then send for his bagel. One time he sent for a bagel and coffee, and somebody quickly made a check out of cardboard and signed his name to it and gave it to the delivery kid. It was for ten dollars. It was sort of to teach Mel a lesson. But I don't think he bothered to learn the lesson.
COLLINGS
So you come in at the beginning of the week, and I mean what would—
GELBART
We'd come in on a Monday morning, and we'd say, "Well, what are we going to do?" Sometimes we'd have a couple of things that we had thought about before we said, "We'll do it, we'll do it, we'll do it." But by and large, the page was very blank on Monday, the program having aired on Saturday, all of us having rested on Sunday, Monday we looked at each other and said, "Now what? Should we do a movie takeoff, should we do a this? Should we do? Oh, I know, we haven't done a this for a while. Should we do the Hickenloopers?" which were the domestic couple, the married man and wife in suburbia. "All right, let's do a this and let's do a that. And you know what? I saw a movie the other night and I think it's ripe for satire." Or, "I saw a musical," or another television show. Television then, of course, became its own—
COLLINGS
Self-parody.
GELBART
Right. As in Helene Curtis or Rubenstein commercials.So we'd outline, say, a half a dozen items that might be doable, some might fall out, some might not, and then we began the writing process. The writing process was, "How about if we open the sketch in the bathroom and he's shaving?""No, no, we did shaving," or somebody shaved last night. "No, let's have the guys in their offices and they're talking to each other, and we'll intercut guy to guy to guy to guy.""Okay. All right."So Sid says, and then you start throwing lines and lines, and if Sid liked the joke, he would say, "Put that down," to Mike [Mike Stewart].
COLLINGS
So when you were pitching the very early ideas, Sid would be a part of that, too?
GELBART
Absolutely. If he didn't like it, he pretended he was at a machine gun, and he would go [sound of machine gun]. He would shoot the joke down, which is hard to do when you've got your pants off.Then bit by bit by bit the sketch would build, you know, and between Monday and Wed— We worked till six o'clock. We went home at six. Sid would sometimes like us to stay a little longer, but that was it, six o'clock. Then we would work until Wednesday. By Wednesday it had to be finished because sets had to be built, orchestrations had to be created, if necessary, and you had to rehearse it. So on Thursday, they went into— Sid had what seemed like an entire floor in this building. There was reception, of course, then there was the writers' room, then maybe a couple little rooms, and then the large rehearsal room. Then if you went up some stairs, you went up to his office, which was very Caesarian, as things tended to be with him, and that was it. But there was no— Other than the star that he was getting the star treatment, Carl didn't have an office, Howie Morris didn't, Nanette Fabray, none of the people did. Writers didn't have individual offices. We had the room.So on Thursday the cast would get up on its feet and the director would be there, the camera director. Nobody directed Sid and the actors in terms of performance, and they would run the show. I don't even think we had a table reading. I think it was just they just got up and did it with the scripts in their hands. It was very little time. If there was a piano pantomime or something, Sid, when it came to that part of the program, he would do that.We would be making notes. "This felt a little weak. Maybe we can cut from here to here. Do we really need that?""No, what we really need is a new this."Then we would go back in the room, the writers would, and start thinking about other stuff for the next week or fixing up what we just saw. That was Thursday. Friday was the same. Saturday, we'd be in the theater, and Sid would not work on stage. He had a very gifted comedian named Milt Kamen, K-a-m-e-n, standing in for him, and Milt would walk through the show.Milton Berle used to do that, and one time he stopped the rehearsal and said to his stand-in, "No, no, you're doing it all wrong."The guy said, "I'm not going to be doing it. You do it right." [laughs]The writers would be there in the house, making notes, whatever, whatever, whatever, and then we would have an audience in for a dress rehearsal. Then we would all assemble, "we all," the writers, Sid. Carl and I would probably give Sid the notes. Now, that's really putting your head in the lion's mouth when you had to give Sid his notes. This is like a runaway train.
COLLINGS
Tweaking his thing.
GELBART
Tweaking his thing, saying, "You know, you're not doing that quite right. Let's cut that. I love it, but it's hurting that.""Okay."I got the unenviable/enviable job of talking to Sid.
COLLINGS
Oh, you did? How did you get that?
GELBART
They elected me, "You do it." [laughs] I guess really how did I get that is while I was the newest of the veterans to be working with Sid, I had been around a long time, you know, and it was either a bedside manner or a dressing room manner, whatever it was, I'm able to do it, because by and large, you know, you cull your own criticism. You're not going in there and nitpicking, and the best of the comedians knows you're trying to be helpful, and that there's no ego and there's no— This is really direction, and Sid took it. The best of them do.So then they go out and do the show. Sometimes we'd watch the show at home. Sometimes we'd be in the theater. A lot of comedians liked their writers in the theater because they liked the writers to start the laughter, because there were no laugh tracks here, there was no sweetening, mechanical.
COLLINGS
Right, they didn't have signs telling people to start?
GELBART
Applause, but never to laugh, never to laugh, or an announcer saying, "Laugh." The announcer was Hugh Downs, who later went on to have a big career as a kind of eminence in television, but he was just a guy standing there with one hand cupping an ear, saying, "Live from New York." And live then meant live. It didn't mean live on tape. It didn't mean partially live. It didn't mean this once was live. This was live live. An hour and a half or an hour, an hour show took one hour. That's all. And you know, that was another art, timing the show, allowing enough time for laughter, sometimes allowing too much time for laughter that never came. Sometimes on air, you'd say, "We've got to cut this. We've got to cut that." It was adrenaline-making.Then Sid would come back to the dressing room, and he would have a tumbler waiting for him, a water glass, a large glass filled with Scotch, totally filled with Scotch, no ice cubes, no twists of anything.
COLLINGS
This is for after the show.
GELBART
This is for after the show. "This is for me. I did all this for you. Now this is for me." And he would down that drink, and there would be a sandwich waiting him, but I mean a sandwich. There was a Sherpa on top. It was huge, from one of the nearby delis. He would eat that, wash it down with this slug, and then vomit.
COLLINGS
Really?
GELBART
He put out so much, he had taken so much in, there was lots he had to let go of.
COLLINGS
Wow.
GELBART
I mean, it was—
COLLINGS
That's amazing.
GELBART
—incredible, yes. It was incredible, the expenditure of all kinds of energy.Then we'd all go to a restaurant called Danny's Hideaway, which was a very popular place with celebrities in New York in those years. Upstairs, Sid would rent the entire upstairs, and there would be more drinking, more red-meat eating, more "That was funny when you this, and that was funny when you that," a postmortem, but very good-natured, and he was very generous. I mean, the stuff really flowed.Then Sunday you'd get the phone calls, "I liked this. I didn't like that. Why did you do that? That sketch was too long. That was hysterical. That was this," from your friends, from your family, to each other.And then Monday morning, "Well, what are we going to do?" Thirty-nine times.
COLLINGS
Did you ever wake up Monday saying, "You know, I don't feel very funny today"?
GELBART
That's okay, because other people would be funny.
COLLINGS
Okay. So it kind of evened out that way?
GELBART
Yes, in a room— Let's see. There was Sid. There was Carl. Howie would normally be in there, the late Howie, unfortunately, now as we speak. Mel Tolkin, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, me, Sheldon Keller, Gary Belkin, Mike Stewart, so that's ten people, right, and Sid's brother Dave, who rarely spoke, but was a darling man. So if you weren't particularly on your game, someone out of the eleven people would be, or three or four or five of them.
COLLINGS
So did shows tend to sort of organically shift from one writer to another in terms of where the spark really came from for that week?
GELBART
It might, it might, it might. But different writers had different specialties. Mel Brooks never, never really said a funny line. Mel never just made a joke, pitched a joke. Mel, it's a rare talent that he has, could get up and do maybe three or four or five minutes, all connected, all working, all complete, but all coming from some place in him that no one else has inside them.
COLLINGS
So was it fun?
GELBART
It was fun. It was torture. It was everything in between.
COLLINGS
So after the thirty-nine shows, you didn't even consider renewing, is that right?
GELBART
No, I did. I did two seasons, so what is that, seventy-eight? No. No. I didn't consider it because I think there was a dispute at the end about next year's money. I remember getting angry, and I remember saying to his representative, "Take a look at the phone number that you're calling me from. That's what I want next time every week, those six numbers, seven numbers." [laughs]But then I did come back and do two specials with him. He called me a couple years later and he said that he was going to do two specials, they were called, hour-long revues for Chevrolet, and he said, "Will you do them? Will you be responsible for the writing?"I said, "But without everybody, Sid. I can't do the room anymore. I still haven't gotten the cigars out of my clothes. I can't go back in the room like that again. I love everybody, but—."So he said, "Okay. I'll write it with you, you and me."I said, "Okay, terrific." You know this story?
COLLINGS
No, no.
GELBART
Do you want to go back?
COLLINGS
Was the room, sort of the energy of the room, an important thing for his show?
GELBART
Oh, sure, that energy. Well, first of all, there's his energy, and his is the kind of energy that a dynamo has even when it's running very low, or you know what I'm saying, even when it's not on full power.
COLLINGS
Yes, it's just kind of idling along.
GELBART
It's just the strength of him. That's right.
COLLINGS
And it's just there.
GELBART
You're also talking about at least a half a dozen very high-powered energy-type energized people. So that, those, combined with the time factor, you've got to get it, you've got to get it, you've got to— There's no, "What if we don't get it?" There's, "When are we going to get it? And if we don't get it, let's start on something that's wrong but that might kick us into something that's right." Yes, the energy. That's why Sunday was—
COLLINGS
Did he always work like that, with sort of this intense crew in a room cooking the show all week?
GELBART
Sure, sure.
COLLINGS
Was that his method?
GELBART
Well, he had been, a vital part of Your Show of Shows. The linchpin there was Max Leibman, who was a very, very experienced writer, producer, director, and he created the atmosphere where people just came up with it, came up with it, came up with it. Show of Shows was far more remarkable than Caesar's Hour. They did, for I don't know how many years, thirty-nine per year entire revues, sketches, monologues, musical comedy, dance, ballet, modern dance, and classical music. Incredible.
COLLINGS
Yes, vaudeville in a box, I think you said about something else.
GELBART
When vaudeville died, television was the box they put it in. But Max had had his training in the Mountains.
COLLINGS
Oh, in the Catskills?
GELBART
In the Catskills, and he was used to putting on live shows. But nobody ever put on thirty-nine in a row, in a row, with the manpower, the womanpower, the thinking power. Incredible.
COLLINGS
Actually, that reminds me of something else that you had said. Oh yes. You said to Sid Caesar, "I wanted to write for the comedians who didn't come out of movies and radios and was a pure television performer." I was wondering why—
GELBART
I said that?
COLLINGS
It's in something.
GELBART
Okay. I guess I said it. The nicest thing—
COLLINGS
I don't know. If you did say it, what—
GELBART
No, no. I'll take credit for it. You know that nice Bob Hope thing that happened?
COLLINGS
Which one?
GELBART
The oil wells?
COLLINGS
What do you mean?
GELBART
Sid got a telegram from Bob Hope, just a gratuitous one out of the blue. Because I'd left Bob and come to New York and done a couple of years, and then I went to work for Sid. Sid got this telegram, he showed it to me, it said, "Will trade you two oil wells for Larry Gelbart," which was really nice, really nice.
COLLINGS
Wow. Yes. Did he think about it? [mutual laughter]
GELBART
No. No, he knew he got the best deal, because oil wells go dry.Energy, energy, energy. No? Are we past energy?
COLLINGS
Oh, no, you can talk about energy.
GELBART
No, no, no, no, no. I don't know what more to say. He just had some very energetic— Well, look, if you're talking about energy, I'm still active. Mel Brooks came up with that show [The Producers], which is an amazing success. Neil Simon is still working. Carl Reiner is always doing this book, the next book, the one after that. Woody [Allen], of course, keeps turning out movie after movie after movie. Only Sid, strangely, has been forced to slow up, but that's physical.
COLLINGS
Isn't he quite old, though?
GELBART
Well—
COLLINGS
But even before that?
GELBART
He's eighty, Sid's eighty or eighty-one, but he got laid low by bad backs, bad knees. Sid needs a walker. He's not in very good shape. But those who are physically fit are still turning it out, pounding it out. So I guess we had what we have now, plus what we didn't have then all these years in between.
COLLINGS
Well, it was also a very energized period, too. It was after the war and—
GELBART
Exactly.
COLLINGS
—the economy is expanding.
GELBART
Exactly, exactly, exactly.
COLLINGS
The advertising business is booming.
GELBART
And the industry is new, and that energizes you because—
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
And New York. New York is a Duracell metropolis. I mean, you're just alive there, or you're dead.
COLLINGS
Yes. The United States is the king of the world.
GELBART
Well, we did have the nuclear threat. That sort of hung over us. But we had a desk to hide under, so how could that hurt us?
COLLINGS
Yes, you had "duck and cover," no problem.
GELBART
Yes, right, right. [mutual laughter]
COLLINGS
What about the blacklist? I mean, talking about the fifties, I know you weren't blacklisted or anything, but—
GELBART
I wasn't. The blacklist worked in New York, too. There was a writer that was on The Red Buttons Show who had been blacklisted. His name was Sam Locke, and I don't remember how it came about that he was allowed to continue working on it, but he was definitely— Didn't we talk about the blacklist last time?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
At all?
COLLINGS
Maybe just mentioned it in passing or something.
GELBART
My wife was in a Broadway show, in the original production of The Pajama Game with an actor named Stanley Prager, and Stanley was called downtown to appear before some committee, and somebody said to George Abbott, the producer, "Are you going to fire him?"He said, "Hell, no. I just want him at night at eight-thirty." There were some sensible people.
COLLINGS
But it didn't operate quite the same way in the theater world?
GELBART
No. But it was there. It was definitely there. had a firsthand experience with it on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Did I tell you this? Jerome Robbins?
COLLINGS
Yes, Jerome Robbins had named the wife of—
GELBART
Jack Gilford's wife.
COLLINGS
Yes, and ruined her career.
GELBART
Ended it.
COLLINGS
Ended it.
GELBART
Yes. But I remember, I may not have told you, when Hal Prince, the producer of Forum, said to Zero [Mostel], "Will you work with Jerome Robbins?"And Zero said, "The Left doesn't boycott," which was a great line. Then he said, "Do I have to have coffee with him?"
COLLINGS
Well, that's a different question, isn't it? [mutual laughter]
GELBART
A little less grand. That's not on the statue.
COLLINGS
Would you like to break now?
GELBART
Sure.
COLLINGS
Okay.[tape recorder off]
GELBART
Regarding the atmosphere in the room, we who know it, we who experience it, or anybody who experiences a very particular set of circumstances, always finds it hard to explain that experience to someone else.
COLLINGS
Sure.
GELBART
In 19— I don't know the date, but about six or seven years ago, maybe more, it generally turns out to be that way. What I think is last week it will turn out to be 10 years ago. There is a tape, PBS has a tape, of a show called Caesar's Writers. We assembled at the Writers Guild of America on Doheny in our theater, and we had a seminar which included all of the writers that we're talking about, as well as Sid and Carl. Someone at the last moment thought, "What a good idea to tape this," and it was a good idea. If you see this show, you get a real sense of how it was in the room, the electricity. I may have sent one over to UCLA, I'm not sure.
COLLINGS
I'll take a look.
GELBART
The connectedness, the what's often described as a feeling of almost a jazz band, of people bouncing off one another, picking up a note, or in this case a word, and everyone is totally in character. I mean Mel is Mel. I know I'm stuck with being me. It's the only thing I know more so than— Although Laughter on the 23rd Floor was a damned good job of fictionalizing this factual experience. But here are the real people being their real selves, and it's very much what the room was like.
COLLINGS
Have you ever had an experience like that since then, or was this unique?
GELBART
It was unique to be able to record.
COLLINGS
No, the writing room, that intense writing room.
GELBART
Oh, the writing room, have I ever had an experience that way?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Well, it's hard when you work at home. [laughs]
COLLINGS
So you never gravitated back to that kind of thing ever again?
GELBART
No, no, no. Once you do a considerable amount of work yourself, as much as you're allowed to do in the city without people giving you notes, it's very hard to go back into that. I think part of it has to do with where you are in life and in terms of experience.
COLLINGS
Age.
GELBART
Age, certainly. That's it.
COLLINGS
This is a very mundane question, but when the show was being shot live, would they cut away to live performances of the commercials?
GELBART
Oh, that's interesting. Yes, that has happened. That would have happened.
COLLINGS
That is how they did it.
GELBART
I think so. There might have been prepared ones so that they were perfectly what they wanted. I know there were many, many live performances of a commercial.
COLLINGS
Because if the commercials were live, they could kind of pick up a little flavor of the—
GELBART
The show.
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Well, certainly. Yes, but they might not have been done in the same studio.
COLLINGS
Oh, I see.
GELBART
They might have been done next door.
COLLINGS
Okay.
GELBART
I remember on The Red Buttons Show, which was sponsored by Maxwell House Coffee, that Red held a cup with some instant powder in the cup, and someone poured hot water in there, or poured a cup of coffee. In any case, the cup cracked and broke. Right on camera.
COLLINGS
Oh, my gosh.
GELBART
So you can imagine. The longest recorded laugh in radio is the one that happened on the Fred Allen Show.
COLLINGS
Which is what?
GELBART
Which is when he was interviewing someone who had a trained eagle with him, or just an eagle with him, and he was talking about the eagle and what he does and so forth, and the bird took off and circled the audience and did what eagles do on several members of the audience.
COLLINGS
Oh, my gosh. The good old days of live radio and TV.
GELBART
Right. You heard it here.
COLLINGS
Yes, you heard it here.
GELBART
Remember SPERDVAC. That's the radio guys, in case you ever—
COLLINGS
Oh, oh, yes. Okay. Yes.
GELBART
S-P-E-R-D-E-V-A-C, something like that. They're on the Internet. Of course, Google them.
COLLINGS
Yes, I will.[End of July 12, 2005 interview]

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
September 28, 2005

COLLINGS
This is Jane Collings interviewing Larry Gelbart on September 28th, 2005. This is tape five, side one.Good morning, Larry.
GELBART
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
COLLINGS
We ended up talking— Last time we sort of finished up your time in New York.
GELBART
Okay.
COLLINGS
Unless you felt like there was something you wanted to add to that.
GELBART
I have no memory of what we said.
COLLINGS
We were talking about working on Caesar's Hour.
GELBART
We probably— It's such a lingering sort of memory that we'd probably return to it when we're in another city or another time.
COLLINGS
Sure. And you head off to London on the Queen Mary.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
I've got a picture of the Queen Mary here for you, just for fun.
GELBART
Oh, my gosh. It was wonderful.
COLLINGS
I was just wondering what it was like to—
GELBART
Well, for me it was interesting because many years before, I'd gone over on the Queen Elizabeth when I worked with Bob Hope, so I had the privilege of being on both Queens, not that they were that much different, but just this was nothing I would ever have dreamt I would ever do in my lifetime. So this time— Did I tell you the whole getting there? Did I talk about coming out here for Gary's Bar Mitzvah?
COLLINGS
No, no, none of it, not at all.
GELBART
Oh, so we're just on the ship when we left. Well, how we got to the ship was this. There was going to be a West End production of Forum in London, of course, and we were living at the farm. My stepson Gary [Markowitz] turned thirteen and had been preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, which was going to happen in California, because his father lived here and for a lot of reasons it was thought that we would do it here. So knowing I was coming to California, I made an arrangement with— I had been approached by Danny Kaye, who was going to begin his series. Did we talk about that at all?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
CBS wanted to know if I'd be interested in working on the series, and I said, "No, I wouldn't be," because for a lot of reasons, but I said I was going to be in California for a limited number of weeks, and I could work on the first one or two shows. So we made the kind of arrangement where prior to coming to California, I spent about four weeks outlining what I thought would be possible character situations. It was a variety show, re-doable segments, departments, so to speak, for this one-hour variety show. Then when I got to California, I actually spent four weeks in the writing room.So we set off from New York, my wife, the five children, the youngest of which was Becky, who graduated with honors from UCLA.
COLLINGS
Just recently?
GELBART
Not that recently. She's forty-two, I think, now.Anyway, to go from the little town of Ghent, New York, to California, there was no way we were all going to get on an airplane, and we were—
COLLINGS
Why was that?
GELBART
Well, we had our tickets for the Queen Elizabeth. We were going to California for one month. I don't know why. It was nothing like, "Oh, let's not all go on the same plane," because we'd never been like that.
COLLINGS
Okay. Just wondering.
GELBART
No. But I don't know why we did it. But here's the picture. We have to go from Ghent, about a thirty-five-minute ride to Albany for the train, for the train that would take us first to Chicago, and then you always had to change trains in Chicago and with about a four- or five-hour layover, and then you would take the other train, the second train, to Los Angeles.So there we are, five children, the youngest of whom is Becky, she's eight weeks old, she's on formula, so there's ice chests and what have you, and forty-five pieces of baggage and two steamer trunks. It's the first time and only time in my life I was charged overweight at a train terminal. You can only imagine what it would have been had we flown. It was really staggeringly crazy.But we got to California, I did my work, then we got on the train again, went back the other way, spent one night in a motel on the West Side, and then got over to the ship and hired—you could do that; I'm sure you could still do that—a nurse to look after Becky, and not a governess, an actual nurse, to sit with Becky, who wasn't old enough yet to put on dinner diapers and sit at the captain's table with us.
COLLINGS
Did you sit at the captain's table?
GELBART
Once, yes. What made life comfortable—I think we must have covered this—was the fact that I had for the first time in my life a show that was running every week on Broadway; Forum, that is.So we got to England. Now we can take it from wherever you want.
COLLINGS
One thing I just wanted to ask you, which is not part of the chronology, but you always seem to have been very involved with your family and the kids and these cross-country trips with all the luggage and stuff. I just wondered how you were able to kind of balance your writing life and your work life with all of that. It's usually a question that women are asked, but, I don't know, it's just like in your stories you always seem to be mentioning the family, and I just thought I would ask.
GELBART
They're the longest running show in my life, my family is, being in its nearly fiftieth year, and you know you're much more involved with your kids than you are with employers and co-workers. You put in more hours with your family, if you're smart, and who is that at that age?But anyway, I think one of the things that helped was my early training, primarily with Bob Hope, because that was always packing and unpacking and writing under the most outrageous and disruptive kind of settings, but you just learn to deliver, and I learned to deliver without warlike situations going on, just because you have to— It's not that you have to learn how to deal with your family, you have to just successfully kind of shuffle these cards so that you're in the right place at the right time.I know a man, a writer who lived in New York, and he was equally up to his navel in family, and he fixed his attic as a studio where he worked. He would have breakfast with his children, then put on his hat, which people wore in those days, pick up his briefcase and go out the front door. Then, when they left for school a minute later, he would sneak back into the house. Then, he went upstairs, so they never knew that Dad was home all that time or he probably wouldn't have gotten those private moments.But, you know, I think people who do what I do, and there are a lot of them, there's a lot of work that goes on consciously when you're with your kids, and probably even a good deal more unconsciously, so that you're present and you're attentive, but some part of you is working anyway.
COLLINGS
Do you think that you got material for your writing from your family life?
GELBART
I got plant food. I don't know. I can't point to any— I got a lot of anecdotes, but I don't remember ever employing actual situations. In fact, I rather resist those, because, for me, it's enough to live them. I don't have to write them and then relive them.
COLLINGS
Relive them over and over.
GELBART
Or have somebody say, "You got that wrong." Anyway.
COLLINGS
So we didn't talk about how you got involved in the Forum project. Something I read, you had said that it was the work that you were most pleased with. I can't think when you wrote that or if you would still stand by that.
GELBART
I wrote— I became involved. When I first came to New York to work on the Red Buttons Show, did we do all that?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Okay. There was a director on that show, the director of that show was a man named Burt, B-u-r-t, Shevelove. You've maybe seen that name.
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
I always say B-u-r-t, or whenever I say it, I remember that he was always upset when people spelled it B-e-r-t. We once both shared an honor, a Christopher Award, a kind of a prestigious prize for something we had done in television, and Burt sent a note to the organization saying, "Remember, it's Burt, with a U." When his prize came it said "Bert, B-e-r-t, Capital U, period. Shevelove." [laughs].I envied Burt because he was very, very smart, educated, highly educated, very sophisticated. Years before we met at Brown University—he was about ten years my senior or maybe a bit more—Burt had done a— He always had the notion that the comedies of Plautus could be adapted for a modern audience along the lines of what eventually became Forum, and he did a college musical based on plays which he selected for culling and expanding.He asked if I would be interested in writing a Broadway production based on Plautus, and I didn't have a clue, did not have a clue what he meant. But he was very charismatic and endlessly entertaining, and he also enlisted Stephen Sondheim to work on the score. It was the first for Steve. He had only done lyrics then, so he would do both. And Steve didn't know much more about what Burt was talking about than I did, but over a period of time, I began to get it, I began to get the assignment. That was in, the late fifties, and we worked on the show for five years, and it was a tough, tough— First it was a tough job realizing it as Burt had envisioned it, and maybe some changes took place where he began to see the students catching up with the teacher, but it became an even harder sell because a one-set musical with a limited number of people in it, not a big chorus line for those days, and smacking of the classics, you know, togas, wreaths, kitons— People didn't really appreciate for a long time how broad it was, how vulgar in the best sense it was. Time magazine called it a "good clean dirty show".But it was really, really an education. I've said it before and I just know that it taught me so much about writing something that lasted more than twelve minutes or more than twenty minutes and plot. It is a cat's cradle in terms of plot, a Rubik's cube, really. So it was educational, it was profitable, and eventually became very prideful. How many people still do it? It's in its fourth decade, fifth, actually. I tell people we used copper plumbing in building that show.
COLLINGS
Excuse me, I'm not a student of third century Roman comedy, but—
GELBART
Go ahead. Pre-Christian third century.
COLLINGS
Oh, oh, really?
GELBART
Well, Titus, T-i-t-u-s, Maccius, M-a-c-c-i-u-s, Plautus, P-l-a-u-t-u-s, was the most famous. Terence was famous, of course, but Plautus was famous for comedies. Borrowing techniques from the Greeks and inventing a great deal of his own devices, he invented comedy, if one can be said to invent an entertainment form. I mean, people have always laughed, probably laughed before we spoke, you know, and then we cried.
COLLINGS
That's a funny idea.
GELBART
Yes. Well, it's easier to do that than to say, "Darling, I'm leaving you." I started with "Pass the ketchup," then I got on to more important matters. [mutual laughter]If you'll make a note, I'll give you a piece I wrote for the most recent production in London of the piece, in which I discuss what Platus did and what our assignment was. I know you'd rather have it oral.
COLLINGS
No, that's okay.
GELBART
But it's just for you to know. It was daunting, and finally, although we never boasted about it because we didn't want to put audiences off, but I mean, it really was quite a scholarly work.
COLLINGS
What from the comedy of that period were you able to keep and what had to be changed for the twentieth century sensibility?
GELBART
Nothing. Nothing. I mean, two Romans meet on the street in a Plautine play, and one says to the other, "How's your wife?"The other says, "Immortal."
COLLINGS
Now, is that actually—
GELBART
That's an actual joke.
COLLINGS
Okay, I actually have this written down specifically, because I thought is this really from that time?
GELBART
Yes, that's really from that time.
COLLINGS
Because that sounds so fifties.
GELBART
Yes, of course. Because what changes? Marriage doesn't change. Men and women don't change. Relationships don't change. They can be stretched, stressed, strained, advanced, retarded, but basically it's somebody getting along — or not— with somebody else.Steve used— You may have this down there, too, I don't know. But Steve used an actual— We didn't use that joke, but Steve used an actual phrase that's spoken by the braggart warrior in an old Plautus play, and we used it, too. He used it lyrically where the guy sings, "I am a parade." When the audience laughed at that, they were laughing at a line that they had laughed at twenty-five hundred years earlier.
COLLINGS
Wow, that's astonishing.
GELBART
There is really nothing new under the sun— or the spotlight.
COLLINGS
It also shows you the continuity of our particular civilization with the Roman civilization.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Because if you'd taken something from, what, third century B.C. and some other culture—
GELBART
Yes, Mesopotamia.
COLLINGS
—it might not have.
GELBART
Exactly, exactly.
COLLINGS
Actually, here's some of the lines from one of the opening.
GELBART
From Comedy Tonight.
COLLINGS
Comedy Tonight, exactly. The reason I Xeroxed it was because there's such a mix of themes, and it actually sort of reminded me of, looking ahead, M*A*S*H, the way M*A*S*H is.
GELBART
Yes. You could look at anything I've done after this and see this in it. In "The Wrong Box", definitely, yes. Well, it just talks about every universal, timeless stupidity, cupidity, and, of course, like the best social comment, everybody in the United States you're talking about somebody else.
COLLINGS
What was it like working with Stephen Sondheim, by the way?
GELBART
Not pleasant, and he's the first to admit it. He was very young. When the first production opened in May of 1962, nobody made much of a fuss about the score at all or they didn't make that much of a fuss about the book, to some degree. It was the Zero Mostel show. Then in '72, we had revival, and without Zero Mostel's looming presence, people said, "Oh, what a great book. What an astonishing book." Now, when it's played anywhere, it's the Stephen Sondheim musical, because his fame has increased so in the forty-year— plus interval.Usually, the problem with Forum as a musical is that it works without the score. It's like a Marx Brothers movie, which used to have musical relief rather than serious pieces which have comic relief. Forum had musical relief, and Steve knew that his songs were just really not all that essential. They didn't move the plot. They might celebrate a moment, but they were not what he wanted his music to be, his songs to be, and he was quite right about that. But he's very generous in attributing a lot of credit to Burt, who was, himself, an accomplished lyricist. Often he cites as his two influences Oscar Hammerstein III and Burt Shevelove. With a U.
COLLINGS
Burt, U, Shevelove, okay, I'll remember that.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
How do you feel about the film adaptation of the—
GELBART
"Forum?" Very, very negatively. It was a terrible adaptation. They felt compelled, as screenwriters often do, to in some cases earn their salary, and others say, "I can improve upon this." I thought it was a mess. When they show it on television, they invariably cut off the first half hour in which all the exposition is laid out. So I don't know what anybody coming to this show as a television show even thinks is happening, can't imagine what's happening.
COLLINGS
Now the title itself is something entirely contemporary, I'm assuming.
GELBART
That was Burt again. We worked on it for years with the working title, A Roman Comedy. We didn't know what to call it, and then Burt came up with this title one day because "A funny thing happened" is a stock comedy line. I don't know if I told you Arthur Leow, Jr., an old friend of mine and a very nice, nice, nice man, he wanted to become a comedian, even though he was heir to the Leow fortunes, the movie Leows, the MGM Leows, L-e-o-w-s. But he wanted to be a comedian, and on one occasion he worked a flood benefit. Some things just never stop, do they?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
In upstate California, there was a terrible flood, houses, everything washed away, and Arthur's opening line was, "A funny thing happened to the theater on its way to me tonight." But I think the musical kept the phrase alive, because you see it used all the time now.
COLLINGS
So it sounds like up to this point, your really seminal experiences were, of course, Duffy's, which was like the first one.
GELBART
Duffy's, yes.
COLLINGS
Bob Hope.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Caesar's Hour.
GELBART
No, Caesar— Yes, Caesar's Hour. Right, I'm sorry.
COLLINGS
And this. Those were kind of the main—
GELBART
The peaks.
COLLINGS
The peaks when you were really learning.
GELBART
Right. Yes, and to this day, if anybody says, "What did you learn?" I wouldn't be able to tell them, but I know whatever it was that I did works in whatever I'm working on.
COLLINGS
I was kind of struck by what you said when you were talking about coming back to California for the Bar Mitzvah, and you said, "So I worked in the room," the writing room, and it just seems like the writing room, the atmosphere of the writing room is really important to you.
GELBART
It was. It was.
COLLINGS
I've got something from your files where you're talking about the Marty Feldman Show.
GELBART
Oh, right.
COLLINGS
You're writing to somebody and you're saying— You're writing to Lew Grade, Sir Lew Grade.
GELBART
Sir Lew.
COLLINGS
Yes. You're saying, "Contributing writers certainly, but a great number of bodies all sitting in a room together and pitching material endlessly is an absolute must."
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
So that sounds like a very important creative setting for you.
GELBART
Yes, depending on the project. Yes, sure.
COLLINGS
Okay. So you also worked on—
GELBART
I must have been asking him to bring some writers over, rather than just having them send the material.
COLLINGS
Yes, you were saying that it's really hard to find like a really good pool of writers. That's fine to pick up people here and there, but you wanted to get a good stable of writers.
GELBART
Yes. Grade accommodated us.
COLLINGS
So what about The Wrong Box? That's something you worked on with Burt, U, Shevelove also.
GELBART
A man named John Fernley, F-e-a-r-n-l-e-y, a friend of Burt's, but I knew him as well, he worked for Richard Rodgers the composer, and he said to Burt one night, "You know what you guys should do next?" (Meaning after Forum.) You should do a movie based on The Wrong Box." Burt didn't know it, which surprised me, because I thought he knew everything that had ever been printed.We got a copy of it and read it, and agreed that it was indeed the basis for a comedy. It's written by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, with a U. Osbourne was Stevenson's nineteen-year-old stepson. He had written a draft of a book called The Wrong Box, and he showed it to the old man and he said, "You got any ideas about this? Any notes?" So the guy wrote it— "The guy." Stevenson read it and wound up collaborating. I guess he had a lot of notes. So Burt and I wrote a screen adaptation. Burt wanted to call this one When Anti-disestablishmentarianism Was in Flower.
COLLINGS
That's a funny title.
GELBART
Yes, but we thought The Wrong Box would fit on a marquee a little more snugly.It didn't take long to write, and, again, our Forum training helped because it's got a lot of characters and each of those characters has his own relationships, and then, of course, the fun is in the confluence of all of these people, characters, and situations coming together.We went to Columbia Pictures. They interested Bryan Forbes, who was a hot director then. That created a bit of a problem, because Bryan wanted to work with his wife in the film, and she was older and, shall we say, not as comely as the part as written by Stevenson and Osbourne and the two of us.
COLLINGS
For the daughter?
GELBART
Yes. And that meant we had to cast the leading man older. We had originally thought of someone like Michael Crawford, who had been Hero in the motion picture version of Forum. This is pre-pre-pre-Phantom [of the Opera], obviously. But we had to go to Michael Caine, who was wonderful.
COLLINGS
Yes, he was.
GELBART
Terrific, but a bit older, and so that got the whole piece a bit skewed because this was really a battle of the innocence versus the—
COLLINGS
But it sort of made it look as if she'd been in isolation for a rather long time.
GELBART
That, too.The show was a wonderful experience for me because I got to work with some remarkable actors. I mean who would ever dream I would be standing on the set with Sir Ralph Richardson and he's asking, "May I change this maybe to a perhaps?" He said, "It fits a little more trippingly on the tongue." And a host, a host, of British people, many of whom I never ever heard of because there was such local favorites, and not least of all Peter Sellers, who did two scenes in the movie which are probably as good as anything he ever did in any movies.The picture was not that well received in England. I think they're very possessive of their literary rights, and two Yanks futzing around with their authors, I don't think sat very well. But it was much better received critically here. But of course, in typical Hollywood studio bookkeeping tradition, Burt and I deferred some of our payment, and the movie still hasn't broken even forty years on.But that was a good experience, a really good experience. What soured it a bit was something that no one could have foreseen. Burt and I had a private falling-out, and that took place during the filming of that movie, which makes it a sad sort of asterisk. It's a droopy asterisk, if somebody can come up with an icon for that.
COLLINGS
Because it was the end of the working relationship.
GELBART
It was the end of the work, and personal. It was so funny, Burt Shevelove, Burt— I want to say "with a U" every time now. Burt with a me and Steve, we said— No, Burt and I said, "What do we next after Forum?" And we both agreed that what might make an interesting play was one that dealt with a couple of authors who had a very successful show and then reunited a year later, or tried to, to write another piece and found out that they really couldn't really stand each other. And sure enough, that's what happened to us. We didn't have to write it; we lived it. Not that we didn't stand each other, we just—
COLLINGS
Just the chemistry just wasn't there.
GELBART
No, it wasn't chemistry. I had done something very destructive, and he helped me, and so we blew the partnership out of the water.
COLLINGS
So Marty Feldman. Do you want to talk a little bit about the comedies?
GELBART
Sure.
COLLINGS
You're living in England.
GELBART
I'm living in England.
COLLINGS
There you are in England.
GELBART
I'm not doing much of anything.
COLLINGS
So you get over there, and I was just wondering if you could just remember anything. You were over there and it was like mod, mod England at the time.
GELBART
It was fabulous.
COLLINGS
What was it like to live over there at that time?
GELBART
Well, if I ever get around to doing half the things I would like to do, I'd like to write a film about that period, because it was sensational. There were a lot of expats there, some because they'd been blacklisted in America, some because they wanted people to think they'd been blacklisted in America.
COLLINGS
Oh, really?
GELBART
Well, Yes, there was a certain—
COLLINGS
What an interesting phenomenon.
GELBART
There was that phenomenon called subpoena envy, you know.
COLLINGS
Oh, that's so funny.
GELBART
Not mine, but it's very apt.It was a wonderful time. We lived in Knightsbridge first for about a year, and then we moved to an area called Highgate, which is right near Hampstead, and we had a wide circle— Several wide circles, one the other Americans that were there, and even more refreshing in a way, English people with no connection to the business.We stayed in the UK for almost nine years. I didn't do much work there. I was certainly not the first person anybody was going to call any more than English people get calls here from American companies. I don't know what I did.
COLLINGS
You watched TV.
GELBART
I watched TV. I watched TV, because it really was watchable and listenable, given the appreciation of the language which they have. I even read newspapers for the same reason.I came back here on a couple of occasions and wrote pilots for rent money and put it in my suitcase and came back to England with it. But the first real employment was Marty Feldman. An American company, headed by producer Greg Garrison, who just died, but then I could say that about almost everybody I know all too often, they came over there and—
COLLINGS
Here's a picture of Marty Feldman, if you need to refresh your memory.
GELBART
I first met Marty Feldman— He needs no refreshing. Somebody once said, "I sneaked up on Marty Feldman. I walked right straight up to him." Marty was a comedy writer, with a partner named Barry Took, T-double-o-k. They did some work for Frankie Howerd.Oh, my god. Are you going to leave these?
COLLINGS
Yes, you can have those, sure.
GELBART
Okay. Marty Feldman—Marty wrote for Frankie Howerd, with an E, Howerd with an E, very famous British comedian, who starred in Forum in London and also did some radio work, and Marty worked for him. I met him that way, and we were friends for many, many, many years, because he eventually moved back here. Marty had been in a BBC television show called At Last in 1941 Show, with John Cleese and some of the other future Pythonites, or Pythons [Monty Python's Flying Circus]. He was a good writer, a good comedy writer, and of course he had this bizarre face, which led him to performing.How it became the Marty Feldman show is a little bit tortured, and I don't know, boring, I think, but we did thirteen one-hour shows financed by Lew Grade in London for ITV and co-financed by the American Broadcasting Company here. We did thirteen, I think, very original shows. A compilation of them won a rather prestigious award in Switzerland called the Montreaux Rose [Rose d'Or].I think you know I imported Barry Levinson and Rudy De Luca as writers from here, a fellow named Shelly Keller.
COLLINGS
You wanted to have an American face in each show, too, right?
GELBART
Right.
COLLINGS
You wanted to sort of pitch it to an American audience in that way?
GELBART
Yes, you're right. I remember. So we'd have a guest such as—and I just saw her name in the paper in connection with Don Adams' death—Barbara Feldon. She did a show. Groucho Marx did a show. Orson Welles did a show.I think the highlight of my life, absolutely, and if I ever have to fill in a questionnaire, whichever gate I'm in front of, the hot one or the cold one, we had Orson Welles on the show, but this was Orson Welles in his "Give me a check and I'll say anything or do anything" days.
COLLINGS
Well, at least it's clear what the ground rules are.
GELBART
Yes, yes, that's right. It said, "whore" right over his door.But anyway, there was a scene he was in, sitting down, of course, and he was getting it wrong. He was getting the line wrong. So I said, "I wonder if you could maybe get a little more—."He said, "Give me a reading." Now, you know that's something you're never supposed to do with an actor. You give an actor a reading, and they say, "What am I, a parrot?" "What am I, a ventriloquist's dummy?" "I'll say the line. I'll interpret it." But he was so on the money and for the money, he said, "Give me a reading." Well, that was as good as Cary Grant saying to me once at an Oscar ceremony, "I love your tuxedo." So I can die now.
COLLINGS
Boy, now you've got two highlights.
GELBART
Two, two highlights, one sartorial and one creative.So we did the shows. They were good. They were ambitious. They were different. We talked Terry Gilliam into doing the credits for us and even the odd spot. He was a little reluctant to do that because he felt he owed his—and he did—his allegiance and his creativity to the Python show, which was on at the same time. In fact, Eric Idle was one of our original writers on the Feldman show, and he backed off, too, because it was a little like them and not enough like them and whatever. Interesting experience.
COLLINGS
It sounds like it was fun.
GELBART
It was fun, and Marty would do anything.
COLLINGS
For some reason, it doesn't sound as tortured as the Caesar Hour.
GELBART
Well, it wasn't. It wasn't. It wasn't. No, it wasn't as tortured. It was much— Well, Sid's show was very New York nervous.
COLLINGS
That's what I'm thinking. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the sort of the light kind of brittleness of English humor, versus that dark undercurrent that you can find in American humor.
GELBART
Yes, it did. Yes. Well, just look at the stars. Sid was a— I mean Marty was no less complicated, but one was a kind of a clown, Marty, and Sid was a— There was a broodiness. He was a brooder. But there's no question which was the better one, which was the better show. It was certainly Caesar's Hour.
COLLINGS
Why do you think it was better?
GELBART
Better written. I mean, Marty just couldn't take one step away from getting out from behind his face. I mean, Marty was Marty, and there was no losing that. Sid could cross his eyes, but he could uncross them. Or Sid could be walleyed, and then he could knock the wall down.
COLLINGS
He could do a lot of different things.
GELBART
Marty was— They say somebody's a one-joke comic or a one-trick pony. Marty was a one-face face, so you couldn't get much variety.
COLLINGS
I'm going to flip this.

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
September 28, 2005

GELBART
Marty was a solid movie buff. He really loved the balletics, and tried to emulate them as often as he could. There was one show we did near the end of a brief series of thirteen where he broke his hand, and being a very thoughtful person, the first thing I did was give him some brandy, which means he couldn't have any pain injection for about four hours. [laughs]
COLLINGS
Oh, god.
GELBART
I should be a second responder, never a first. [mutual laughter] I should give second aid.But yes, he was very physical, and he's— I don't know all the circumstances, but I don't believe he should have died in a hotel room. He had a heart attack in Mexico City, and it was forty-five minutes before a doctor got to him. So one thinks he probably should have gotten a better break.
COLLINGS
Yes, certainly. That's terrible.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Yes, that's very sad.How did you as a writer deal with all of the physical comedy in the show? I mean, was that something that you were—
GELBART
You write business.
COLLINGS
You wrote for those scenes as well?
GELBART
Oh, sure. You worked out what they used to call gags. You stand here, the building falls down, and you're in the opening and you don't get touched on either side. You write that, sure, and Marty could, too, which was wonderful.
COLLINGS
Because I know how interested you are in language and plays on words and things, but writing gags and sort of positioning people physically is something that's also an important part of what you do?
GELBART
I think so. There's a lot of it in M*A*S*H, actually, a lot of business. I mean, you're obliged to, although I— Woody Allen said that— St. Woody said that Groucho [Marx] is the only American comedian who developed two styles, physical and verbal, the walk and then, of course, his wit. But usually it's one or the other with comedians.
COLLINGS
Yes, that's what I think, yes. I don't have a particular question about this particular scene, but I just Xeroxed it. It's called "Nude Love Scenes," and it's about—
GELBART
Was this in the Marty Feldman show?
COLLINGS
Yes. It's at the time when people are starting to do nude scenes, and this is a takeoff of that.
GELBART
Peter Starkers. [laughs]
COLLINGS
Because it's discussing doing scenes—
GELBART
I remember that, yes.
COLLINGS
—fully clothed and how daring it is. I just thought it was really quite sardonic and—
GELBART
Good. I hope so.
COLLINGS
Very droll and witty. So I enjoyed it and I Xeroxed it.
GELBART
Thank you very much. I'll tell you an example of Marty's imagination and the irony of someone being so visually distorted.
COLLINGS
He has a thyroid condition, right?
GELBART
Yes, yes. It was a failed operation.
COLLINGS
Oh, how terrible.
GELBART
Yes, they weren't supposed to do that.
COLLINGS
Oh, really?
GELBART
But with that, he had this wonderful visual imagination. I guess I knew at the time how we accomplished it, although I can't remember now. But Marty envisioned this sketch, and we executed it successfully, wherein he played a silent movie star being interviewed on a television show. Do you know what I'm saying?
COLLINGS
No, I haven't seen this one.
GELBART
Everything on the show was in color, and he was in black and white. I guess we shot him in another studio and put him in there, popped him in. And not only was he in black and white, but he was kind of like—
COLLINGS
Wavering, flickering.
GELBART
—wavering like an old film, like an old lamp was flickering. It was brilliant.I remember Peter Starkers. Thank you.
COLLINGS
You're welcome.It really sounds like it must have been absolutely fantastic time to be working in television, like there was a lot of freedom.
GELBART
More.
COLLINGS
More?
GELBART
More freedom, more receptivity to different ideas. But now you can't say there's not more freedom with cable, and you can't say that some companies aren't very bold, but—
COLLINGS
I guess I meant like freedom to do this sort of absurd kind of off-the-cuff comedy, which—
GELBART
In England, certainly. In England, certainly. I mean American shows were much more earthbound. Show of Shows, good as it was, was really vaudeville and the [Catskill] Mountains and opera and dance, theater, all presented on the tube. The Bob Hope (TV) Show was the Bob Hope radio show, but they really did— Well, they did a lot of crap, too, when I think of it, but they're more imaginative.
COLLINGS
You have a really funny letter from Spike Milligan in your files.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
"Dear Larry, you will be hearing from my solicitor about this. If you think you can bribe me to writing with crummy meals in renovated coal cellars, you are wrong. Regards, Spike Milligan."
GELBART
Oh, Spike came on the Marty Feldman show. He was a regular. 1971.
COLLINGS
It's just a funny letter.
GELBART
Yes. Well, of course, he came on and he was on the show and he was funny, and for Marty to work with Spike Milligan would be the equivalent of a young comic today working with Jack Benny. I mean, Spike was an icon. He was one of the Crazy Gang. No, The Goons. The Goons with Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, and Michael Bentine and a guy named Harry Secombe.Spike lost me, unfortunately, later on in a social situation, in which he was so openly anti-Semitic, I almost hit him. I mean, he did kind of a Fagan-ish thing. He said, "What are you back in England for some more gelt?" Just terrible. And he was pretty mad, but fun until that, one thing popped out. Spike Milligan.
COLLINGS
So it sounds like you didn't get along that well with him.
GELBART
No, we got along. We got along. He was fine. He was fine. He, too, wanted the gelt. I mean, he, too. Like Orson Welles, I mean, here's a very— The most iconoclastic comedian in England, and here's a chance to pick up thirteen checks, which were generous, I believe, coming from an American company as they did. That doesn't happen often, then, and not everybody was Benny Hill with their own— Although Spike did have a number of his own series.
COLLINGS
So there you are over in England. What were you thinking that was going to be the next chapter in your life? Were you thinking that you were just going to stay there a while or was there a plan brewing?
GELBART
There was a whim brewing. No, there was no plan. There was no plan. I've never been one for thinking ahead, only making the present the most entertaining I could.
COLLINGS
So you liked it over there in England?
GELBART
Oh, yes, I liked it very much. I liked it for a lot of reasons. I mean, American was in turmoil, the Vietnam War was on, our sons would have been drafted, or could have been drafted.
COLLINGS
Oh, how old were they at that time?
GELBART
Old enough to register for— And did register at the US Embassy.
COLLINGS
Were they protected by being in England?
GELBART
Yes. They were members of— They were part of the draft board in Washington, D.C., where many diplomats and other people are registered. Anyway, they were.
COLLINGS
So was that your primary reason for staying over there?
GELBART
No, we didn't go over there— When we went over there, there was no—
COLLINGS
No, but for staying?
GELBART
We stayed, we continued, yes. We were just well set up there and we liked it.
COLLINGS
But the draft thing, was that a key reason?
GELBART
That became a consideration, certainly, yes. Eventually, our three oldest children came back to America, and we stayed there with the two youngest, in case you can't do the math. I don't know how long we would have stayed if M*A*S*H hadn't come up, but we did stay.
COLLINGS
When M*A*S*H does come along, that's something that you write without a writing room, initially, isn't it?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Was that the first time?
GELBART
No. No, I had done a lot of stuff. I had done a lot of stuff, the odd things, without a writing room or a partner. I guess you could say it was the first most important— I wrote a play while I was in England called Jump, which was adored when I tried it out in Nottingham. Why they liked it in Nottingham, I'll never know.
COLLINGS
Interesting.
GELBART
I brought it into London at the Queen's Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue and they hated it. They said, "We don't know why this ever got to be a success in America." Well, it never did because it never played in America. But it was a very angry, funny play, funny.I did a number of other things while I was in England. I would do the odd movie script or the odd rewrite. I remember being asked to punch up the script that Terry Southern had written for Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr called the Magic Christian.
COLLINGS
So this was your first rewrite job then, is that right?
GELBART
No, not my first. No, the first rewrite job started back in the Hope days when his writing staff would take his movie scripts and ruin them. And then there was Notorious Landlady, which was a rewrite, essentially. No, I was used to that, but I was nobody's first choice to do anything, as I just said, because I was the odd man out, or one of the odd men out. I wrote a movie over there with a man that— I just wrote about this on a— There's a website called Writer Action, and I just finished a month of being asked questions in writing about career. I'll send you a copy if you want that.
COLLINGS
Yes, please.
GELBART
I'm going to print that out because the end of the month is nigh upon us. So that's two things I have to send you, Forum and W.A.
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
It's a movie called Not With My Wife You Don't, and what's odd about that is the other writer listed, two other writers, one is Norman Panama, who was the producer, director, and the other is Peter Barnes, who became a very, very prestigious author in England. His best play was The Ruling Class with Peter O'Toole. Fabulous writer.I did the odd things, and then, as I said, I would come back here. I wrote a pilot for Phil Silvers, which they considered putting on the air that actually went on— Everything went on the air. For Tim Conway, funny little jobs, and then I got the call to do—
COLLINGS
Did you feel like your career was going along as well as you—
GELBART
I never thought of a career.
COLLINGS
You never thought about it.
GELBART
I thought of how much money do we need, what do we need, what's the family situation? I never thought career. I knew I was missing steady work, not so much for the— Just to create work. It was in those years that Neil Simon established himself and Woody began doing a lot more than just writing jokes, and I thought, "You know, I should be doing more. I should not be just having pleasant walks on the heath."
COLLINGS
That sounds nice, though.
GELBART
It was nice. It was terrific. Well, I managed to have it both. I managed to be in sort of semi-retirement for seven or eight years and then I got the opportunity to write M*A*S*H and then I swung back into action. To say my batteries were recharged is to reflect the gift of understatement I picked up in England.The way that came about— Do you want to know how that came about?
COLLINGS
Sure, yes.
GELBART
A guy I've known for a lot of years, and still do, named Gene Reynolds, G-e-n-e, who was a child actor who went on to become a very, very, very successful television director/producer, he would come through England from time to time. Gene loved to travel. Whenever he got to London, we always had a meal, and on one of those occasions he said, "Is there anything that could bring you back, or would you come back for anything?"I said, "It would have to be something really, really special, and then I don't know about actually moving back there, but if you ever hear of something very, very special, give me a ring."Not too long from then, just a short while later, he said, "Have you seen a movie called M*A*S*H?" which was then in first run. I guess it was about ‘70, right, '71?I said, "As a matter of fact, I saw it last night in Leicester Square."He said, "What did you think?"I said, "I thought it was very, very good," the kind of movies that you'd see several of during the year in the old days on a Saturday. It was brave. Somebody said, "fuck," and somebody was anti-government. I said, "On that score it was quite different, but it's okay. It's good work."So he said, "Well, Bill Self," William Self, who is the head of, then, television for 20th Century Fox, "has asked CBS if they'd be interested in financing a pilot script based on the movie," which was kind of surprising because as a first-run movie, it's doing very well.I said, "On that one?"He said, "Yes."I said, "Yeah, yeah, that would be appealing, only if we can do the television equivalent of the freshness of it and the audacity of it. If they just want another kind of hijinks series about life in the service, we can't do that. We're in Vietnam. It's another climate."So he said, "Well, put that in the script."So I said, "Okay." I was working on the Feldman show. Have you read this somewhere? Am I repeating myself?
COLLINGS
No, no. I mean I know the chronology, but you're filling in details.
GELBART
Okay. So he said, "Well, why don't I come over, make you a deal, and then I'll come over and let's kick around planning the pilot episode." Gene was very good at story. "And we'll do it. You'll write the script, and then they'll decide whether they want to actually finance the filming of that script."So he came over, and I was working on a daily basis on the Feldman show, and much more so than I would have ever done just as the writer. I was the producer, blah, blah, blah. So he came over and we would meet between takes, for dinner, we walked the same pretty place on the heath, and we came up with this. I worked out a scene-by-scene breakdown of what the pilot episode would be.I remember we called CBS, a man named Allan Wagner, who was in charge of whatever, of getting long distance calls from people who were just walking the heath in North London.
COLLINGS
Yes, that's a very important position.
GELBART
Yes, that's right. And he said, "Good, I like it. Go. Do it."So Gene said, "Okay," and Gene left for America. And he was very, very patient. He never, never called and said, "How's it coming? How ya doing? What's happening?" Very good, wonderful, except about two months later.
COLLINGS
"Is it done?"
GELBART
"Is it done?" I'm in the control booth working with Marty, and it's Gene and he says, "How's it coming?"I said, "I just mailed it."He said, "Oh, great."But then I called up— I can't remember her last name, but her first name was Laurie, a woman that served as a secretary for a while for me at home. I said, "Come to my house. I have to write something very fast." So she came there, and in a couple days I did have a draft and I went to the all-night post office in Trafalgar Square and, in fact, mailed what I said I had mailed two days earlier, and I put two days' earlier date on the envelope or whatever, of the draft.
COLLINGS
Is this something you had a lot of stock in at that point, or was this just sort of another project at that time?
GELBART
Oh, I liked what I did. I didn't have a lot of stock in it. I didn't think it would go. Again, it was a very, very healthy fee. I liked the subject very much. It gave me a chance to say things about the war, Vietnam, of course, not Korea, that I was sort of denied the opportunity to, living in England. I could be at the odd protest about the Vietnam War, but this felt good. This felt like I was making some contribution to the anti-war movement.But I mean, we all know how many pilots are written, how many scripts are written, how many scripts are shot, how many scripts are shot down, how many— I didn't think, "Oh, boy, this is the one." Not at all.That was in late fall, and then CBS liked the script. They asked for certain modifications, not serious ones, I made them, and then they provided the funds to Fox to cast it, to make it.Gene said, "Would you come back for the shooting?"I said, "I'll come back for the reading with the cast and maybe a day or two of rehearsal, but I've got to get back." I don't know why I had to get back. Christmas, I guess, with the family was a good enough reason, and so I did.Oh, I think I made a deal with— I made a deal with CBS, and included in that deal was the writing of the script. I also promised them, or they wanted me to act as a consultant on two other shows, and I said, "I won't. Yes, but this way. Give me the scripts and let me make notes about what I think about the script. I don't want to be on the set. I don't even want you to tell the people where these notes are coming from. Let them be yours." And they agreed to that.But before I said yes to the whole thing, I called my wife and I said, "Let's come back here. Let's come back." I said, "Everybody says, ‘Have a nice day.'" I was that naïve again about my own country. They say that now in a carjacking as they drive away, "Have a formerly nice day." I said, "It feels right, and it's sunny, it's bright." I was talking to her in the fall. It must have been pissing rain at her and as it always does, and gray. I said, "Come on, let's come back here." Three of the kids were in the states already, which was her— That's all she needed to know, really, as enough motivation.There was no such thing as a sure sale of M*A*S*H, I said, "But I do have this other work that I'll do for CBS," and this meant— We still had the farm in New York. This meant bypassing New York and coming back from England to California, and I think more than anything it was how physically comfortable California was after nine years, that is to say, eighteen winters in London. Is this chronology clear?
COLLINGS
Yes, yes.
GELBART
So she said, "Yeah, let's do that."So we had the cast reading, Gene did put the show up on its feet, and then I did come back to England and then— I never saw a DVD. There were no DVDs. There were no cassettes. I'd just heard that they'd done a wonderful job and that everybody was very, very happy and that CBS would decide whether or not they would include it in the fall schedule, fall of 1972.I guess somewhere around March— No, February or January, they said, "Yeah, we're putting it on," famously and infamously, "at seven-thirty on Sundays."
COLLINGS
This was against another program which was very popular.
GELBART
It was against This is the FBI and The [Wonderful] World of Disney.
COLLINGS
That's right.
GELBART
So we came back. We came back here on March 20th, and we moved into the Chateau Marmont with two little kids—the other three were somewhere else—two Filipino maids, and two old English sheepdogs. We said, "We've got to get out of this hotel. This is not a group to stay in a hotel. "Let's rent a house," and then we heard what they were asking for rents, and we said, "Let's buy a house." So we bought this house on March 25th, 1972, and then a couple days later they picked up M*A*S*H. They had scheduled it, and they wanted to date the contract for the series on April 1st. I said, "No, let's make it April 2nd."
COLLINGS
Oh, so you are superstitious.
GELBART
Well, in that case I was. So the rest is history in this family.
COLLINGS
But it's just interesting that going into it, it wasn't anything that you had any sense would snowball into a—
GELBART
No. When I finally saw the episode, the pilot episode, I thought, "Nice job." But as I told you before, I'd been watching marvelous television, quality television in England, so it didn't surprise me. But people in the business, writers that we were showing the pilot to with the idea that they would write future episodes once we knew the show was scheduled, they would say, "They're going to let you do this? Are you kidding?" This is whatever, whatever. "This is brave." This is that. And I was glad to hear it, but I thought, "What's all the hollering?"
COLLINGS
What was the evolution of your thinking about the Vietnam War?
GELBART
Well, I think I was never for it. I mean, I certainly recognized the difference between the Korean War and the Vietnam War, neither of which, as we know, was a declared war. One was called a police action. I don't know what they ever called Vietnam, just Vietnam.
COLLINGS
To tell you the truth, I don't know either.
GELBART
Yes. They never defined it. They did call the Korean War a police action, and seventeen nations participated. In Vietnam, we were there alone. I was as against that as I am against where we are now in G2.I was part of one large, large evening that protested the war with some very famous British names, Vanessa Redgrave, as you can imagine, being at the head of it. She was so emboldened by my appearance that she called me sometime later and asked if I would donate money to buy bullets for Palestinians to kill Israelis and I said, "No, no, no. No, I will not."Anyway, I didn't move very far from being against to being even more against it. That was always the way I felt, where I stood, as if that's important.
COLLINGS
You were attracted to the theme song.
GELBART
I was.
COLLINGS
What was it that you liked about that?
GELBART
Well, it's got that curious combination of a beat, it swings, and it's sad. It's written in a minor key, and I'm a sucker for that. I'm sucker for the particular composer, a guy named Johnny Mandel. We go way back. We both courted the same girl once.
COLLINGS
Oh, really?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Oh, how interesting.
GELBART
Yes, I loved it. We never put the lyrics on, as they did in the film, because we didn't want to do a commercial for suicide.
COLLINGS
No, no, that you wouldn't be able to get that on TV, I'm sure.I was interested to look at some of the early episodes and noticed that the title sequence changes. I don't know. The title sequence in the very first episode—
GELBART
The graphics?
COLLINGS
Where they're like running across the hills to the helicopters that are coming in. It's just probably not significant, but—
GELBART
No, tell me.
COLLINGS
In the first episode, and perhaps like a couple others after that, the nurses and things are sort of running out of the tents in a kind of a disorderly fashion, like it's— There's just a sort of a greater sense of emergency.
GELBART
Is it still the one about the four of them running across?
COLLINGS
I think that that shot is in it, of the four?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Yes, I believe that shot is in it as well.
GELBART
From the beginning?
COLLINGS
Maybe the title sequence is just shortened.
GELBART
There was a sequence where, I think, where somebody came out of a shower or a man came out of a woman's shower? Gene shot all of those. We were shooting material even before we were on the air, naturally, and no one director ever captured as well as Gene did those four women running across. For many, many years, people would write and say, "Who was that brunette nurse, the one that's so—?"
COLLINGS
So ready to go.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Well, I think that's the striking thing about the title sequence, because— And the sequence twinned with that music.
GELBART
With that music, yes.
COLLINGS
Especially sort of looking backward, it is very sad, because you kind of think that the only thing of value that was taking place during the Vietnam War was with the actual fixing up of the people that were wounded and that there really isn't much else that you could say for the whole thing.
GELBART
Yes, I know, I know, and I remember when they finally approved, Congress approved, funds and plans for a Korean War memorial, the New York Times said, "It's about time that this series M*A*S*H was not the only memorial to that war."
COLLINGS
Interesting. So in what ways were you able to sort of blend your concerns about the Vietnam War with the Korean War setting? I mean, you were talking about them both simultaneously, I presume.
GELBART
Well, it was an odd situation. We're writing about a war that took place twenty years before and a war that was contemporary at the same time. There was a lot of mixing and matching of emotions because there was not that much protest. There was no protest about Vietnam. We understood why we were there.
COLLINGS
About Korea.
GELBART
About Korea, I'm sorry. See, to this day. And for that reason, Dr. [Richard] Hornberger, the writer of the book, didn't like our show because we had a very liberal bent, you know, and he recognized it. Everybody did. But he was personally affronted by the fact that we were putting anti-war sentiments into the mouths of people who were pro-police action.There's another interesting footnote, deserves more than a footnote, maybe, about M*A*S*H, and that is what a curious, again, confluence of artistic events and real life events, political events, personal events, because M*A*S*H the movie owes its life to the fact that Ring Lardner, Jr., who was a very, very good motion picture writer, sometime in the late sixties, I would think, picked up a book in an airport in New York. He was on his way to California, and there was a paperback called M*A*S*H, and he picked it up and read it. When we got off the plane, he called Ingo Preminger, who was a producer, and said, "I think this would make a wonderful film," and Preminger went to 20th Century Fox, and they agreed.Now, Ring Lardner, Jr., was one of the Hollywood Ten. He was blacklisted for many years. He couldn't work. At an age when he would never have been called to serve in the United States, he served a year in jail, actually, and at an age no one would have ever thought the United States Army would take somebody, he volunteered and went to Korea.
COLLINGS
Really?
GELBART
Really. And worked for Stars and Stripes as a writer.
COLLINGS
After he had been in jail?
GELBART
Uh-huh.
COLLINGS
That's surprising.
GELBART
I think so. I think the chronology will bear this out. So he showed his patriotism, and he didn't do it to show his patriotism. He went to war, wrote about war, and then wrote this film for a studio, which probably had blacklisted him in his screenwriting days, and they did, in fact, want him to write the pilot for it.
COLLINGS
Oh, did they?
GELBART
Yes, I found that out many years later, which would have been fair and right.
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
But he didn't have any faith in it as a series. I didn't have any faith in it as a series. The worst thing they can do after you write a pilot is to say either, "We're not going to do it," or, "We are going to do it." What do you mean, you're going to do it? I just did it. What else is there to say? And that was probably his frame of mind. But he was always very generous whenever we met, which was not often, but in saying, "You really did a wonderful job with that material," and he did a wonderful job with the material, although Robert Altman forever says or says always that it's 90 percent improvised, that Lardner didn't deserve the Academy Award that he received for the screenplay of M*A*S*H.
COLLINGS
That seems kind of picky.
GELBART
Yes, yes, a little bit, considering the amount of work that he probably did that we'll never know about under a pseudonym or no name at all.So what point was I trying to make? Just this M*A*S*H stew, you know. But I was lucky in the fact that CBS was doing the show, because Walter Cronkite was the one who really attacked our participation in Vietnam.
COLLINGS
Right. "Now that we've lost Walter Cronkite, we've lost the war," this is what [President Lyndon B.] Johnson said.
GELBART
Johnson said that, that's right. Well, they would say to me, "We don't want to be so anti-war," and I would say—
COLLINGS
Who would say that?
GELBART
Somebody in Program Practices, or probably not Program Practices. They were just looking for four-letter words. Some representative of the network would say, "You know, ease up a little bit."I would say, "If Cronkite, on your network, can attack the war at six o'clock, why can't I do it at eight?" And they would always yield to that argument, which was amazing, which was just amazing. It was another universe.
COLLINGS
Another time.
GELBART
Another everything. So they gave us that freedom, and that's what I think was M*A*S*H's greatest achievement.
COLLINGS
Did they get much mail that was objecting to the anti-war?
GELBART
I think we really thought of it as though they were the letters that said "pinko commie" and all that. I never saw a lot of the letters.
COLLINGS
I was just wondering if you heard about it.
GELBART
No. There were people who thought we were. Yes, there were people who definitely thought so. Phil Rizzuto, the old "Scooter" of the New York Yankees, was part of the Right Wing was very, very— They had nothing near the power it's got today, but they would raise their tiny little voices. They were sopranos then.
COLLINGS
Yes, they were the Silent Majority.
GELBART
Yes. How can we get them to be silent again?
COLLINGS
That's the question. [laughs]One thing that I was noticing from your files was how much research you had done.
GELBART
On M*A*S*H?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Oh yes.
COLLINGS
To do the show.
GELBART
Tons.
COLLINGS
Tons?
GELBART
Never-ending.
COLLINGS
You're conducting interviews with doctors who had served in Korea.
GELBART
Doctors, nurses, pilots, orderlies.
COLLINGS
Did you actually conduct interviews yourself?
GELBART
I did. Gene did.
COLLINGS
I thought I saw some that you had done.
GELBART
I did, Gene did, Burt Metcalfe did, the three of us did, or any combination thereof. You know Gene and I went to Korea after the second season and went to the 4077th, I mean that was the fictional of the real-life 5088th, and spent a week living with a MASH unit, which was no longer mobile, and in that unit was a man named Mr. Kwan, a Korean who had served in the Korean police action and was there to remember stories.
COLLINGS
Oh, great. That's great. Now, you had never done this kind of extensive background research for something before?
GELBART
No. Well, ancient Rome had crumbled so many years before, I couldn't ask them to put it back together again.
COLLINGS
Right. One of the themes that is in the interviews that it looked like you conducted were a lot of discussion about back-door ways of obtaining medical supplies.
GELBART
Scrounging.
COLLINGS
Yes, and ways that authority is subverted, and I was just wondering, did you—
GELBART
Does that come through a lot?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Yes?
COLLINGS
I was just wondering, did you go into these interviews with a sort of an idea of—

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
September 28, 2005

GELBART
No, I think anybody we approached, anybody we interviewed, it was completely open-ended. We were not trying to make a point. It's enough for an interviewee to say, "We just lived to go to the latrine. You know, the latrine was our friend. We would write letters in there, we would read letters in there, we would read books and magazines in there. We could shut out the war." That suggested endless references or even maybe a show about the latrine. We didn't care where they took us. But when something just sort of flagged itself in conversation— Scrounging would be part of it, anything. Of course, audiences love capers and clevernesses, and that all goes back to Plautus, you know, the crafty slave who's using his wits to accomplish something he shouldn't be accomplishing. The whole Bilko show is based on beating authority, and letting them know it or not letting them know it, just beating the system.
COLLINGS
So the show, I mean even if you take it out of the setting of Korea or Vietnam and put it into like an office setting—
GELBART
Absolutely, absolutely.
COLLINGS
—you've got all of these levels of authority and control.
GELBART
Absolutely.
COLLINGS
So it becomes very universal.
GELBART
Pecking order, the worst and the best in people coming out because they're in such tight circumstances. Romance never goes away or the need for it, the absence of it, the profusion of it. The food, that's always on everybody's mind.I remember asking Becky, my daughter, who was about eleven at the time, she was going to Hawthorne Grammar School, and she said, "My friends love that show."I said, "What do they love about it? What do young people— What do your friends love about it?"She said, "The insults." They liked people being rude to one another.Doctors love it because I show them unshaven, sometimes drunk, egotistical, on the make, on the prowl, filled with self-doubt sometimes. They loved it, and that was a great compliment. You get a lot of prizes, sometimes you wonder why, but a couple years ago, I think, the AMA [American Medical Association] gave me one of the rare non-physician prizes just for the series.
COLLINGS
Wonderful.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
It looked from the photos like you used a lot of focus groups as well to vet the authenticity.
GELBART
We used focus groups?
COLLINGS
Yes, is that right?
GELBART
No.
COLLINGS
I thought I saw something like that. No?
GELBART
No, no, not this show.
COLLINGS
Okay, must have been something else then.
GELBART
Maybe somebody was doing it. I wasn't there.
COLLINGS
Yes, must have been. Maybe it was something else.You have some notes of a conversation with Ron Glasser who wrote—
GELBART
Oh, yes, 365 Days.
COLLINGS
Yes, and he was a doctor who had served in Vietnam.
GELBART
Yep.
COLLINGS
He's sort of commenting on the character of Hawkeye, and he's saying, "Among the doctors, there are very few Hawkeyes." He's sort of finding Hawkeye to be a very iconoclastic—
GELBART
A little too good to be true.
COLLINGS
Yes. One of the things that strikes me about Hawkeye is how very competent he is, how underneath all of this, there's a sort of recurring theme that he's a topnotch doctor and he really knows his stuff. And I'm just sort of wondering—
GELBART
Well, my own physician now is like that, at UCLA. He's the top, top, top of his field and funny as hell, and he'll make fun of what he's charging, what other people are charging, what the system, whatever, and he just can't be a better doctor.Incidentally, Hawkeye was modeled on a real guy, with a few other guys thrown in. There is a Dr. Eugene Hesse, H-e-s-s-e, who lives in, I think, Arizona, and he has a reunion every year of the MASH guys, and he thinks last year was it, and if not, this year will be it. The Hawkeye guy, the last time he had to come out in a station wagon spread out in the back, stretched out, he's just in terrible shape. But I guess we started going another way with Hawkeye so that he was a finally a brew of a lot of Hawkeyes, but the original guy was both competent and devilish.
COLLINGS
Well, it seems to me like that's the thing that makes it allowable for television, that they can be irreverent, they can basically be anti-war, they can walk around the base in their dressing gown. However—
GELBART
When the time comes…
COLLINGS
It's shown explicitly that he's the one who saved this person's life, he's the one who noticed something, and it just seems like it's an anchor and it allows so much other stuff to go on.
GELBART
Yep. Well, we forgive great people for shitty behavior, as long as they can give us our lives back or our music or whatever, our entertainment.
COLLINGS
Hawkeye name comes from the book, right?
GELBART
It's from the book. It's from The Last of the Mohicans.
COLLINGS
Oh, it is? Because I thinking of it as being like something from James Fenimore Cooper. [laughs]
GELBART
It is. You're right on the money. Hawkeye says in the book, he says it comes from The Last of the Mohicans.
COLLINGS
Leatherstocking.
GELBART
"Which is the only book my father ever read." That's what he says. It was wonderful. I inherited so many fantastic elements, the characters, their names, Trapper John, Hot Lips, whatever, not whatever, Radar, and that locale, that background, which we always kept in the foreground. We never let it get to be just another half hour, and again I think it owes so much, the success of the show, the longevity of its success, to Gene, who really understood the value of feature film texture, because we shot it with one camera, there was no audience sitting three feet away with the actors pitching their voices in a stage projection to get a laugh, but rather relating to the situation and the player they're with. It just made it a very, very— I've used the expression before, but I think when somebody says, "Why is Forum still so— Why does it work today so many years later?" I say, "We built it with copper plumbing." I think the same is true of M*A*S*H, it's just in there. Or not. Or it's a flash in the pan. It's a half-century flash in the pan.
COLLINGS
Well, I think that—
GELBART
No. I never go on about this so much, but since I'm a prisoner here and I have to speak. [laughs]
COLLINGS
What do you think you would do if you had to do something like about the first Gulf War? You wouldn't do it about the war that is going on now, because M*A*S*H is sort of one of those things where you're safely removed.
GELBART
Well, it's interesting you say that because for a long time I've resisted doing anything about a war situation again, but I wouldn't do anything about Gulf 1. I just think it was similar to the Korean experience. I won't say Korean War. I mean I'm so spooked.There was a— What did we call it? What was that thing that—
COLLINGS
[Operation] Desert Shield?
GELBART
No, the alliance. Wasn't there some kind of—
COLLINGS
The coalition?
GELBART
The coalition. There was a coalition.
COLLINGS
Oh, yes, there was.
GELBART
Of 1.
COLLINGS
Yes, of 1, right.
GELBART
That's right.
COLLINGS
It's not a coalition of toga and—
GELBART
No, they were major. There were French, there were countries you could spell. Not to give it any more glamour or anything, but they had invaded Kuwait and, you know, there was— You can hate war, but you can understand why some are fought and others are— And we understand why this one is being fought, and because it is such a rogue war, it is a declared war, for the first time I've been talking to a couple of people about a way to do this war, and the last thing in the world I want and they want is to think we're ripping off M*A*S*H. It would reflect how it is now. There wouldn't be a Hawkeye. There wouldn't be a Trapper John. It would reflect today's realities and today's technology, which is a whole other thing. There are no MASH units today and there's a whole lot of other—
COLLINGS
So it would be a medical thing?
GELBART
It would be a medical thing, but from another point of view. It's so early in the process that I don't even know that it will even happen, but it's the first time I've been moved to write about it. I mean write about what's going on in that way, and I would only do one anyway. I would not be around, I may not be around for four years anyways, but I certainly would not be there on a day-to-day basis.But what were you going to ask me?
COLLINGS
To tell you the truth, I forget.
GELBART
I can do that.
COLLINGS
Yes. Would you like to break for today?
GELBART
Sure.
COLLINGS
Does that sound good?
GELBART
If you're for—[End of September 28, 2005 interview]

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE
October 12, 2005

COLLINGS
Last time we left off, we were talking about M*A*S*H.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
And I thought I'd follow up with a few more questions about M*A*S*H
GELBART
Please.
COLLINGS
—if you aren't completely sick of talking about it.
GELBART
Over-M*A*S*Hed, right?
COLLINGS
Yes. The pilot episode has the title "Korea in 1950: A Hundred Years Ago."
GELBART
It doesn't have the title. That's an art card.
COLLINGS
No, the subtitle, yes.
GELBART
It just only to imply that it seemed a century ago that we were engaged there.
COLLINGS
Oh, I see, that so much had changed.
GELBART
So much had changed. It wasn't, of course, meant to be literal. In time, I guess people will say, "Well, that was a hundred years ago."
COLLINGS
I think we talked a little bit about the credit sequence last time. I was saying, did it change, because it seemed like it changed, and then I went back and looked at it again, and in the beginning it doesn't have those four nurses.
GELBART
It doesn't?
COLLINGS
No. No.
GELBART
The pilot does not have them?
COLLINGS
No, no, it doesn't. The credit sequence is more— It's like everybody running out of tents and things, and it has a more disorganized feel that kind of goes more with the sort of laissez-faire attitude that's shown in the pre-credit sequence. We were just talking about that before, so I thought I'd—
GELBART
Well, you tend to get a little tidier as you do things and probably at some loss to the quality of what you're doing, maybe in a sense you get not too good at it, but too sure of it, and you miss some of that early energy that only ignorance can give you.
COLLINGS
Because when the credit sequence changes and it has those four nurses, it is a much more professionalized M*A*S*H unit.
GELBART
Was there a pre-title sequence—
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
—where they hit the ball—
COLLINGS
Into the minefield?
GELBART
—into the minefield.
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Then do we go to M*A*S*H?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Then do we have the running nurses?
COLLINGS
Yes, because Radar is part playing in a game of some sort, I think.
GELBART
Oh, and he says, "Wait for it."
COLLINGS
Yes, and then he looks up and then you have the beginning of the title sequence of the helicopters coming over the—
GELBART
I guess when we knew that we were a series, we went for the more conventional opening credits, no action before that. But now that I am reminded of what we did, it would have been nice to do that kind of thing every week. However, maybe if there's M*A*S*H after death.
COLLINGS
Right. After-M*A*S*H, although—
GELBART
Yes. We won't talk too much about that, or as much as you want.
COLLINGS
Then you say, I think it's in your archive notes, "I think as we got more confidence in the scripts and the series itself, they got darker, but we were finding our way. I think the truth is that we didn't really find our way until about six or seven weeks in," which seems like a pretty short time to find your way, frankly.
GELBART
Well, actually, it was— I'm always amazed to find out that the episode "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet" was, in fact, number seventeen. So we were floundering a bit longer than I gave us credit for.
COLLINGS
When you found your way, what was the "way"?
GELBART
Well, the way was that we could get a whole lot darker, that we could afford to be less superficial, and then, of course, the bounce-back with humor, which was not planned, it's just something you do to taste, was all that much stronger when we went literally from tragedy to comedy. But we didn't really have a tone. We didn't really have a feel for what we were doing. We might have done it on an individual episode basis, but rarely as an underpinning that we all recognized.[tape recorder off]
COLLINGS
So, sort of the darker it got the more you kind of compensated with kind of—
GELBART
Yes, without saying, "Hey, this is getting pretty dark. We need a laugh here," there's just something about your own reaction to sadness that tells you, that allows you to make light of something, to restore your own other side, the helpful, the whatever endorphins that are released by comedy that knock down some of the less attractive ones that unhappiness brings out.
COLLINGS
Were there times when you were kind of like responding to the headlines about the Vietnam War, like—
GELBART
Oh, sure, always, basically, which was double-edged because—I think we've covered this ground—the resistance to the war, to the Korean experience was nowhere near as extreme, nowhere near, as it was to the Vietnam War.
COLLINGS
But I mean if there would be like some particularly bad set of affairs, would that mean that M*A*S*H would be particularly dark that week?
GELBART
No, not really, not consciously, no. You tend to write those scripts three or four weeks in advance, so you didn't ever want to do anything that seemed topical, especially with war, where the color of it can change so quickly.What I really had fun with was not so much— And only a few instances, not so much talking about the real war that was going on in Vietnam as we talked about the war that went on that many years earlier in Korea, with planting in the episodes references to French Indo China and the war there, not mentioning Vietnam by name because it wasn't Vietnam then, I don't think, yet. Well, maybe it was. But anyway, it was kind of sneaky and only for people who really were looking for those kind of layered meanings.
COLLINGS
How would you say that the show kind of developed overall while you were there? Sort of in twenty-five words or less, how would you describe the arc of the development while you were there?
GELBART
I don't know. I really have to leave that to others.
COLLINGS
I noticed in your file, all of the script pages were like heavily rewritten and crossed out and written over, to the point that they were just layers upon layers upon layers. You talk in your autobiography with the fictional Sidney Freeman about the obsessive rewriting of M*A*S*H.
GELBART
Right.
COLLINGS
Was it just M*A*S*H that you did this with?
GELBART
There's a process where you actually do rewrite. That was mainly what I did with work that other people did. In my own work, I consider the rewriting to be just part of the writing process. I consider it a constant shaping and improvement, hopefully. Sometimes you can improve something right into the ground.But there was a lot of rewriting on M*A*S*H, not because I was better than the writers that I was rewriting but— I may or may not have covered this subject, but clearly—and this is the pattern in television—the people who are responsible for a show, and usually one show only, are much better, in the end, suited to exercise the kind of quality control that only they can. The writer of any given episode might be working on three different episodes for three different series at that time, and only you have sole responsibility for your own series. Now, they're called show runners, but only the person responsible for the script, I think, in a series staffing can do the kind of work that lends consistency to the scripts.
COLLINGS
That was you in that case then?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
You were the sort of the point person for that?
GELBART
I was the staff.
COLLINGS
Right. What's it like to go through the read-throughs on Monday mornings? I mean what kind of surprises would you come across?
GELBART
Well, the read-throughs, the table reads, held on the sound stage were either joyous affairs or a trip through a very dark tunnel. Some scripts you could see were going to have to be doctored even beyond what you had done at your desk. Others were joyous experiences.We had a rule that we would read the script without stopping, because everyone has a question, everyone, some people have suggestions. But we didn't want that to interrupt the flow of what it was that they were reading, and so we'd go through it once without stopping. It's not too long before you recognize the difference between genuine laughter and kind of accommodating laughter.
COLLINGS
Of the cast.
GELBART
Of the company and—
COLLINGS
Assembled—
GELBART
—the assembled personnel. After the usual, "That's terrific," "That's great," "That's wonderful, but nope, save it, we'll talk about it later," then we would read it again, and then anybody could say, "Should I be saying this? Do I really know that that's going to happen?" Or, "Why would I say that? I don't know that's going to happen," and I would accommodate— I and/or Gene [Reynolds], usually, would accommodate the questions and the suggestions.I must say it was really— First of all, it was a compliment to all of us that we understood that the script, the play was the thing, and there were some that were trashed, literally, some we just threw out. They were no good. But by and large, the cast trusted what was on the page. They respected what was on the page. They were largely stage-trained actors who were not accustomed nor expected to ad lib, to improve on lines on their feet. In fact, we were very rigid about them being slavish to the text.So after we had that second read, which, as I said, could be both sides, comedy and tragedy, I would go back to my office, which was just about twenty pumps away on my bicycle, and implement those changes. Sometimes I could make them quickly. Sometimes we would be into the shooting when these changes would take place, and they would incorporate them. At the end of the first day, which started with the reading, the actors went through the scenes with their scripts in hand. No one, obviously, knew their lines yet. Some never knew their lines. [laughs] But the director would show Gene and I how he was blocking those scenes. It was a very full day, because the next day they had to report in makeup and start shooting that script.
COLLINGS
The Tuesday?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday—
GELBART
Then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday they would shoot, then Friday we would sit down and read the script for the next episode. Then they would shoot Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, then Thursday we would read the next script.
COLLINGS
I see. It was kind of a slipping, a sliding.
GELBART
Sometimes a director would not quite finish shooting the script completely, and sometimes after we cut a show we would find that we were a minute or two under, so we had one kind of a makeup day a month in which we would finish those scenes which had been slopped, for the shows which had not been completed, or we would shoot a completely new little bit to make up for that minute we lost by paring the show down to what we thought was its best.
COLLINGS
You said, "For me, the least satisfying episodes were the ones that we knew would work." I was just wondering how would you know what would work versus what would not?
GELBART
Well, if the situation wasn't all that unique, or situations, or if we were just really falling back on kind of our own clichés. It was always better when we were doing something that we were a little nervous about.
COLLINGS
So, like what? Can you think of something? I know it's kind of a long way back.
GELBART
Well, "The Interview" is certainly the best example of a show that we were making up as we went along, literally. The actors were improvising. The script changed depending on what we said. We would decide to shoot one thing, and instead we would shoot another, so there was a nice kind of energy that comes from doubt. Nervousness, I guess that's called.
COLLINGS
I think that would probably stimulate the whole cast as well.
GELBART
It was stimulating.
COLLINGS
You'd said somewhere that Hawkeye was the character that you'd written that was most like yourself. Is that the character—
GELBART
My idealized self.
COLLINGS
—the character most like yourself in M*A*S*H or in your whole work to date, to that point?
GELBART
Just me, my personality whatever personality is, or my point of view.
COLLINGS
Which is what? [mutual laughter]
GELBART
Well, why don't you sit down and watch the episodes. Which is what, depending on— It depends on what subject. If it's about war, it's one thing. If it's about men and women, it's about— I like to think I've grown some in that latter category. I think I had kind of a freshman approach to man-woman relations at that point.
COLLINGS
Well, that probably fit for the period, too.
GELBART
I guess so, and so was I.
COLLINGS
So what can you do?
GELBART
Right.
COLLINGS
Why did you invent the Klinger character?
GELBART
We just wrote it— I just wrote it as a bit. I think that character appears in a script called "Officer of the Day," and the premise called for a general to visit the camp, and I wanted to show just how mad things were in this very nonmilitary military unit. So in writing it, I remembered Lenny Bruce the comedian, who in real life, in order to avoid being drafted in World War II, joined the navy. Then he found out he wasn't any crazier about the navy than he would have been about the army, and so he started dressing as a WAVE [Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service], a female sailor with a skirt and specially cut blouses and jackets. In short, he was in drag, naval drag. And I thought that might be funny for one of our people, and so I had this private on guard duty wearing a WAC, WACs being World War II Women's Auxiliary Corps, stopping the visiting general as a way of demonstrating to the general how out of control things were at this unit. It was only about a half a page, about three or four speeches. We never thought of him as a continuing character. But we were so pleased with what we saw on the screen, that he hung around until the very end of the series.
COLLINGS
Okay.
GELBART
Except Gene went back and redirected his half a page, because the original director had him being extremely gay, and the whole point of Klinger was that he was not gay, it was that he was pretending to be a cross-dresser to get out of the service.
COLLINGS
But nobody believed it, so they kept him on, apparently.
GELBART
Right. If you're smart enough to do that, then you're sane enough to stay in.
COLLINGS
Right, the Catch-22 thing.
GELBART
Right.
COLLINGS
How would you kind of characterize the political viewpoint of M*A*S*H? Because I mean a lot of the themes have to do with the ineptitude of the military, whereas now, and of course, today people sort of look at George Bush, for example, and say, "Oh, well, he's so stupid," but I have doubts about that, frankly, but actually sort of point the finger and say, "There were no weapons of mass destruction. It was a trick. It was sort of criminal," and that kind of thing. Whereas the Korean stuff doesn't seem to question the military's motives. It seems more to address—
GELBART
It just attacks the establishment. I can't believe that even George Washington didn't complain about army food. I mean, that's what it was more about than it was about anti-war. It was about leadership and how often it messes you up as it leads you. So in that way, it's no different than Gulf 1, Gulf 2, WWI and II, Korea, Vietnam. It was just about the inept— Well, the first ineptitude belongs to the politicians who cannot solve things in a reasonable manner, and then the next one belongs to what happens invariably when you have so many details that can go wrong, and if they can, they will, and they did and they do. So that's what was such great fun, kidding army officers, kidding army directives, army custom, certainly the cooking, and in a sense, you could make a list, I guess, about what's given the script, the show, its longevity, but surely that's one of them, the timelessness and the universality of military screw-ups.
COLLINGS
Right. Also, it's a nice showcase for what seems to be a theme of yours, which is the primacy of the individual over the institution, because you've got this situation where there are all of these— The ineptitude of the politicians, the ineptitude of the people running the war, running the camp, and then in the actual instance of performing a surgery, it's a human making creative choices and decisions, and on the level of their human activity they are able to succeed as sort of an individual.
GELBART
Only on an individual, yes. The primacy too often takes the form of a scream. We're so dominated by these people who make a mess of things that while we may be able to do it on an individual basis, we rarely seem to be able to exercise it— I can't say on a mass individual because there is no such thing, but we don't seem to be able to collect ourselves to take that action in a way so that we win out over those forces.
COLLINGS
So that Hawkeye can come up with some tricky way to save somebody's life, but he can't stop the war.
GELBART
He can't stop the war, and by saving his life, there's every chance that that saved soldier will be sent back to battle and they'll take another shot at him.
COLLINGS
So it's a nice metaphor.Were you surprised by the reaction to the death of [Henry] Blake?
GELBART
Yes, I was. I was surprised. We heard from people in great numbers. Have you read what I wrote about that? Shall I repeat it?
COLLINGS
Well, that you were sort of shocked because at the exact same time one of those orphan flights taking off from Vietnam had crashed.
GELBART
Yes. In fact, Gene and I wrote a lot, a lot, a lot, hundreds of handwritten letters, not photocopied, to the people who wrote, because we felt if they had been moved to write, we should honor their feelings, and that was part of the copy in each letter that said we hoped that they felt as badly about this fictional death as the actual death of these babies, youngsters. I gave those letters— They weren't mine, but I took it upon myself to— I gave them to the Smithsonian Institute [Institution] and that's where they are.
COLLINGS
Oh, did you?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
The letters that you wrote or that you received?
GELBART
That we received. I'm sure there's at least one copy of what we responded, of how we responded in with those letters.
COLLINGS
Oh, that's very interesting. Do you think that one of the reasons people were so shocked was because Blake was a kind of an unlikable character and they felt—
GELBART
Likeable.
COLLINGS
Unlikable.
GELBART
I don't think they thought he was.
COLLINGS
Oh, okay, all right.
GELBART
No, I think they were shocked because he was so likable.
COLLINGS
Oh, okay, because personally I would have felt bad because every time he comes on, I'm kind of like, "Oh, what a jerk." Then he dies and then you feel bad for thinking poorly of him. [laughs]
GELBART
Well, it works on every level. No, Henry, I always thought, was a great example of the Peter Principle, upward failure. He was a perfectly good small-town doctor in Bloomington, Illinois. He was just never meant to run a medical unit in a war situation right at the front.
COLLINGS
Right.
GELBART
Then we did have that really romantic, affectionate farewell to him during all through that last episode so that to then drown him was very upsetting to people.
COLLINGS
You did that because he was just leaving the show, right?
GELBART
Well, he was leaving the show, but we felt that let's not just make it a case of just another actor leaving just another show, let's let it work for the series, and it did. It may have even worked against the series, but I don't think anybody noticeably stayed away after that season.
COLLINGS
I have to say that I was really interested in the speech that Father Mulcahy made about—
GELBART
The open wound.
COLLINGS
Yes. I thought that was such a great metaphor for what drama is, I mean in many instances. You warm yourself over the steam of an open wound.
GELBART
It's probably the best single speech in the series, and written by no one. It was said to us in an interview with a doctor. Did we talk about this last time?
COLLINGS
About the interviews?
GELBART
About this line?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
Oh, I just have a memory of having talked about it recently. Yes, it's a brilliant line, and it's one of those lines that just got stuck in one of those notebooks, and poring over it day after day, it just jumped out as if not an episode, certainly worthy of mention, worthy of repetition, worthy of repeating—Sorry. Did somebody say the unedited life is not worth living?But I was surprised. Recently I saw a rerun of an early episode, well before this, in which I think it was Trapper [John] and it was bitter cold and he says—the line is almost this—he said, "I don't know whether to operate on this guy or crawl inside of him." Either I had had that line said and I was converting it or I had hit upon the same truth myself, which is what I like to think when I'm in a back-patting mood, but anyway, it was better in its original and it's a wonderful line.
COLLINGS
Yes, it is, and it's very visual, as well.
GELBART
And he tells it beautifully.
COLLINGS
Do you go on to the M*A*S*H chat rooms, is that what I—
GELBART
Mm-hmm, less and less.
COLLINGS
What happens there?
GELBART
Well, who's your favorite character? What's your favorite joke? Do you think somebody's better than somebody? Do you think that—
COLLINGS
Do you answer questions?
GELBART
I do answer questions. I'm really sort of at the tail end of that, I think, because the news group used to meet in AOL. AOL had a news group site, and they dumped it. So now it's Google or something, and the format's different. It's not as good. It's down to three or four real diehards, and I like the people who say it's a communist, lefty, pinko, Jew show.
COLLINGS
I was just wondering what kinds of things you had run into there.
GELBART
Well, you know why it's fascinating to me? Because during the four years I worked on the show, I never saw any fan mail, except the Henry Blake letters.
COLLINGS
They didn't give them to you or—
GELBART
Well, Gene took care of that. I just didn't think to look at them. So I never really had much contact with the fans, but now that I don't have to get a script out every five minutes, it's nice to see that. It's nice to communicate with them.
COLLINGS
Yes. And the people are still watching the reruns, I presume.
GELBART
They certainly are. To me, one of the nicer rewards, although I never got a bad reward, is that— I think I've said this to you. I'm beginning to think I've said everything to you. As a kid, I mean I remember coming home and quoting the Marx Brothers and quoting W.C. Fields, and it's a great sense of satisfaction knowing that there are young people quoting stuff that I've written. Nice.
COLLINGS
You said that M*A*S*H was a cross between the Marx Brother and All Quiet on the Western Front.
GELBART
Somebody else said that.
COLLINGS
Oh, okay.
GELBART
I wouldn't have had the pretension. I have other pretensions, but that's not one of them. Yeah, somebody. I thought that was perfect, and in fact, the Marx Brothers did do All Quiet on the Western Front in Duck Soup. They did this fantastic war sequence where every time you cut to them, they're in another uniform, in another period.
COLLINGS
Oh, I don't remember that.
GELBART
Wonderful, wonderful.
COLLINGS
Is that the one where he marries the wife—
GELBART
Who knows? Margaret Dumont?
COLLINGS
Yeah, and she's the—
GELBART
Maybe. I don't know.
COLLINGS
She's the empress of Dynatopia or whatever the name of the country was.
GELBART
Fredonia. "Hail Fredonia."
COLLINGS
"Hail Fredonia." Yes, is that that one?
GELBART
Maybe.
COLLINGS
Yes, could be. Oh, I love the Marx Brothers.
GELBART
I was pleased to learn that Groucho loved M*A*S*H.
COLLINGS
I bet you were.
GELBART
Yes, I mean from Groucho. Anyway, go.
COLLINGS
AfterM*A*S*H is not in the chronology but—
GELBART
"Why did you do that?"
COLLINGS
No, no, I wasn't going to say that. I was just mainly I just really had one question.
GELBART
Please.
COLLINGS
I haven't seen it.
GELBART
You're in good company or in large company.
COLLINGS
"The message will be the same. People are more important than the system." Then you say—
GELBART
Is this me saying that?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Then you say in your notes that "These are people for whom all the corners are back," and that that's what makes them different than—
GELBART
All the corners?
COLLINGS
All the corners are back.
GELBART
You mean everything's nice and neat and square?
COLLINGS
Yes, I guess that's what that means.
GELBART
I don't know what I meant.
COLLINGS
So I was just wondering what was different writing for this— Some of the same cast of characters that—
GELBART
It was not the same cast of characters. It was a mistake and one of the— First of all, I learned about that specific show, was that I think it would have had a better chance had it been an hour show with a dramatic base and comic relief rather than a half-hour show and the opposite in format. We truly didn't have— We had good supporting people, but we didn't really have stars, and when I say "stars," I don't mean for box office, I mean for the kind of strength that a leading character gives any ensemble. We didn't have that. But that wasn't their fault. Everything about that was my fault. I fell in love with this AfterM*A*S*H title and I should have thought it all through a lot longer and said, "Thanks, but no thanks."
COLLINGS
Okay. Your next steps after M*A*S*H, you did Karen.
GELBART
Wasn't that during? I think that—
COLLINGS
1975, was it?
GELBART
I think it was during M*A*S*H. Well, that was a— I was one of the few people that had never seen Karen Valentine work, so I didn't understand when people said, "You're doing a show about Common Cause with Karen Valentine?" They thought that was really a contradiction in terms.
COLLINGS
Why was that?
GELBART
Well, because she was not especially known for being a political activist or even interested in that. She's a pretty, pretty, pretty woman, and a personality that really— I mean who's to say what an activist should look like? But I think we thought more in stereotypes in those days, and she just didn't seem to fit the subject, and nothing she had done before made anybody think that she could do it. It wasn't Karen's fault; it was our fault. We took something very tough to do. This was a show based on—
COLLINGS
Yes, I've got the synopses here. I think it's very impressive, to tell you the truth.
GELBART
Yes, it is impressive. Yes.
COLLINGS
These are like very political, very forward—
GELBART
They really were.
COLLINGS
—thinking topics.
GELBART
Well, Gene—
COLLINGS
Particularly for 1975, it's amazing.
GELBART
Yes. I like this, "A M*A*S*Her and a head of a redwood logging operation."
COLLINGS
I mean, who was thinking about redwood logging operations in 1975?
GELBART
I know, I know.
COLLINGS
Obviously I'm not in television, but I would think that you would need a pretty-star-type female for something like that.
GELBART
Well, we had that, but this was not the only show we tried while we were doing M*A*S*H. We tried a show called Roll Out, which was based on the Red Ball Express, which was a motorized unit in World War II that was almost 100 percent black, and that had a chance, too. We just couldn't— M*A*S*H, in fact, the cast was quite upset when it was announced that we were going to do Roll Out. They thought they were going to be neglected. They weren't neglected and neither were the other episodes, the other two series, but we just couldn't be as committed and passionate and smart as we were with M*A*S*H.
COLLINGS
So what made you want to do a series with a main female character?
GELBART
ABC said, "We want you guys to do a show with Karen Valentine, no pilot, on-the-air commitment, thirteen weeks." We couldn't say no. We could say no, but greed and whatever else or just— You know, when you're kind of flying with a hit series, there's a certain kind of rush that— I hate using that word since it only means one person these days [Rush Limbaugh]. There's a certain kind of, I guess, power and euphoria that takes over and you say, "Yeah, sure, I'll do that and I'll do that and I'll do that," and not really realizing that you're going to rob the resource that got you to be that desirable to an ABC or whatever. So that's what got us to do it and we never got off the ground.
COLLINGS
Did they know that you were going to do all of these very social themes?
GELBART
They didn't care. They didn't care. "Just give us Karen Valentine."
COLLINGS
That reminds me of this woman that I interviewed with did films for Roger Corman.
GELBART
Right.
COLLINGS
And she did all kinds of very progressive themes, and he didn't care as long as the girls were all wearing bikinis.
GELBART
[laughs] Exactly, exactly. Well, we couldn't wear bikinis, but we did have Karen, and that's all they wanted. If it had worked— And they figured, "These guys know something." I mean who would figure a show about surgeons, war, and all that? "That works. Maybe this will work."
COLLINGS
So even if it had been a story about Karen and like a domestic comedy, that would have been fine, too. They really didn't—
GELBART
For them, yes.
COLLINGS
They really didn't care.
GELBART
But that wouldn't have been for us.
COLLINGS
Around that time you were also working on Sly Fox?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Actually, I got the—
GELBART
Volpone.
COLLINGS
Yes. I found the original playbill online if you want to take a look at it. The cover is on the front page.
GELBART
Oh my.
COLLINGS
So with this, you said that you were trying to bring— Oh, no, no, it wasn't. I'm sorry. I was confused about that.
GELBART
What was I trying to bring, again, to the—
COLLINGS
I'm sorry, I was thinking about Forum. I was thinking about Forum.
GELBART
Okay.
COLLINGS
How did you bring your experiences in Chicago into Sly Fox? You mention a character called Itchkey the Goniff—
GELBART
Goniff [pronunciation].
COLLINGS
—in an interview with—
GELBART
Goniff is Yiddish for thief, Itchkey the Thief. How did I bring him into Sly Fox?
COLLINGS
Yes. In an interview in the New York Times, you were talking about how your experiences growing up in Chicago—
GELBART
Well, yes, there were a lot of Runyonesque, and worse, characters. There was an element of— There were a lot of criminals, but small-time criminals, although one guy made it to the electric chair. Itchkey the Goniff was a very colorful guy because he was very handsome and he worked with a gang. The way it went was he would take an attractive— Or she didn't have to be attractive. He would take a woman out to dinner and romance her, kind of, and while he was out doing that, his gang was in her apartment stealing her jewels or her home. But anyway, Sly Fox, as was Volpone, naturally, filled with shady characters, with greedy people after other people's money, so God knows I knew enough of those.
COLLINGS
From your childhood?
GELBART
Uh-huh.
COLLINGS
And from the TV business? [mutual laughter]
GELBART
Well, yes, part of which was spent— My childhood was spent in that. I don't know when the snowflakes melted on my eyelids and I saw all these crooks and gangsters around me in blue and white collars, but I was pretty well— I knew about bad guys, not the kind of bad guys that are in Sly Fox, because these are just people who are usurers and they're poseurs when it comes to confidence men. I knew some of those, but I really knew guys with guns, I mean hardened criminals.
COLLINGS
In Chicago?
GELBART
In Chicago. I remember once, more than once, I knew of guys who were on the lam, hiding from the law, who would sneak into my family apartment so my dad could cut their hair, because they may have been gangsters, but they were very vain, too. That came from the movies, you know, movies teaching gangsters that they should all look like George Raft or—
COLLINGS
Oh, really?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Can you point to a time when gangsters started spiffing up like that?
GELBART
In my life?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
I was aware of them from the time I was seven, eight, nine years old, hanging around the barbershop. I told you, I'm sure, that one of my father's clients in his barbershop there was a man named "Sparky" Rubenstein, who became Jack Ruby. I mean we had that kind of violent lowlife element, and I remember them very well. And the sporting world boxers and—
COLLINGS
Yes.

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO
October 12, 2005

GELBART
And bookies.
COLLINGS
Did that seem frightening, or was that just kind of like par for the course?
GELBART
No, colorful, colorful. Not frightening, no.The first time I saw a guy with a gun in his holster, I thought he was telephone lineman. [laughs] I didn't understand what all that equipment was for. Well, rather than frightened, you felt kind of— You felt protected. At least you knew they weren't going to do anything to you. And I remember learning that people that I really liked were professional hit men. I don't say this with any pride.I remember my uncle, my father's uncle, which I guess would make him my great-uncle, I remember him. He was babysitting me one night, and I remember him crying like a baby because [John] Dillinger had been shot, one of his heroes.
COLLINGS
Yes, that's right. Dillinger on a slab. I've seen newsreel of that.
GELBART
Mm-hmm, the woman in red.
COLLINGS
Yes, that's right. Did your dad ever worry that they might not like their haircut?
GELBART
No, no, he never worried, and they always did.
COLLINGS
That's good. I think I would be a little worried.
GELBART
No. Don't forget, he was the one with the razor at their throat.
COLLINGS
So would you say that Sly Fox was the one thing that you've written that really drew on that childhood?
GELBART
No, I don't think so. I think there is a line in Sly Fox where Foxwell J. Sly says to his apprentice, Simon Able, he says, "Never think too little of people. There's always a little bit less to be thought." So it's more about human nature than it is about any criminal activity, because there's a lot more you can do to people than either physically assault them or take their money, and we do as often as we can.
COLLINGS
So I suppose next on your list of laurels, it's Oh, God!
GELBART
Oh, God!
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Oh, God! I was asked to work on Oh, God! by David Susskind, who was a very prolific producer, television producer, one of the pioneers for the talk show on television called Open End, and it was, because it went on from when it started to whenever. David and I had done some television work together, series of specials, and he had an option on the book by Avery Corman, Oh, God! I read it and I thought it was very entertaining. I saw it as really, if not an homage, certainly akin to Mel Brooks' and Carl Reiner's 2000 Year Old Man, and David and I planned to make a movie of it.By the time it got made, David was out of it. The book had been around a lot. The book had been around so much. So many people had loved it and had a pass at it, but with no reception in any studios, that finally you could option the book for no money, which is very rare. Corman or his representatives said, "Yes, please, just get it done."
COLLINGS
"Just take it." GELBART: So I wound up with it in kind of in that fashion, and I remember my plan was— Have you read about this somewhere around?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
My idea was that I would write an adaptation, a screenplay, and that I would ask Mel Brooks to play God and Woody Allen to play what became the John Denver part. So I suggested it to them, and Woody responded by saying that— Woody's response was— I'm writing something with such convoluted or inane language that I can hear it spilling it over into my own speech. Woody said no, he was working on—
COLLINGS
He had his own deal with God.
GELBART
He had his own take on God, and this wasn't it. And Mel, I've said, Mel didn't want to play God because he didn't want the demotion, and so it crashed, that prospect.I had a very enterprising manager named Howard Rothberg, and Howard got it to— I think that's how it worked, I'm pretty sure. He got it to Jerry Weintraub, and Jerry Weintraub represented John Denver, and he was looking for something for John for motion pictures. I said, "Fine." I would have said fine to anybody, but that did sound like a good idea. I said, "And there's only one guy to play God; that's George Burns," and he said yes. George was enjoying this second renaissance. Is there a second renaissance? Just his renaissance, having substituted for Jack Benny and winning the Oscar in Sunshine Boys.So that's how it went forward, and Carl Reiner directed the script, which is interesting inasmuch as I thought it was about Carl and Mel anyway. To me, it was very successful critically and commercially. It made an enormous amount of money. It cost about— Not about; it cost 2.2 million dollars to produce, and has made much, much more back, of course. But I always felt that they shot a first draft, that I would have enjoyed making a second pass at it, but then I probably would have ruined it, it probably wouldn't have—
COLLINGS
So what would you have changed?
GELBART
Well, I just would have been a little tougher on God. I would have asked him some tougher questions and maybe not have him answer so glibly.
COLLINGS
So they didn't shoot your script?
GELBART
They did shoot my script. They asked Carl and I to do Oh, God II, III, IV. We didn't. I said, "You know, if God comes back, it won't be for a miniseries."But that took place. I was not really connected with it in terms of the casting, in terms of the shooting, and when it was nominated for an Academy Award, I thought, you know, sweet, but it won't even be close enough for a cigar, you know, because it just was too lightweight, really. In fact, it lost to a wonderful picture called Julia, which was written by Alvin Sargent. So that was my Oh, God!
COLLINGS
Have you ever wanted to direct one of your scripts, by the way?
GELBART
Not really, not really. I did a few M*A*S*H episodes, but that was like making home movies, you know. No, I don't think I'm a very good director. First of all, I don't handle contention very well, and there can sometimes be some of that, as there was when I did a play in London, directed it. No, it's never—
COLLINGS
That's just not what you do.
GELBART
It would have saved me a lot of headaches, because as a director, there are any number of situations where I wouldn't have brought another writer on to fix me when I wasn't broken.
COLLINGS
But you just don't think visually then?
GELBART
I do think visually. I think very visually, and I include a lot of visual material in the scripts, but there's more to being a director than there is the visual. There's the politics, there's the whole process of production, postproduction, editing, and the social aspect of being a director on the stage. I mean a writer, as often as not, concentrates on some privacy, whereas a director is a sitting duck out there, small talk and distractions that as a writer I can create my own distractions. As a director, I'm prone to other people's ability to do that.
COLLINGS
That story about how in M*A*S*H when you were trying to think of a solution turning to the wall and just thinking for a moment.
GELBART
The reason I turned to the wall—
COLLINGS
To get rid of the distractions.
GELBART
That's all. There was no little man in there.
COLLINGS
Oh yes. But I was just thinking as a director it would be sort of hard to shut yourself off like that.
GELBART
Yes, you can't isolate. That's right. That's right. I wouldn't discourage anybody who writes from wanting to direct, because it's your last chance for you to get it right, and I would be daunted by taking on someone else's work and giving my version of it.
COLLINGS
Moving along here, Movie, Movie
GELBART
Yes, yes.
COLLINGS
—got a Christopher Award.
GELBART
Right.
COLLINGS
It was, quote, "Judged an affirmation of the highest values of the human spirit."
GELBART
God knows why.
COLLINGS
Well, I was going to ask you that.
GELBART
They must have had a surplus of awards.
COLLINGS
Oh, I see, okay.
GELBART
Well, Movie, Movie was— I love Movie, Movie. I co-wrote that with a writer named Sheldon Keller as I was co-writing Volpone with Ben Jonson. I had made one of the few determinations, conscious ones, that I can ever remember making when I knew I was going to leave M*A*S*H. I thought after I leave is not the time to think about what I want to do next. I think it would be better to do what I want to do next while I'm doing that, so I don't fall off a cliff.So I worked on that with Keller, and there was a time when movie takeoffs were very popular as movies themselves, and I always thought that a feature-length satire of a feature-length film was far too long. So I thought how about two and make it a double feature as we knew as children, using the same actors, sometimes the same sets, same moods. So Movie, Movie was born.We were very lucky. Stanley Donen, who directed it, was very, again, respectful of the text, knew what he had, which is not to say that there weren't suggestions for it, can this be this or can that be that? But not so much to make it different or his way, but to make our way better, and we were lucky to have George [C.] Scott again, who I just worked with in Sly Fox and who brings a lot to anything, brought a lot to anything he ever did.It was distributed by Warner Bros. at the same that they distributed, I think Superman III and some other big, big movie, so we got kind of lost in the dust of those big, big guys. Lord Grade thought enough about it to give me the money to write a follow-up to it, and I did, but nothing ever happened with it.
COLLINGS
In settings and themes, I can see the similarity between Movie, Movie and Sly Fox. It sounds like you have a lot of these kind of characters that are trying to make their way in a—
GELBART
I mean that's almost— I mean that's Forum.
COLLINGS
Well, yes, that's Forum, too, yes.
GELBART
Sure, it's Forum and I guess the characters in M*A*S*H want to go be someplace else, too, you know.
COLLINGS
But as far as like drawing from some kind of experience in a 1930s era neighborhood.
GELBART
Well, I mean that era is, yes, neighborhood, and the most important place in the neighborhood, the movie house and being exposed to those kinds of stories, it was a great chance to write the kind of movies that I grew up on.
COLLINGS
Right, exactly. One of the people in the preview cards writes, "It was a breath of fresh air. It was like going to the movies when I was a child. It was full of American things."
GELBART
Is that what they say?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Yes, sure, yes. Well, the first movie in Movie, Movie is, what is it, it's Dynamite Hands.
COLLINGS
Oh, the boxer.
GELBART
The boxer. Well, that's Rocky, right?
COLLINGS
Right.
GELBART
I mean thirty years after we saw those kinds of movies, here we have it in real life, forty years maybe, and the backstage musical is forever green. Frank Rich, in the review when he was still drama critic of the New York Times, I remember he said on the opening night of 42nd Street, he said, "What this really needs is the book from Movie, Movie, and it would be a big success." But that's the stuff I grew up on, and we all did, obviously. Certainly that person who wrote that card grew up on it, too.
COLLINGS
Right. I mean do you find that when you are writing, that you are writing for a specific group?
GELBART
No.
COLLINGS
Do you have a—
GELBART
Yes, me.
COLLINGS
You're writing for yourself?
GELBART
Yes, the group that is me. And less and less am I inclined now to send valentines to that part of my memory that grew up watching those movies. I think I'm more in touch with what is now than I was when I was writing about what was some prior then, you know.
COLLINGS
So is Movie, Movie the only instance where you were writing about some— And also, I suppose, Sly Fox.
GELBART
City of Angels.
COLLINGS
Okay, and how is—
GELBART
City of Angels is about a screenwriter, a novelist, actually, who comes to Hollywood to adapt one of his novels into what is a film noir, so I could feed into the process my own experiences with studios and studio people who want to change your work and my love of a certain kind of movie from the forties, and an extra plus there was with a very, very swing- and jazz-oriented score, which is a carryover from my days as a kid just loving big bands.
COLLINGS
So it sounds like you almost went through a kind of a nostalgic period with the—
GELBART
The only thing wrong with that sentence is the tense. [laughs]
COLLINGS
Why?
GELBART
Well, I think despite my statement of two seconds ago about being very much in the now, there's a part of you that's always back in one then or another, you know.
COLLINGS
Yes. Well, is it a particular then that has to do with a particular period in show biz history?
GELBART
It depends. It depends. If we're talking about music, it is a certain period. If it talks about movies, it goes back even farther. If it's about comedians, it goes way, way back. But as I say that, I realize how much of it is about the entertainment business, and I get a little bit embarrassed that those are the highlights of my life.
COLLINGS
Well, that's your career.
GELBART
That's right.
COLLINGS
You are what you are.
GELBART
Or that I'm proud.
COLLINGS
Yes, be proud.
GELBART
Now I'm embarrassed about being proud. [mutual laughter]
COLLINGS
Actually, this kind of raises a question. When you were on Caesar's Hour, for example, which is the very early days of—
GELBART
Oh, you met with him, huh?
COLLINGS
Yes, yes.
GELBART
He's a piece of work, huh? Oh, we'll talk about it. Okay.When I was on Caesar's Hour
COLLINGS
When you were on Caesar's Hour, early days of television, did you have any sense at all that TV was going to go on to dominate the minds and souls of every American?
GELBART
Yes, yes.
COLLINGS
You did?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
How did you know that?
GELBART
I'm smart. [mutual laughter] Well, it just seemed obvious. I mean here's one of those things in everybody's house, telling you what somebody wants you to hear, showing you what somebody wants you to see, selling you. It was a no-brainer. Not only that, I mean if I were the dumbest person, if I were the dumbest person in the world, which I am nominated for several times, you could just see it growing by leaps and bounds anyway. You could see more shows, more sets sold, and more commercial investment. You saw it burgeoning.
COLLINGS
You couldn't miss it, I guess.
GELBART
Right.
COLLINGS
So when you do look back toward to sort of the early days, the comedy, that you were aware of the comedy—
GELBART
Wouldn't it be nice to look forward to early days?
COLLINGS
Yes, of the thirties and forties.
GELBART
Not thirties. Oh, the comedy of the thirties? Yes, as a spectator, sure.
COLLINGS
Yes, yes, exactly. What do you think were the key turning points in terms of changes of tone and—
GELBART
Well, it's pretty apparent that in more innocent times, which weren't all that innocent, but we weren't as aware of what was not innocent because there were fewer people lifting rocks and showing us what might be underneath them then, but the comedy was always reflective of the society. I mean, comedy is not a leader. Comedy comments, and so it needs a subject matter. I don't think anybody ever thought it would get to where it is now, but then I don't think— It would have been very difficult to imagine a society which is as tough and as rough, outspoken, angry as the one we live in.
COLLINGS
So when you say got to where it is now, how would you characterize that?
GELBART
Society? The American society?
COLLINGS
No, the comedy, when you say comedy's got to where it is now.
GELBART
Well, comedy, comedy, comedy, comedy. Comedy, a lot of it is protest, whether it's a joke about your mother-in-law, which is a form of protest, and probably the most primitive form, and you can go back to Plautus for those, or race.What's the question?
COLLINGS
Well, you were saying nobody would have ever anticipated that comedy could get to where it is now.
GELBART
Yes, our society is so volatile. You know, you grow up as a kid thinking history is something you study. Everything that's happened has happened, and all you've got to do is remember the dates when it happened now and why it happened. It takes a long time to understand that there's history being made in your lifetime and that these enormous changes are taking place, and whereas the study of history leads to some conclusions, the relentless daily history-making has yet to reveal those solutions, and so you feel a bit adrift.As for the practical side, I would not be pleased if I were starting a career in this industry, in this business, next Tuesday. It, too, has gotten meaner, competitive to a vicious degree, different standards, different values. It was never an easy business to get into, always one you could get out of very quickly if you failed with any sort of regularity.[telephone rings] Saved by the bell.I don't know. Can you get me out of that sentence somewhere, dot, dot, dot. Would I what, I'm sorry?
COLLINGS
You were just saying that it was a business that you would never wish to be beginning right now.
GELBART
I wouldn't, I wouldn't. I mean, I was lucky. I mean, I was almost storybook, somebody saying, "Hey, kid, here's a pencil. Write something," and I did. I guess that could happen today, but—
COLLINGS
Do you think that your sensibility jibed with what the country was looking for at that time, sort of urban immigrant up and coming, upwardly mobile?
GELBART
Well, my sensibility was formed by what I actually experienced in hanging around barbershops and going to school with people from a similar, more or less, background.
COLLINGS
This was a time when people from the countryside were moving into the city in great numbers.
GELBART
They may have been, but more importantly for me, people from Europe had been moving in great numbers. I don't think I ever knew anybody who wasn't a first-generation American when as a kid. We are so in flux in what is an American, who are Americans, and never more so than in the last five years have we changed so drastically, dramatically. I don't know. My hesitation only comes from knowing that anything you can say about any subject can be total poppycock the next.
COLLINGS
There's a book about your work called The Classically American Comedy of Larry Gelbart.
GELBART
Jay Malarcher.
COLLINGS
So do you think your comedy is classically American?
GELBART
Well, he does. That's good enough for me. [laughs]
COLLINGS
Okay, just wondering.
GELBART
No, I was quite— I was pleased, of course, but startled by his selection of a title. But he seems like a very— No, he is a bright guy. I know Jay. But he sought me out. I mean, this is not something I even knew was going to happen.
COLLINGS
No, I just wondered if you would—
GELBART
Do I think it's classical? Well, what else is classical? Then I'll tell you if it fits. I don't know.
COLLINGS
We'll think about that one, then.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Okay. You also worked on United States
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
—which I've got the synopses of it here.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
That sounds like really rugged material.
GELBART
It was. It was visceral.
COLLINGS
I mean, just stuff like this, "The Chapins panic when they think that their daughter is pregnant."
GELBART
Really?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Well, that must be a later script that we didn't ever do.
COLLINGS
Oh, okay. "Libby finally confesses a shocking childhood secret."
GELBART
Oh, that was a great script.
COLLINGS
I can only imagine what that is.
GELBART
No, that was called "Touching Story," and she talked about being molested by her uncle and how it colored how she felt about men and about sex. We had a wonderful first-act curtain which they made us change, "they" being NBC. She was telling him about this experience as a girl and she used the expression, she said, "He was trolling with M&Ms." But, anyway, and she's telling her husband Richard about this situation, and he comforts her by taking her into her arms, and she says, "You bastard. You've got an erection." She's horrified that that turned him on. So we had to finesse that a little bit there somehow. But oh, it was good stuff, really good stuff.NBC was then run by a man named Fred Silverman, and I worked with Fred at CBS on M*A*S*H. He was vice president in charge of programming. Then I think I worked with him briefly at ABC on Three's Company. I don't know if we're going to talk about that or not; it doesn't really matter. Now he was at NBC. It was his third network. And he said, "Do whatever you want. Do a series. No pilot, no nothing, just do a series."I said, "One condition. Let me prepare thirteen scripts. Let's not do anything. Let's not hire anybody. I want to be able to sit down on thirteen different days and read thirteen different scripts and make the changes, make the fixes. Then when it comes to shooting them, that's all we'll have to do." And he said yes. It was very brave of him. They took out full-page ads in New York Times. I remember it was an incredible campaign. Then they saw the product, and it was so much darker than they imagined that they put us on at ten-thirty at night, which was terrible. So it was kind of, I call it— I don't know what I call it. That's some kind of television euthanasia. I mean we really— Crib death. But it was a good series.
COLLINGS
Do you think this series would go now?
GELBART
They repeated a few of them on Trio. There's some series there they called unscripted— No, not unscripted, Brilliant But Cancelled. They've shown three or four of those. I mean it would still be. You what, I'm sorry?
COLLINGS
No, go ahead.
GELBART
You want to see some?
COLLINGS
Sure, yes.
GELBART
I might be able to dig some out.
COLLINGS
Okay, that would be great, yes.
GELBART
I think it was the forerunner, without any question, of a lot of different shows. I mean thirtysomething.
COLLINGS
That's right. That's what's Ed Zwick somewhere says, "Oh, well, we're doing United States with thirtysomething," although this sounds darker, actually.
GELBART
It was dark. It was about the one divorce, and maybe that's in there, I don't know, about the one marriage in two that doesn't end in divorce. Well, if it doesn't end in divorce, is it all that smooth? No, it's this and it's this, but people learn to live through and with these problems. It was wonderful. We covered dyslexia, we covered virility, we covered infidelity, we covered— Oh, Jesus. I just realized something. This is a case of life imitating TV art, anyway. We did an episode in which Libby, that was the heroine's name, Libby's ex-husband comes to stay for a little— Spend the night or something with the Chapins. Richard was played by Beau Bridges. We have a scene where the three of them are in bed, not in any kind of salacious or— They're just sitting around like old friends. Not in bed; on the bed. I just realized that in real life, my wife's ex-husband some weeks ago suffered a stroke, and she said to me, "Could he come stay with us for a while until he gets back on his feet?"
COLLINGS
Recovered, yes.
GELBART
So he's here now. So—
COLLINGS
Oh, is that who that is?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
I thought maybe that was your dad or something.
GELBART
No, my dad is not with us. He's ninety. He, this fellow, not my dad. So I'm either living it and writing it, or writing it and then living it.
COLLINGS
Life imitating art.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
This sounds like it was a really brave series.
GELBART
Well, the other writer involved, Gary Markowitz, is my stepson, so it was kind of interesting giving your own kid kind of a glimpse behind the door that he may not have realized or without— You're showing him something he doesn't know about.
COLLINGS
Well, I hope he was over eighteen by that time.
GELBART
He was. He was.
COLLINGS
Would you like to break for today?
GELBART
No. What time is it?
COLLINGS
It's twelve-thirty.
GELBART
No, we can go another fifteen if you want.
COLLINGS
I'm going to—

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE
October 12, 2005

GELBART
So United States went on the air. Lots of mail, "Can't watch this in the same room with my wife." Or, "When did you start looking into my bedroom?" No rating at all, impossible in that position. I'm not saying it would have been better anywhere else, because so often in television it's what's in front of you and what's behind you, and there was nothing in front or behind that would work for them. So we shot thirteen and we were cancelled after eight on the air, because nobody came.
COLLINGS
Was there anything else on the air at that time that approximated it in any way?
GELBART
Like this? Not yet. I mean, there's being ahead of the curve, and then there's being—
COLLINGS
So what would you point to after that that—
GELBART
That came close?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
I don't know, because— And that's not to say there weren't any, it's because I watch TV of that kind so infrequently. I guess the show with—the something of Molly—
COLLINGS
Oh, The Education
GELBART
Not education. The trials, the travels, the something, with Blair.
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Brown?
COLLINGS
Yes, and she lives in New York, I think.
GELBART
Yes. [The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd] That was the closest. It was kind of meditative and lifelike without trying to be real, and then thirtysomething.
COLLINGS
thirtysomething, did you like that show?
GELBART
I didn't watch it. For that matter, I mean, M*A*S*H, when people are prepared to talk about it, I mean St. Elsewhere, so much that followed in terms of medical shows. So there's some, I can't even say satisfaction, some interest that you do something that other people pick up on and find repeatable.
COLLINGS
Would you consider doing something like that now?
GELBART
Which?
COLLINGS
Like United States?
GELBART
No. I can't write about it. I don't want to write about love and marriage now.
COLLINGS
So what do you want to write about now?
GELBART
I want to write about scoundrels.
COLLINGS
Back to Volpone.
GELBART
Back to Volpone. I'm working on a number of things. I wrote a screenplay with my son Gary about gentrification of our cities and what happens to less fortunate participants in that, those dramas. I'm writing a— It's not a follow-up, but it's in the mode of Mastergate. Did we talk about Mastergate?
COLLINGS
No, no.
GELBART
Well, I'm working on a radio play for the BBC called Abrogate, which is an investigation of this administration, three or four administrations down the line. And I'm working on a— This will just be for one night, but people are free to do it if they think it's worth doing again, a play— Not a play. Again a congressional committee investigating what I call Floodgate, so I have a gate trilogy going.
COLLINGS
Great.
GELBART
I do a lot, but I find it's harder and harder to get stuff on these days. Maybe not for other people, but—
COLLINGS
Why is that?
GELBART
I don't know. It would depend on the project. I did a play— Not a play. I did a musical revue out here called Like Jazz last year at the Mark Taper Forum with Cy Coleman, with whom I wrote City of Angels, and Alan and Marilyn Bergman, who are very prestigious lyricists, and we're getting that ready for Broadway. We have financing and all of that, so that's another project.
COLLINGS
So do you think that the theater and radio are more satisfying for you?
GELBART
Radio, no. Radio only because of the BBC and only because I'm writing something that is so tough on this present administration that I know no one else will put it on, but I know that if it finally exists in play form that maybe it will get done here.Motion pictures are almost impossible for me because a lot of reasons. If we're going to meet again, I'll try to come up with those reasons. All right?
COLLINGS
All right. Okay. Do you want to break now?
GELBART
No. Do you have another question?
COLLINGS
Oh, okay. Well, I didn't sort of prepare anything on Tootsie, which you probably don't even want to talk about. Is that correct?
GELBART
We can talk about it, but let's do that next time when I might have some fresh answers. What else did you want to?
COLLINGS
Well, we could talk about Blame it on Rio
GELBART
Okay.
COLLINGS
—which I really enjoyed.
GELBART
Me, too. Me, too. Well, that's a colorful story. When I was doing Tootsie, when I was working on Tootsie, and not having an easy time with Dustin Hoffman, he said, "Why don't you go see a movie called—." And I forget what the title was, but it's what Blame it on Rio was based on. It was a French film (Un moment d'égarement), and it was playing in a little art house in Santa Monica. I saw it and it was very amusing, but I did not want to work with Dustin Hoffman again.So I said to my friend Stanley Donen, "If you want to see a cute movie, not with the idea that you want to make it, there's this thing called—." Which I'll find.So Stanley saw it. He said, "I love this. And I know the Frenchman who wrote it and directed it. Why don't we do it together?"I said, "Well, I would feel funny, because Dustin put me on it and I don't want to feel that I passed it off to some—," blah, blah, blah.So Stanley went ahead and made a deal, got the rights to it, assigned a writer (Charlie Peters), and by that time I had fallen out with Dustin. So when Stanley called me and said the script can use some help, I said, "I'm available." So I did a lot of work on it, and I think it is funny. I mean, it's one of the few things that I have seen that I've written or been part of that I laugh at now because there's some wonderful lines it in.One of the nice things about it was I got to go down to Rio for a couple of weeks and spend some time there, ostensibly working on the script and working with Michael Caine again, with whom I'd worked way back in The Wrong Box.But then the movie came out, and it was a shit storm. I mean people were so offended at the— Well, I think Stanley made a mistake, although I was part of it, in having someone so pneumatic play the leading role. I won't mention her name, but she's a young woman that was just— I mean she would have been over-endowed for a statue in the most scandalous times in Rome, and it would have better, I think, if we hadn't played up— Or played less on her physicality. That said, it was funny, and Joe [Joseph] Bologna is very funny.When it got as shot down as it did by the critics, I remember Michael Caine saying, "I've never seen such mass hypocrisy, because we know this goes on, and why can't people have a sense of humor about it?" But it was the wrong picture at the wrong time, I mean. When a country—
COLLINGS
What was the year on that?
GELBART
I don't know, but and it wasn't as bad as it got to be in our society.
COLLINGS
'84, I believe?
GELBART
Was it '84? I think that's right. Well, then I'm shifting. Then that's an anachronism. I mean we weren't as aware then of how many people prey on young girls, so maybe I'm giving it an importance—
COLLINGS
When I read the synopsis before I saw the movie, I was wondering, and then when I saw the movie, I mean Michael Caine comes off as so somebody who is just dragged into this by the energy, the insistent youthful energy of this girl. We all know how insistent young people can be and how hard it can be to fend them off, whether they want to buy some ridiculous thing or what have you, and that really comes out for me.
GELBART
Well, then good. I think you're very discerning, because a lot of people would say we were making Michael the victim rather than the girl, but clearly what you've just said plays a great part in it, that he is swept up by her enthusiasm, and his defenses are not all that strong to start with. But anyway, despite it all, it remains a memorable experience because it was fun to write, it was fun to see. Just the criticism wasn't fun to take.
COLLINGS
Well, going into it, I mean, were the cast discussing what might be some of the possible reactions to the film?
GELBART
No, I don't remember it, because I only stayed the two weeks, and then we, my wife and I and my son Adam, we were down there, and we left. So whatever discussions took place, I was not privy to.It was also Demi Moore's, I think, first sort of major role. She didn't look too comfortable in it, but she got very comfortable naked and in front of the cameras later on. I don't know what else to say about it.
COLLINGS
You said that Forum was really sort of one of your favorite pieces, and M*A*S*H, I presume, in terms of television is probably your favorite?
GELBART
In television?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
No. Oh, sure, I mean, god, four years of a personal soapbox. You'd have to be pretty ungrateful to not— What are my favorites?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Well, it's not so much a favorite, it's a surprise to me that I was able to do Barbarians at the Gate. I am so unsmart about finances that I never thought I could do a comedy based on high finance.
COLLINGS
In terms of your thing that you're doing now with the—I think you put it somewhere—straight from the spleen, regarding the present administration—
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
—is this the first administration that you've really felt you needed to go out of your way to write about specifically?
GELBART
Oh yes. Oh yes. Will Rogers used to joke about senators, and Plautus joked about senators in the first Senate, so they've always been fair game. And I was making jokes about Harry [S.] Truman and whoever in M*A*S*H, and certainly every week in Bob Hope we would talk about Washington. But feeling as I do that we've never had a more destructive group of corrupt officials and dangerous ones in Washington, this is from the spleen. Those others were not from the spleen. Those others were some kind of detached conventional observation of politicians as a group being what we all think they are. But this bunch, I mean, they're threatening the planet.
COLLINGS
I think that's what I was trying to ask you before when we were talking about M*A*S*H, because Will Rogers' humor, for example, is always sort of based on the idea that those inept politicians don't have as much common sense as the common man.
GELBART
Right.
COLLINGS
Of course, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington plays on that kind of thing.
GELBART
Well, now we have the— Yes, I'm sorry.
COLLINGS
So in M*A*S*H, it was kind of like oh, how inept the politicians are.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
But now you've made a switch, and you're saying it's not that they're inept, it's that they're dangerous. It's that they're corrupt. Those are the words you—
GELBART
They're dangerous, they're corrupt, and in order to demonstrate how inept government is that really all, all society benefits from corporate or private enterprise, they have done their best to strip any "eptitude" from government. We see it. We see it on the news.
COLLINGS
So this is another level of magnitude compared to what the kinds of criticisms you were making in M*A*S*H?
GELBART
I think so, because I think what they're doing is much more important than picking a pocket or going on a junket. They are threatening, literally threatening our lives. Some people are no longer threatened. They have been deprived of their lives because of FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] and other exercises. And with the avian flu looming, we don't know the quality. I've already heard the quality of some of the people in charge of this study being suspect in terms of qualifications of what they're doing.
COLLINGS
Oh, god, more like Friends of George Bush or something.
GELBART
FOBs, Friends of Bush.
COLLINGS
Right.
GELBART
They used to be Friends of Bill's, right?
COLLINGS
Right, it used to be Friends of Bill's, yes.
GELBART
No, I think I would have been—I know I would have been as worked up as I am in any event, and I'm one of millions, hopefully. But because of the children, the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren, it makes it even more, as you know from your own personal experience.
COLLINGS
Yes. I don't know if you want to make this a part of your oral history, but we haven't really talked about your kids and what they're doing.
GELBART
Whatever's fine.
COLLINGS
I know that you've mentioned your stepson's in the entertainment industry.
GELBART
Right, yes.
COLLINGS
What other kinds of things do the kids get into?
GELBART
Do other kids do?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
My son Adam, he's forty-five now, when he was eighteen he said, "Don't make a job for me. Don't call your friends and have them give me some kind of a position. I don't really want to do that." What he is is an absolutely brilliant model maker and radio control artist.
COLLINGS
Oh, neat. That's very interesting.
GELBART
It is interesting, and he's worked on some amazing assignments. I mean the most recent one— He does it all the time, but his most recent work was in The Aviator. He built that Spruce Goose and he flew that. It's just extraordinary. So he does that. I'll tell you about the rest next week.
COLLINGS
Okay. Do you want to break now?
GELBART
Yes. It's my back. It's not—[End of October 12, 2005 interview]

1.13. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE
October 26, 2005

COLLINGS
This is Jane Collings interviewing Larry Gelbart in his home in Beverly Hills on October 26th, 2005, and it's tape [nine]— I'll get back to you on that.[recorder turned off]
COLLINGS
Good morning, Larry.
GELBART
Good morning, Mr. Chairman.
COLLINGS
Are you going to take the Fifth [Amendment]?
GELBART
Yes, tell me.
COLLINGS
Is that your light?
GELBART
No, no.
COLLINGS
Before we get back into the chronology, I had a few kind of like thought and opinion questions. You had said last time that you didn't know anyone who wasn't a first-generation immigrant growing up, and of course you must have known a lot of second-generation immigrants like yourself.
GELBART
Well, when I say that, I mean in my earliest years.
COLLINGS
Yes, earliest.
GELBART
Plus a lot of immigrants.
COLLINGS
Was there a point where you began to feel like that environment for you changed? I supposed when you came out to Los Angeles.
GELBART
I think when I came. Yes, when I went from places named after Polish generals to places named after Mexican or Spanish generals.
COLLINGS
So that was a big change with that.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
I was watching a documentary about Caesar's Hour, and Mel Brooks make the comment, he says, "He assumed that everyone in America was a little nutty."
GELBART
Mel did?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Mel assumed?
COLLINGS
No, Mel said that about [Sid] Caesar.
GELBART
Oh. Oh, that Caesar thought that everybody in America was a little nutty?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Only someone supremely nuts himself.
COLLINGS
Okay. Because I just wanted to ask you, I mean the Caesar's Hour show has such a—
GELBART
Glow.
COLLINGS
Yes, glow, and kind of like a frenetic edge.
GELBART
Oh, yes, very urban, very Jewish-family show. I don't mean it was a family show. I mean the people in it all were clearly raised by neurotic Jews.
COLLINGS
Actually, that goes actually to another question that I had. Maybe we'll skip ahead to that. Your name comes up in works discussing what is now being called Jewish comedy or Jewish humor.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
This is one of the books, The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America, Funny Already: A History of Jewish Comedy with Television Program; A Gift for Laughter: Comedy and the Jews.
GELBART
You mean I've been outed?
COLLINGS
Yes. But what I'm trying to say is that this is sort of a way of looking at film and humor and comedy that's really something from the eighties and nineties.
GELBART
A look back at or a summing up or a revelation or—
COLLINGS
At that time, I mean did you guys say, "Oh, we're doing Jewish humor"?
GELBART
No. No. I don't think anybody that's being himself or herself ever says, "I'm doing this as a representative of a group," or, "Gee, I'll bet all this is adding up to something." No, I don't think so.I think we probably have gone here. So much of popular writing; that is to say not literature, radio and television, came from people who are generally acknowledged to have a point of view that borders on the wry or the satirical. Jews, we sort of had a corner on that market, or a cornerstone on that market, as I heard someone say recently.Do you have a pencil?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Thank you. I just wanted to use that somewhere, not as mine, but—
COLLINGS
You're just going to start writing right here and now.
GELBART
Yes, in front of you, he exposed himself.
COLLINGS
Yes. This is probably a silly question, but was there also any kind of sense after World War II, do you think, of a kind of an acceptance of a more perhaps sort of like offbeat or even noir-ish sensibility which perhaps faded as the war years faded in memory?
GELBART
I don't know. I would leave that to social—
COLLINGS
Just wondering what you would think about that.
GELBART
No, I don't think so.
COLLINGS
Because I was just really struck by some footage of the Lawrence Welk Show in comparison with Caesar saying that the Lawrence Welk Show had pushed Caesar's Hour off.
GELBART
Well, if I'm being repetitious, stop me as soon as it gets so, but it pushed it off because it was, as most, as many things do, for an economic reason. Once the price of sets came down, more people bought them, and the wider the audience, in fact, the less educated, and so it was a lot easier to understand "and a one and a two and a three" than some of the more esoteric paths we may have taken with Sid.
COLLINGS
Did Caesar and your group ever consider changing anything?
GELBART
No, no. No. You can't. I mean, there are those people who do watch the market and try to keep up with it, adapt to it, change for it, which is adapting for it, but no. We were all trapped in our own, happily, ways.
COLLINGS
You were off the show before it was cancelled, right?
GELBART
I try to do that as often as possible. I try to jump ship even before it sails.
COLLINGS
Yes. Okay. Another question. Lucille Kallen, right, was the sole female writer for Your Show of Shows?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Then Selma [Diamond], you didn't work with her?
GELBART
No. I did work with Selma Diamond, who I knew from radio days. We had been on Duffy's Tavern together for a short time, and I knew Selma. She was kind of a fixture.
COLLINGS
How did the women fare in the writer's room? It sounds like it was pretty crazy place, kind of like locker-room-like.
GELBART
Well, yes, but insanity has no gender. We didn't think of them so much as the woman in the room as another writer in the room, and if she said something that made the cut, fine. If not, it wasn't, "Oh, women are bad drivers and bad joke writers."
COLLINGS
But what about all the high-jinks, like Caesar trying to throw Mel Brooks out the window and—
GELBART
I think there's some who might have joined him. [laughs] No, it was either Selma was one of the guys or all of us were one of the girls, but it was fine.
COLLINGS
Okay. Just wondering about that.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
I think that it's time for us to get into what's probably been called your reportage trilogy.
GELBART
My reportage trilogy. Oh, the HBO films?
COLLINGS
Yes, Barbarians at the Gate, Mastergate, and Weapons of Mass Distraction.
GELBART
And Pancho Villa.
COLLINGS
I was going to ask you, yes.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
The work leading up to that sort of celebrates the individual in the face of the institution in many times. How would this other work, which seems in some ways to be quite different, continue that theme, or are you on to something else with that work?
GELBART
It's only in hindsight that a pattern emerges. It's like being in a darkroom and suddenly something you didn't know was there is there as the liquid brings it into view.I was drawn to Barbarians because it was a very difficult but a wonderful yarn with incredibly colorful characters. It was meant to be a motion picture first.
COLLINGS
Oh, it was?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
After the book, you mean?
GELBART
After the book, it was optioned by quite an astonishing man named Ray Stark, who made motion pictures at Columbia Studio, and Ray— I read the book. I didn't read the book. First I read a review, and I thought, "That's the book I want," so I sent for it and, of course, it started immediately to gather dust on my bedstand because that's what happens these days when you can get them so easily and still don't have any more time to read them.But he called very soon thereafter and said, "Do you know of a book?"I said, "Yeah, I'm looking forward to reading it."He said, "Please read it, because I'd like to make it into a film."So I did and I realized, generally, it's good to be frightened about an idea rather than thinking it's going to be a slam-dunk, which is probably something I've said before with you. Columbia Pictures put up the money, and after a few drafts decided that it was not really a good investment to spend the kind of money that would have been required to make a motion picture with probably a very limited audience. Certainly wasn't going to be a date movie, all this talk about leveraged buyouts, none of which I understood when I started to write the script.So Ray went to HBO, a company that had expressed an interest in buying it even as he was doing it and said, "Would you like to make it as an HBO film?" And they jumped at the chance, so we went over there. Again, looking back, I realize it was a tremendous challenge because I don't know anything about it.
COLLINGS
What drew you to the material, besides the character?
GELBART
Just the power, the power of those people, the recklessness of those people. A couple of the characters were just irresistible, real-life people, and I resisted meeting any of them because I didn't want them to have to— And they would have sort of campaigned for themselves, and I wanted to be able to treat them from a distance and from the record, rather than how they might want to influence my portrayal of them. But it was a terrific experience, just terrific.
COLLINGS
Did any of them talk to you after they saw the piece?
GELBART
Any of those people?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
No, but I got word about it.
COLLINGS
What did they think?
GELBART
Well, some were extremely unhappy, but not knowing them, it didn't really matter what they thought because I never wanted to know what they thought. Anyway, that was the first, and as I said, I really wasn't thinking about— I just thought it was a chance to write a very good movie. It turned out to be a good movie, but for the small screen.Weapons of Mass Distraction, a gentleman named Bob Cooper, who was one of the people in charge at HBO, came to me and he talked about the tabloidization of America and how much people were into reading the rags, as we call them, the tabloids. So I got this take on it, which it turned out to be successful, I think, and I liked it because it was an original and, looking back, I've done an awful lot of adaptation, so I always welcome the chance to do something which at least I think might be original, and so we did that one.The third one of the HBO films was a case, again, of HBO coming to me and saying, "We have this enormous research about the Mexican revolutionary general [Francisco] Pancho Villa and his flirtation with the early movie industry." I read the material and I was hooked, and so I did that for a couple of years.
COLLINGS
That seems like a strange thing for a movie conglomerate to be interested in.
GELBART
Well, they're interested in everything. I mean, they have such an unfillable maw, that everything is grist. But movie people, as a rule, like nothing better than stories about other movie people.
COLLINGS
That's true, yes.
GELBART
This one had it all, it had war and it had the birth of Mexico and the birth of pictures, modern Mexico, and so it was irresistible.The other one, Mastergate, actually, Mastergate began life back in, I guess, the late eighties. I had an invitation from Robert Brustein, who was then the artistic director of the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge at Harvard [University]. I always say "at Harvard" because it lets me say me and Harvard in the same sentence. It's not part of their address.But he said he wanted to do a political play, and he mentioned a play called Peace by, I believe it was Aristophones, and I read it and I couldn't make head or tail of it because it's very hard to read a classical piece by yourself without the help of others, and all the notes in the world don't really help. I just felt I underprepared, unprepared to tackle something like that.But it was around that time that the Iran Contra hearings were going on or just had finished, and I was, as always, glued to my set for those kinds of things. I think what I love mostly is just how they corrupt the language, how they— It's not true that it's a first casualty. It's really grammar and anything to do with the word, public speaking.So I said I would like if he would— Instead of that, I would like to, instead of Peace, I'd like to take a try at doing a full congressional committee hearing looking into some government abuse. And so it was inspired by two things, one, the Iran Contra situation and the other thing was there was a moment at that time when there was a great deal of heat on 20th Century Fox, the studio. It was owned by Marvin Davis and a man named Marc Rich. Marc Rich later became even more infamous than he was, because he became a tax fugitive, and he was one of the first people that President [William Jefferson] Clinton pardoned.But Marc Rich was subpoened by some branch of the government and refused to come home to testify, and he was being fined something like a hundred thousand dollars a day for every day he ignored the subpoena. One of the remedies which the government, or penalties which they thought they'd impose, was that they would take over his half of 20th Century Fox. So the notion of Washington bureaucrats running a Hollywood studio, again, was kind of irresistible, so I married the two things. I was looking for— I wanted to get "gate" in the subject, in the title, and so I said to my wife one day, "What can I call this thing? I want something-gate."She said, "How about Mastergate?" Of course, I sparked to it immediately and named the studio Master Pictures, so as to justify the use of Mastergate.So we did it at the American Repertory Theatre, and Frank Rich, who was then the drama critic for the New York Times, paid me the great compliment of coming up from New York to see the show. As it turned out, his review was printed on February 14th, Valentine's Day, and it was just that. It was just a glowing, glowing, glowing, incredibly wonderful review of the show, and he said it had to go to New York, but by way of Washington, because they should see this.
COLLINGS
Did it ever play in Washington?
GELBART
I submitted it to the Kennedy Center, and they said it was too political. But I did open it in New York and, unhappily, Frank gave it a far less enthusiastic review.
COLLINGS
Because it was longer at that point, right?
GELBART
No, it wasn't so much that it was longer. I think the surprise was over, for one thing, and it really was. I call it a play. It's really a very, very, very extended sketch. It's a satire, although it had its own little storyline, which was quite a good one, actually. I had the mechanics of the scandal were that the government having taken over Master Pictures, used the shooting of a film in Central America as a way of getting money to the Contras. So I was mirroring—
COLLINGS
They could just shovel endless amounts of money and nobody will—
GELBART
Exactly. They added it all to the budget of the movie, which was eventually, I think, 1.3 billion dollars with catering.It ran on Broadway. It ran on Broadway for sixty-seven performances, I think, had a very small following, enthusiastic but small following, and I remember it taught me a fantastic lesson, and I don't even remember most lessons that I've thought I've learned.But the play closed too early for my taste on, I think, December 9th of '89, and December 10th, City of Angels, which I was also working on at the same time, opened. So it was really that thing about one stage door closing and another one opening, and not ignominiously, but as the show was kind of put to death, the next one was so highly praised, City of Angels, that I kind of learned to not be too up or too down about anything, because there was only a day that could separate comedy from tragedy.
COLLINGS
It seems like you've kind of enjoyed the theater more than the movies. Is that—
GELBART
Oh yes, oh yes, because I never aspired to direct. The end of a movie, usually, for me was putting the brads in the script and sending it off and then having other people do their stuff, whereas in the theater, without directing, you're there every moment. You're there with the actors. You're there with the audience.
COLLINGS
So you don't tend to do that on the set for one of your scripts for film?
GELBART
No, no, no. No. And scripts tend to be taken away from you anyway. They tend to be passed on to the next writer, the next writer, the next writer. That doesn't happen— It didn't happen at HBO, happily. It certainly didn't happen at the American Repertory Theatre, and it didn't happen on Broadway.
COLLINGS
So how do you work with actors in the theater when they're putting on one of your scripts?
GELBART
Well, you don't work directly with them. Certainly you're there and you're available, not so much to explain what you mean; that's the director's job. First it's the script's job. I get along well with actors because I need them and I like them, but not all of them any more than you like everybody in every way that you're involved with people. But I'm there to clarify if they want clarification, and more importantly, or just as importantly, I'm there to see if I can't make their roles better as a result of knowing them, knowing their strengths, their weaknesses, giving them more, changing what they have, because you've written the concerto and now the pianist is working on it, and you see that you can make a better marriage between your work and theirs.
COLLINGS
So have there been instances where as the actor works with the part, that it's actually changed in really significant ways?
GELBART
Yes, I think it has. I think that happened in Sly Fox, working with George C. Scott. It took on his darker real malevolence or maybe it wasn't real, maybe it was just his public malevolence. But that got shaved very much as a result of having— The role, as a result of working with him, and then he had— Another good thing about the theater is when a movie plays, that's it. Nobody goes back and re-cuts it. But with a play, which is plastic forever, after we finished the New York run, it wasn't done in L.A. for perhaps a year, and when we were rehearsing a Los Angeles company, George again starring, George had another idea for the ending, and it was wonderful. You just put it in right then and there. You don't have to rebuild sets and you don't have to do the movie madness, and it works.Again, and best of all, though, you get to work with an audience. You don't get to work with an audience with a movie unless you play the picture for them, check their reactions, go back and fix it or change it, but this is so— I mean you hear them breathing and you see them. You see all kinds of people, real live people. [laughs]I remember watching a performance of the revival of Sly Fox, which we did a couple of years ago in New York, and I was standing in the back of the theater. I can't sit during a performance of anything I've ever—
COLLINGS
Why is that?
GELBART
I don't know. I need to walk away from it. I need to look somewhere else. I can't be trapped there. I just can't. But during the performance, I heard [imitates noise], and I thought, "My god, what is that sound?" Then again, like a [imitates noise], this terrible—
COLLINGS
It's like a leopard in the audience.
GELBART
Yes, I thought somebody was dying or something. It was an animal, it was a seeing-eye dog. [mutual laughter] This woman had come to hear the play, and the dog was having a bad dream or listening too carefully and registering his own opinion.There was a time in England, I directed, or misdirected, a revival of A Funny Thing Happened in a city called Chichester, and on opening night there was a contingent of people from an asylum there. There was all this inappropriate laughter and crazy sounds now and then. But, oh, god, but that's the theater. You're part of it. It's part of you. It's not a process that takes place someplace else and you need a parking permit to go visit your work.
COLLINGS
It sounds so much more satisfying than making movies—
GELBART
It is.
COLLINGS
—that you sort of wonder why anybody makes movies.
GELBART
Because they don't know how to do the other thing, or they don't want to do the other thing. They think that's archaic, and of course, you can't— In movies, talent is a special effect— I mean in the theater. But in movies, it's a giant erector set or train set, as Orson Welles called it.
COLLINGS
Yes, they really are very different—
GELBART
Animals.
COLLINGS
Animals. Very different, yes.
GELBART
One is an animal and the other one is a special effects animal.
COLLINGS
Yes. What was the ending that George C. Scott innovated?
GELBART
I don't remember. It was just an extension of a conversation between his character and his servant, Mosca in the original Volpone, and Simon Abel in the adaptation. I wish I could remember it, and it's somewhere in the archives. There's a copy of the play as it ended in New York, and then there'd be a copy of how it ended in Los Angeles.
COLLINGS
Okay. That's something good to look for.By the way, you were talking about how you had seen the Ollie [North]— The Contragate hearings.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Did you watch the Clarence Thomas hearings as well?
GELBART
Yes. Oh, yes.
COLLINGS
Did that spark any thoughts?
GELBART
Yes. Well, just how stupid people are. I mean I still remember Senator [Patrick] Leahy saying, "Judge Thomas, Miss Hill says that you—" what she said he said, you know, that he was always making these lascivious references and so on, so on.She said, "Yes, yes, Senator."And he said, "And he says they're not true."She says, "I know, Senator."He said, "Well, why would he say that?" I mean is that really good lawyering? Is that really— "Why would he say that? Why would anybody be dishonest?"
COLLINGS
Gee, I've never heard of that.
GELBART
Well, actually, I was lucky. I was in on the very first of the televised hearings, and that was the [Senator Joseph] McCarthy hearings, and those were riveting.
COLLINGS
What were you thinking about during those?
GELBART
Just how much better this is than anything anybody can imagine or write. But I'm just thinking, when was that? Like that was early fifties, so I've been a junkie now for—
COLLINGS
What were you working on? Do you remember what you were working on at that time?
GELBART
It would depend on when the McCarthy— If you can find out when the McCarthy hearings—
COLLINGS
Yes, I can. I don't have the exact date.
GELBART
Yes. It would have been Caesar or somebody. No, it wouldn't have been Caesar, because I remember being home a lot and able to watch it.
COLLINGS
Home at the farm.
GELBART
No, home in New York, watching, watching, watching. Fantastic.
COLLINGS
I remember one of the lines from Mastergate from your book, "The extent of my involvement is—."
GELBART
"Was limited to extent of my participation."
COLLINGS
Yes. [laughs]
GELBART
Some good stuff in there. This one is called Floodgate.
COLLINGS
The one that you're working on now.
GELBART
Yes. It's about Washington being inundated with— Being overrun with outrage, and just the breach in the public faith is such that there's been this torrent of destruction, so much so that the city government has been changed to Colorado.
COLLINGS
Oh, interesting.
GELBART
So I can do all the [Hurricane] Katrina stuff, but I do it in the context of Washington having become an emergency, a disaster.
COLLINGS
A disaster area.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
A federal disaster area.
GELBART
Exactly. Then I'm doing one for the BBC. They've commissioned a radio play, called Abrogate, which is about a committee of the future examining the events or the responsibility that this current administration has for abrogating law as many times as they did. I'm on a "gate" kick.
COLLINGS
Yes, you are. Now, is Floodgate for the theater?
GELBART
It's interesting you should ask, because I don't know where it's for. At the moment I had the possibility of doing it at the Geffen Theater for one night as a benefit, just with some actors sitting on stools and reading, but I'm seeing if— They can't do it until, I think, March, and that's a long time to wait, especially in these fast-moving times.
COLLINGS
That's right, yes. We'll be on to the next thing by then.
GELBART
Exactly, the next gate or two.
COLLINGS
It really does seem like once you start the ball rolling with these sort of political shows, that that's a whole new era in your work.
GELBART
It does seem that way, doesn't it? And yet it doesn't have to be political, whatever it is I do, but it has to be about something, something I care about.
COLLINGS
In your autobiography you wrote that Weapons of Mass Distraction is much darker than you expected, that you were expecting to write something lighter.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
But that you found that you were just a lot more angry about the subject matter than you realized.
GELBART
Yes, but I really sort of didn't— I really didn't address what I was angriest about in Barbarians.
COLLINGS
In Weapons of Mass Distraction?
GELBART
Oh, in Weapons?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Oh, Weapons was darker, yes. But there was something in Barbarians that I didn't concentrate on enough.
COLLINGS
Okay, well, let's hear of it.
GELBART
And that is the fact that tobacco and the fact that so many people got and get rich killing so many other people, and there are people connected with the Barbarian situation who give whole wings to museums and whole wings to hospitals, and yet they really do kill people and lie to Congress and get away with it. That, I've never really been able to— Well, I did in a way about a project that you don't even know about that ever went anywhere, but we can talk about that later, if you remember to ask me about: C-Scam.
COLLINGS
Okay.
GELBART
But, yes, I didn't realize how angry I was when I wrote Weapons of Mass Distraction, about this sort of mental hijacking that goes on that where our attention is either— Where we either were distracted or were diverted and ultimately, I think, we pay a very high price for that.
COLLINGS
I remember when, I think it was in the eighties when suddenly everywhere you went there was a television set. You'd go to the airport, they're in the departure lounges, they're in doctors' waiting rooms, they're in restaurants. It seemed like it happened very suddenly.
GELBART
I think maybe you're suddenly aware of it.
COLLINGS
Maybe I was, yes.
GELBART
I think it happened gradually, but it did. Yes, we're just not allowed a moment to concentrate on whatever it is we want to concentrate, even if it's nothing, even if it's just to really blank out, to meditate, to think. We're just assaulted by people after our money and after our minds.
COLLINGS
And the advent of the Entertainment Tonight kinds of magazine shows.
GELBART
Yes, the parasitic shows and the parasitic publications run by, staffed by people with no real achievement of their own, only there to report on the achievements and the naughtiness or the privacy of others who do do something.
COLLINGS
It's an interesting aspect of globalization, because it means that people are aware of things going on around the world.
GELBART
Mostly breasts are breasts in every country.
COLLINGS
Yes, yes.
GELBART
And handsome is handsome and kissing is kissing. It just cuts down on the need for any thinking. It's just so primal or atavistic.
COLLINGS
It's interesting. So what is the story of Weapons of Mass Distraction?
GELBART
The story of Weapons of Mass Distraction?
COLLINGS
I've read it, but let's hear it from you, because it seems like it's very multilayered.
GELBART
Well, it's about what happens when the rivalry between two men permits them to do to each other what they're so busy otherwise doing to others, that is, saying, outing someone's sexuality, revealing the most intimate parts of another person's life, pandering to prurient curiosity. These two men are rivals, each has his own media empire, and because they lock horns over the purchase of a football club, they begin to use all the weapons at their disposal to attack one another, to the great appreciation and further distraction of their audience.There was a real-life counterpart at that time. Ted Turner, before he sold out his interests in CNN and MGM and whatever else he had interests in, he and Rupert Murdoch had a tremendous battle, and they were always slamming each other, each in his own way, each in some different part of the media, and it finally extended to the— I mean, it finally reached the point where each one had a baseball club, the Atlantic Braves versus the Brooklyn— The Los Angeles Dodgers. Brooklyn Dodgers. And, you know, people said at the time, "Is this about them?"I said, "Well, it's about people like them, and we see it all the time." "My media is bigger than yours."
COLLINGS
Wasn't there another story about a family?
GELBART
Yes. I wanted to show that what goes on in first class affects the people down in the boiler room. I'm talking ships, of course, not aircraft.
COLLINGS
Yes, right.
GELBART
So I invented this couple, Rita and Jerry. He was a telephone linesman, went out and worked on those poles doing whatever they do, and when his company was bought by one of the media giants' companies, he lost his job and so his life went down, down, down, down to robbing his kids' piggybanks to go buy a beer because he was drinking because he had nothing to do. The last job he has on the show is he's one of the workers who cleans out the portable toilets at the new stadium that's being constructed by one of our two protagonists. Eventually— Well, specifically, he gets so drunk and he becomes sexually inactive at home, looks for sex in other places, is completely de-balled. Eventually he winds up in a freeway car chase, and his wife is at home watching him being chased and finally coming through the goddamned living room wall, and they wind up as two unfortunate Jerry Springer types on a television show owned by one of our two moguls, who eventually join forces to buy the team that they were both killing each other to get.
COLLINGS
Is there an accident with a bus?
GELBART
Yes. When Jerry, the telephone man, is at a bar, he picks up a young woman at the bar, and they go out to his car, both drunk, and they're making out in the car when his sons' bus, school bus, stops at the corner to drop some kids off, and the boys see their dad being serviced by the woman, and he is in such a panic that— Oh, I don't think he ever sees it. No, he doesn't see it. He doesn't see it. I'm sorry. They just observe dad in this scene in flagrante, and he does, going home, cause the school bus that they're on to turn over, to his reckless driving because he's being— Oh, no, I'm sorry. I forgot the sequence.He spends the money, the grocery money, on some beer. Then he picks up the girl, then his sons see him, then he goes to a supermarket, but he hasn't got any money, and so he goes around the back and he's looking in the dumpster, and while he's doing that, some provisions men are bringing some foodstuffs into the market. He steals some of this, they chase him, the police become part of the chase, they chase him on the freeway, and as they're chasing him, as he comes off the freeway, the bus is in front of him, a truck swerves, the bus goes over, catches on fire, and then he crashes through his own living room. It was a fiery, literally—
COLLINGS
All the kids on the bus—
GELBART
All the kids on the bus are fried.
COLLINGS
Oh, my god.
GELBART
It's a long way from "Thanks for the Memory," right?
COLLINGS
Yes. Let me flip this over.

1.14. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE TWO
October 26, 2005

GELBART
It was pretty purple.
COLLINGS
Yes, it certainly— So, number one, what brought all this out? I mean I don't see anything in any of your other work where a busload of kids get burned to a crisp.
GELBART
Well, the director added that, but I liked it so. No, so, no, I won't deny that I could have said, "No, they don't burn." But I thought, "Yeah, of course let it all come down on him."It's just that I am not for one moment, not for one millisecond, comparing myself to anybody like Goya, but look at his first works and then look at the darkness that crept into his painting, and I'm just one of many people far less gifted than Goya who finally sort of let the disappointment, let their frustration, let their anger be expressed through, in his case painting, in mine HBO.
COLLINGS
So this was a particular anger, frustration, disappointment with the media business?
GELBART
Yes, because I'm one of the— This being such a young business in such a young country, we've been around to see the birth of the movies, we've been around to see the birth of the airplane, we've been around to see the birth of jazz, popular music, and certainly television and radio, too. I remember how it started, and—
COLLINGS
That must have been so exciting.
GELBART
It was exciting, but I mean, I don't know whether I said it before to you, but it's the same as I'm certain the Wright brothers didn't think anybody was going to drop a bomb on other people from their little invention, or their very big invention. It's not this disappointment of what happened to the media, it's disappointment in a country that so celebrates greed, tries to emulate it, and what the greedy people who have it all do to everybody else.
COLLINGS
So this all started, this turn for the—
GELBART
This dark turn.
COLLINGS
This dark turn begins with the cycle, this kind of documentary cycle, because it's not really there in Tootsie.
GELBART
No, it's not there in Tootsie. It's not there in— Which means that it probably wouldn't have happened if not for cable television, which is a good— And even that's not what it was, cable TV.
COLLINGS
No, and you could have done it for the theater, too, right?
GELBART
Yes, but not with the scope. I mean, how do you burn children on the stage, unless you're doing The Crucible, where nobody gets burned.
COLLINGS
Also you said in a commencement speech at USC [University of Southern California], "Commissions have replaced commitment, regarding the film industry, packaging has replaced passion," and I guess this is all sort of grist—
GELBART
Citizen Kane is being replaced with Candy Kane.
COLLINGS
Yes. This all sort of grist for the mill of Weapons of Mass Distraction then.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
So that sounds like it's probably like a really important plot point in everything that you have been doing.
GELBART
Then maybe it is.
COLLINGS
I just wondered if you thought so because—
GELBART
Well, again, I liked it because it didn't exist until I made it exist. I didn't have a set of characters. I didn't have a plot. I was able to take just what I saw around me and turn it into something that worked, sort of worked.
COLLINGS
Have you built from that point? Is the Floodgate kind of along those lines?
GELBART
Oh yes. Well, it gets angrier. It gets angrier and angrier and probably a little too word-bound, as in muscle-bound. I start playing with words to such a degree that maybe sometimes nobody knows how what they thought was going to be a brilliant sentence ends up to be so loaded and larded with other meanings that I might even sink that thought with just too much baggage.
COLLINGS
Is Weapons of Mass Distraction funny at all?
GELBART
I think so. Well, it's black comedy. I mean it's very dark comedy, but I think it's— I think the scene where [F.] Ross Johnson—
COLLINGS
Oh, that's in—
GELBART
Oh, sorry, that's Barbarians.
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
I got my monsters mixed up. I don't know what's funny about Weapons. I don't go for funny. I just go for wherever there's an opportunity to comment on something and with something of a curve or something that's wry. Fall-down funny, I don't know.
COLLINGS
Did you see when you were a kid what are now called Hollywood social problem films?
GELBART
Sure.
COLLINGS
Did those make an impression on you at all?
GELBART
Everything in the movies made an impression on me. The short subjects made an impression on me.
COLLINGS
Because we talked before about how you loved vaudeville and this kind of thing. Then I was thinking, well, yes, all of those social problem films were on, too.
GELBART
You loved them. You loved them all, but I mean— Oh, I don't know. It's the comedies I remember. But the comedies, some of them were of very high quality, really literate.Go ahead, I'm sorry.
COLLINGS
Absolutely. No, that was a good time. That was a good period, yes.In looking through your files, I was finding all of this evidence of nascent political activity from your early days.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
You have what appears to be a note card signed by JFK, is that correct, thanking you for attending an event honoring the arts, hosted by JFK? The envelope is addressed to you at this address.
GELBART
Well, yes, I think that is a— After he'd been in office a short time, there was a big— I lived in New York at the time. There was a big celebration, probably a fundraiser, in the Armory, maybe it was the first hundred days, I'm not sure, in Washington. A fellow I worked with, Burt Shevelove, and I were asked to write the continuity for the show. It was a wonderful, wonderful show. So that was probably it. It was thanking me for— It would have been a form.
COLLINGS
Yes, sure. But did you meet him?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
What was that like?
GELBART
Like terrific.
COLLINGS
Oh, tell me what he's like in person.
GELBART
Well, first of all, he glowed. We didn't know it was his liver. He did have some kind of— He had more medical problems than we can imagine, but he was kind of almost amber. He looked suntanned, and he was handsome as hell. I remember after the evening, after the show at the Armory, we were invited, those of us who helped prepare the program were invited to a party at the residence of Perle Mesta, who was famous. They used to call her the hostess with the mostest. She was a big contributor to the Democratic Party, and her house became the official residence of Vice President Johnson and Lady Bird, and so we all went over there. And I remember going to a bathroom and seeing a can of Ajax underneath the sink and thinking, "My god. Just folks. Was that here or did they bring that from Texas?"We met him and his wife in a little line, and I remember this so clearly, and my wife does, too, he met her and he gave her the old MRI, you know, just scanned her from top to bottom.
COLLINGS
Wow.
GELBART
That was our JFK.
COLLINGS
Wow, how interesting.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Maybe that was just like he just—
GELBART
It was pro forma.
COLLINGS
He did that? That's just what he did?
GELBART
That's right, and then he did the other thing. [laughs]I remember her voice. I thought, "My god, she sounds just like Marilyn Monroe."Then my partner, Burt Shevelove, was standing next to me, and he gave him a real, "Hi, Burt, how are ya?" because one of Burt's best friends, who became one of my really best friends, was a man named Chuck Spalding, who was very close to the Kennedys, and Burt had obviously met him at some time when he was senator or whatever. Burt was so— I could hear the wind go out of him. He got so drunk so fast because he couldn't believe the President of the United States had said, "Hi, Burt."It was a wonderful night. All the acts did a little impromptu show in the living room, and you could see he was hitting on— The president was quite clearly hitting on Mary, of Peter Paul and Mary.
COLLINGS
Really? What was he doing?
GELBART
Well, just you could— He was a flirt, you know.So that note would have been "Thank you, Larry," for whatever you did. But I told you, it's not that I met him, but I felt somewhat connected to him because my father used to cut his hair when he came out here, when the president came out here.
COLLINGS
Oh, right, right. Did you see him at that time?
GELBART
No.
COLLINGS
How did you get involved in writing that particular show?
GELBART
There was a man named Richard Adler, who was one half of a team called Adler and Ross, who were songwriters. They wrote only two shows and then Ross died. They wrote Pajama Game, and then they wrote the score for Damn Yankees. Adler was a funny guy. He didn't know he was, but he was. He said to Burt and I at a meeting about the show, he said, "This is wonderful. This is wonderful, you guys. And I'm telling you, you're going to get a nice credit on the program. I saw it this morning, and it says ‘Program written by Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove,' and it's in italics, you know those letters that slant?" [mutual laughter]We said, "Ooh!" They slant.But, you know, you get asked that a lot, "Will you do this? Will you do that?" I used to say no to practically everything, but now as there are fewer friends asking fewer favors, I do more than I have ever done, but only on the condition that I don't get any credit for it.
COLLINGS
And it has to be in italics, right? [laughs]
GELBART
Yes, yes, but that's easy now.
COLLINGS
What made you want to do this one?
GELBART
JFK. The magic.
COLLINGS
For one of the events, there's a speech that's in your handwriting labeled "Peck," so this was a speech that you had written for Gregory Peck?
GELBART
Gregory Peck. Yes, I think— Did he deliver that in Washington?
COLLINGS
It's with that whole packet, and it's in—
GELBART
Oh, that's another thing, though. That wouldn't have been then. Oh, maybe. Maybe he was on the program. Really? Is that a JFK packet from then?
COLLINGS
Well, it's a whole folder that's got— No, it's like stuff from a whole bunch of events.
GELBART
That would have been Peck somewhere else, Gregory, yes, who I also met in my father's barber chair and then who I got to be friends with later on in life, played poker with every Sunday.
COLLINGS
Was he a good player?
GELBART
Sort of.
COLLINGS
Sort of, okay.Now, there's also some notes in that folder that look like [Michael] Dukakis speech notes.
GELBART
I think I wrote some stuff for Dukakis, and I wrote an op-ed piece for the L.A. Times for him.
COLLINGS
Do you remember that speech that he gave? I think it was at the convention. There was this kind of continual refrain, "Where was George?"
GELBART
No, I wasn't part of that.
COLLINGS
Oh, okay, because this speech has got— It's not "Where was George?" It's "Where was Bush?" It's sort of a refrain.
GELBART
Maybe I did do that. [laughs]
COLLINGS
You know what, I'm not asking the right person.
GELBART
You should have asked the old me.
COLLINGS
No, I'm just kidding. Yes. No, I'm just kidding.
GELBART
Can you pull my plug there a second? I just want to use the men's room for a second.[recorder turned off]
COLLINGS
In that folder there's also some testimony before Congress on the hearings on sex and violence on TV.
GELBART
Oh yes, I remember that.
COLLINGS
In 1976.
GELBART
Yes. I don't think that was in D.C., I think that was downtown L.A. But it was a congressional committee or whatever.
COLLINGS
Your testimony is kind of interesting because you said that you blame the networks—no surprise there—and you say that their concerns are different from yours or ours.
GELBART
Right.
COLLINGS
But your point of view seems to be that there is not enough frank examination of sexuality as part of the range of human behavior, which I think was probably not the point of the hearings.
GELBART
I'm sure. [mutual laughter] Right.
COLLINGS
You use the example of that show Phyllis where, I guess, the daughter had been out all night and there was some question about whether she had slept with her boyfriend or not.
GELBART
Did she or didn't she, yes.
COLLINGS
Then finally Phyllis decides that she hadn't, because her daughter told her that, and then there was the line, "Unless she's lying," and that was cut out of the show.
GELBART
I'd forgotten that completely.
COLLINGS
Yes, this is part of your testimony. I just thought it was sort of interesting because it points to the problem that a lot of the 1970s shows were presenting.
GELBART
Yes. Did you find any of the Family Hour lawsuit?
COLLINGS
No. Could you tell me about that?
GELBART
That would be interesting.
COLLINGS
Yes, all right, let's hear about that.
GELBART
That's just that's seventies, I think '77 or '78, and that was at a trial. I was a plaintiff along with Grant Tinker, I think, Norman Lear, some other production companies, Danny Arnold, I think, and we sued the three networks over something called Family Hour. They were instituting a— They had instituted a policy of not allowing certain words that might be considered— It was probably a bow to early, very right-wing conservative pressure. That was good testimony, and we won the case.
COLLINGS
So they were putting— That was when they were starting that sort of prime time family hour, which was anything before nine p.m.?
GELBART
No, no. Like seven to nine, seven to ten, maybe, you couldn't— That's where the whole virgin thing came from on M*A*S*H, that situation where—
COLLINGS
Which is what, the virgin situation? They weren't allowed to use the word "virgin" on—
GELBART
They wouldn't let me use the word "virgin." So I had the guy say he was from the Virgin Island.
COLLINGS
—virgin rum and, yes.
GELBART
Yes, but that was a result of that. It was terrible. We can joke about it now, but it was really, really quite awful.
COLLINGS
What were some of the restrictions that it put on your work, do you think?
GELBART
Well, it had a very chilling effect. You couldn't— The sexuality issues. I was never concerned with violence, because no one ever hurt anybody laughing too hard. And it was all verbal. We didn't ever show any body parts. I guess that didn't start until— And you still don't see a breast, but you can see a man's bottom, I mean. It's just so crazy and random and stupid.
COLLINGS
Well, you can see dead, cut-open bodies in a morgue, but you can't—
GELBART
Yes, that's right. Yes, exactly.
COLLINGS
Like on CSI or something.
GELBART
Well, yes, that's reasonably— Look at the ads for Nip/Tuck, I mean, you see a naked girl go by you on a bus, and then she's in— Anyway, I don't know. I think I'm burned out on that subject.
COLLINGS
Okay. All right. Well, I guess I just thought it was interesting, because it just makes you really wonder if you could do a film like Oh, God! today, for example, or even something like Tootsie because it's—
GELBART
It's so— It's quaint.
COLLINGS
Yes. But also I mean something like Oh, God!, it's got like the sort of individual responsibility for deciding religious questions, which—
GELBART
Which is a no-no, right?
COLLINGS
Which is like sort of a no-no today. I mean on the one hand, it's very quaint, but you sort of even wonder if in the context of the conservative movement that was getting going at that time, if you could even do it now.
GELBART
Oh, I think you could. I think you could do that, but I think as you were doing it you would probably— Well, I think there was some heat even about the first one where— And it was a line from the book, I think, where God said—He's asked "Was Jesus your son?" and he said, "Yes, so was Moses, so was Buddha. They're all my sons." I think someone took exception to that. But you're always asking for trouble with that. It's always, now, has been forever, in terms of stepping on somebody's beliefs.
COLLINGS
I just find it that it would be hard to have a film that has so much relativism, so much religious relativism in wide release in malls and across America.
GELBART
Well, if it didn't get made, if it's not—
COLLINGS
Today.
GELBART
Yes, if it's not made today, it's only because the big companies are afraid of having that kind of pressure brought against them and jeopardizing their investment. They had no trouble at all finally with releasing Mel Gibson's blood-drenched [The] Passion [of the Christ].
COLLINGS
But this one, that one hues more closely to a specific text.
GELBART
Yes, yes. I'm probably not answering your question. I have a feeling of— I have the feeling I'm not answering your question.
COLLINGS
That's okay. That's all right.Oh, by the way, talking about Oh, God!, what was it like to work with George Burns?
GELBART
I didn't work with him at all. Again, this goes back to what you said about the theater, yes. George, happily, was my idea. I suggested that they cast him, and he was more than happy. There are not a lot of parts floating around for an eighty-seven-year-old man then. But I didn't work with him. I just wasn't around for the filming, but I'm sure it would have been fine. He was funny.
COLLINGS
Yes, I mean he's perfect.
GELBART
He was wonderful.
COLLINGS
I think the film, one reason the film really works, is because he is not acting. He's just like unimpressed with the whole—
GELBART
That's right.
COLLINGS
He's just who he is, and John Denver is being the same way. He's a singer, and he's just who is. Then everybody around them is kind of acting because they're in a film, and yet John Denver and George Burns are just kind of—
GELBART
It was wonderful chemistry. It was terrific.
COLLINGS
Yes, that was nice.We never talked about Tootsie at all. We've kind of skipped over it.
GELBART
All right.
COLLINGS
I was just wondering, do you think that all of the wrangling that seemed to take place over Tootsie was sort of typical of the movie business, or do you think this subject matter presented special problems?
GELBART
No, the subject matter never, never mattered at all.
COLLINGS
Oh, I see.
GELBART
No, it was emblematic of an aspect of the picture business where certain people are indulged to the point where they make it very difficult for other people, specifically Dustin [Hoffman]. Dustin is very hard to work with. I accept that he wants some say in how he appears on the screen, that he just doesn't want to be handed pages and told where to stand. On the other hand, he's sort of like the kind of officer who doesn't care how many bodies are at the foot of the hill as long as he takes the flag off the top if it. He's willing to sacrifice relationships, goodwill, sensitivity, almost anything, to get his way.
COLLINGS
That's interesting, because that's what the character in the film is like. How did that happen?
GELBART
That's called Hello, Columbus. [laughs] With all the wrangling, with all the bad press, with all the speculation, with all whatever surrounds that picture, I take pride and comfort in knowing that the central theme is mine. That's not to say that pages and pages and pages of dialogue aren't and plotting isn't, but when I was first asked to work on the film, I thought, "You can't make a better man-in-drag movie than Some Like It Hot, and I'm not about to try to compete with Billy Wilder," and Iz Diamond, who wrote the original, based on a German original. So I thought, "What can this one do that that one didn't?" It was the notion that being where we were in terms of a new consciousness about the genders, I thought of the idea of a man becoming a better man because he had found out what it was like to be a woman and a certain kind of woman.So that was the keystone of the movie, and I think that's what— Well, first of all, I think despite the difficulty of working with him off camera, I think on camera he was superb, and I think he really should have received the Academy Award on several accounts, one, that he was wonderful, and to break that down, he was wonderful as Michael the actor, and then he was wonderful as Dorothy, and then he was wonderful in the role that Dorothy played.
COLLINGS
Oh, I loved that character.
GELBART
He did a wonderful, wonderful job. I forgot how that sentence started.
COLLINGS
I was just saying he sounds very much like the character of Michael Dorsey in the film.
GELBART
Oh, right. Well, there was a lot of what it's like to be an actor in that movie, and but it just got completely out of hand. Sidney Pollack and Dustin each relied on other writers to bring in material that supported their visions, and it got to be a battleground, an absolute battleground.
COLLINGS
I'm not really trying to like sort of like dig out Hollywood dirt here or anything.
GELBART
No, that's okay.
COLLINGS
But I'm just really fascinated by the theme of the film itself. I think it's very interesting that he has this very assertive personality, which is so unpalatable when he is a male, but when he turns around and he is this female character, he can be just as assertive and yet people think it's like surprising and admirable and they like it.
GELBART
Well, they like it because—
COLLINGS
Of course, he tones it down a bit with that southern accent and everything, but— I'm sorry, yes.
GELBART
No, that's okay. He toned it down not so much— He adapted, he adopted, he took on the southern accent not so much for that reason, to tone it down, but to soften his delivery so that he could lose some of the masculinity that was inescapable when he spoke as a woman. Dorothy Michaels gets away with stuff because nobody really wants to kiss her.
COLLINGS
That's interesting.
GELBART
You know?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
If Dorothy was sexually desirable, I think guys would have had a bigger problem with her.
COLLINGS
That's interesting.
GELBART
Because they would have thought, "She's going to eat me alive." But I think they recognized what they think was their own masculinity in the masculinity that underlay Dorothy.
COLLINGS
Well, in a way what you're doing here is— Okay, here it is 1984, which is still—
GELBART
Early.
COLLINGS
Still early days of the women's— I mean if the women's movement per se is over, but the women who espoused this philosophy are young. But now all of a sudden, you've got a woman who's essentially postmenopausal, mouthing all of these kinds of assertiveness ideas, and that in terms of the chronology hadn't really happened yet.
GELBART
That's right. Well, it was the difference in if Gloria Steinem said something and you felt threatened, you were kind of resentful because you couldn't fantasize about being her boyfriend, but if Bella Abzug said something, you could give her those points because you weren't going to hit on her anyway. I mean, I never really even thought about that before we're talking about it, before this conversation, but I think that was part of the reason that Dorothy could get away with it.
COLLINGS
Yes, I think that's true.
GELBART
And maybe some guys would have thought, "Well, she's this way because she's disappointed." You know what I mean? If somebody really threw her a great fuck—excuse me—she'd come around, but I'm not going to volunteer, you know.
COLLINGS
Poor Les. [mutual laughter]
GELBART
Poor Les, yes. Well, do you know the beginning of Tootsie?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
Well, I was not there at the beginning of Tootsie. The beginning of Tootsie went like this. A writer named Don McGuire, M-c-G-u-i-r-e, a longtime writer, director, even actor in Hollywood, he wrote a screenplay called Paging Donna Darling, and it was essentially the same, but far more farcical, none of the social overtones, about an actor, an out-of-work actor, who finds himself getting this job, but hardly any social issues were really addressed. But it was optioned, fortunately never made.Then it got kicked around to a writer named Robert Kaufman— It's terrible, I can't remember the man's name, but it's in the history books. It was slightly improved, but it still had a long way to go.Then Dustin got interested in it, and Dustin worked with his— He called him his head writer. Now, that's such a strange thing to call somebody who's a writer, because head of what? There was no staff. He just called him his head writer, you know, a writer at the head of nothing. Murray Shisgal. Murray Shisgal was a playwright who wrote a very famous piece back in the sixties, I think, called Luv, L-u-v, and the [Does A] Tiger Wear a Necktie? or—
COLLINGS
Is that where that spelling of love came from?
GELBART
Yes. Well, no. He adapted it. I'm having trouble with adapting, adopted it. But I haven't said "adaption" yet.But he and Murray were very, very close. And about that time the original proposed production people were out of it and it had landed at Columbia Pictures. Murray had made two passes at the screenplay, and it wasn't good. They weren't good. Frank Price, who was running Columbia then, which had just been bought by Coca-Cola, called me in and said, "Would you rewrite this? I'll be very honest with you. If you'll write it, we'll go forward. If you're not, we're going to dump it because of the long history," blah, blah, blah.First of all, I knew, again, in the irresistible department, Dustin Hoffman in a dress, gotta work. But I thought, not just as a guy who wobbles in his heels. It's just got to be more. I remember the precise moment when I hit upon that, what I think is the touchstone for the picture. Dustin and I were driving on the Pacific Coast Highway, he was living out in Broad Beach, and we were improvising this scene, with Dustin playing Michael, of course, and I was playing George, his agent. I forgot what led up to it, but he, Dustin, ad libbing, said something quite sensitive in the role of Michael, and I said, "You know, Michael, you're a much better man since you've been a woman," and the car sort of swerved.He said, "Jesus, that's great. Remember that."I said, "Oh, I'll remember it."So then everything in the movie was tied to that notion, to the education of Michael, not just to how he felt about other women, but how he felt about himself as a woman and how he felt as a woman. I think what helped it was we took the truth about how Dustin looked. We didn't say he should be pretty. We didn't say won't other people notice he's not really a woman if we play him as he would be if he were a woman, and that lent an awful lot to it.
COLLINGS
So what was the movie tied to before you hit on that very central—
GELBART
Nothing. Just farce. But, you know, you think why is one writer righter than another writer. Because I look at books, photography books, and I say, "I've got a camera. Why doesn't my stuff look like this?"Dustin insisted upon a scene which would have been much more in character, which was, in fact, in a version pre-me, and which was the first thing I threw out, because it was the kind of scene you would have had if you just said, "Hey, this guy's dressed as a woman. What are all the things that can happen to a guy if nobody knows he's a woman?"So one of the scenes was— Although this had nothing to do with that, as I think about it. But one of the scenes was Michael having sex with a woman, I think Julie, the actress in the soap, and his penis gets caught on her coil and they have to go the hospital.
COLLINGS
Oh, god.
GELBART
Really.
COLLINGS
It sounds so stupid.
GELBART
With a blanket, with a blanket over them, and they have to be separated.
COLLINGS
That's so weird.
GELBART
It is weird. Now, I'll tell you something even— Here's weird, part two. Here's the sequel to weird. Long after Tootsie, Michael made a— Michael. Dustin made a deal to be in a film to be directed by Blake Edwards, and one of the scenes that Dustin wanted to do in this movie was the famous penis-caught-on-the-coil scene.
COLLINGS
That's so strange. [laughs]
GELBART
Eventually, the relationship got bagged and they didn't make the movie, and Dustin threatened Blake with a lawsuit if he retained the penis-caught-on-the-coil scene. [laughs]
COLLINGS
If he retained it?
GELBART
If he did it.
COLLINGS
Oh, okay, because this was—
GELBART
"I'm outta here, but so's my property. Don't you dare do that scene."
COLLINGS
"Okay." [laughs]
GELBART
I think while other writers before me were concentrating on putting him in a steam room with some naked women, doing this, doing that, I was trying to find the tone, the key, the real reason to justify doing what is essentially a 3,000-year-old piece of business. I mean it's in Forum, and that was from Plautus, who had stolen it from the Greeks.Incidentally, for whatever it's worth, and I don't know that it will ever happen, but did I tell you about Lysistrata?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
Well, that's another story, but I did do my own adaptation of Lysistrata without modernizing it, combining it with another Aristophanes play, but essentially the same idea of the women revolting. The only bow to modernism is I call it Sex and the City State, only to not put anybody off who's— But I want to do it with an all-male cast as it was done originally, and probably for a few hundred years thereafter. But maybe that will happen. I hope it does. Obviously, I'm interested in cross-dressing, as well as the fate of the world.
COLLINGS
Yes. Well, I can't imagine that film in 1984 just being a lot of stuff about—
GELBART
Shtick?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Why not? That's what it would have been.
COLLINGS
Yes, it's just unthinkable, because it seems so timely as it is.
GELBART
Well, it got shaped into that. It got shaped and fashioned and forced to be about something and not just about fun in dresses.
COLLINGS
It's so wonderful when, what is her name, Mrs. Beverly Kimberly, or I can't remember what the— Kimberly.
GELBART
Kimberly. I've forgot her name. Dorothy Michael as—
COLLINGS
Yes, I forgot what her name was.
GELBART
Was it Nurse Kimberly? No, not nurse. Something like that when she makes an—
COLLINGS
She was in an administrative position in the hospital. But she makes these wonderful pronouncements about—
GELBART
Yes, and goes off script.
COLLINGS
I love it when she's supposed to read the teleprompter and tell this battered woman about being patient and therapy and all this, and she says, "This is horseshit." It's just such a refreshing—
GELBART
It was refreshing. A lot of that, though, is when I say it's Dustin, I mean he can be so wrong about something like the coil, and yet there is a brashness about him that's refreshing, and I'm saying that as someone very "disin-Dustined." [laughs] I write about him in the book. I quote myself—why not, it's my book—when I say, "Never work with an Oscar winner shorter than the statue."I ran into him about, oh, gosh, I keep saying two years ago, but it was about seven, six for sure, more than six, anyway. Why do old people insist on nailing down a time that nobody else gives a damn about? We were at a party. I mean this was a triple-A party, you know, and wall to wall, so that truly as I came in, I was standing there facing him, small space, and there he was. He said, "Hello, Larry."I said, "Hi, Dustin."He said, "That wasn't hard, was it?"I said, "That wasn't. That was."He said, "I can't tell you how relieved I was to read your book and find out that the worst thing you could say about me was that I short." Now, that's terrific. That's almost how do you hate him? Well, I found out how you hate him, but I mean it was terrific.Then he said to me, because eventually I was really canned off the movie, you know, chiefly because—

1.15. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE ONE
October 26, 2005

COLLINGS
No, I got that part. You were canned off the movie.
GELBART
I was canned. That's right. I was canned, and one of the reasons was Mike Ovitz, who was then running CAA, devised this plan where Dustin and Sidney Pollack and I would all go to Connecticut for a week and spend it in a house that Robert Redford owned but wouldn't be in, and we could work out all the remaining script structure, whatever. I said, "No, I can't. I can't do that."They said, "Why?"I said, "One of my kids is having a birthday party. I can't go."He said, "Well, what am I supposed to—?"
COLLINGS
Send a nice present.
GELBART
[laughs] Exactly. That would have been good.He said, "You're kidding."I said, "No, I'm not kidding." So he really took it to heart, so much so that among other reasons, that was the chief reason. So he said, "You know, I've had a few kids since Tootsie."I said, "Yes, I know. Congratulations."He said, "I understand what you mean now. I would not leave my kid. I wouldn't leave town for all the money in the world."I said, "Well, good. I'm glad you know what that feels like now."He said, "How are your kids?"I said, "Well, our daughter Cathy died last year." I tell you that, otherwise I would be suspicious, but he burst into tears and he was crying for a lot of things. I think he was crying because I think— I know he liked me and I know he knows he hurt me, but he cried like a baby. But then recovering quickly, he said, "Does this mean we can kind of work again?"I said, "If it happens, sure. Why not?" Amazing guy.
COLLINGS
Okay. You've sort of put me off the stride of the questioning.
GELBART
I'm sorry. Tootsie, Tootsie.
COLLINGS
Yes, okay.
GELBART
Oh, I'm sorry. Did I get you, too?
COLLINGS
Yes, it's always hard to hear about stuff like that.
GELBART
I know, I know. I'm sorry.
COLLINGS
Let's see.
GELBART
But if you've noticed, any Dustin movie, Dustin Hoffman movie, that it always seems like a double feature. There's the one he's in and then there's the one everybody else is in, because he kind of looks after himself and it's often at the expense of everything else and everybody around him, except in Tootsie. It worked out rather well.
COLLINGS
Well, I think one of the things that's interesting about it is that it almost seems almost like a documentary in a way.
GELBART
Really?
COLLINGS
Well, in the sense that just exactly like you said, that he comes off as kind of like playing himself and he's in his own movie, and it's almost like a documentary on Dustin Hoffman in the acting world, in the beginning part. Then there's Sidney Pollack and he doing the thing as the agent.
GELBART
Oh, yes, that's kind of verité, yes.
COLLINGS
Yes. Then that, for me, that makes a kind of a nice bracketing for the artifice, the obvious heightened artifice of the soap opera scenes.
GELBART
That's interesting. That's interesting, yes.
COLLINGS
So it all works out kind of nicely, and then the scenes with Jessica Lange and like her dad and stuff, that's in kind of a sort of another realm that I'm just not quite sure exactly what they're doing.
GELBART
They're there to have the kind of fun you can have when they don't know that the woman they like is a man. They're there as—
COLLINGS
As kind of straight.
GELBART
So he can fall in love with her for the conventional reasons. They're there so he can be in bed with her, but not really be in bed with her. They're there so— They're there for really sort of—
COLLINGS
Reality check.
GELBART
Reality check, meat and potatoes. All the social issues go away about men, women, our perceptions of each other, whatever, whatever, whatever.
COLLINGS
In one of the earlier drafts you have a very different agent scene. You've got the agent sort of saying, "Well, my partner died today and I don't want to drop dead." It's really different from the way it—
GELBART
"Oh, you're going to kill me," or something, yes.
COLLINGS
He just ends up sort of switching the subject and saying that Michael—
GELBART
I don't remember that but vaguely now. There were a lot of good things that got lost. I remember in an earlier version that Michael had been married before.
COLLINGS
Right, right, and that's in this, too.
GELBART
I remember, he's working in a restaurant and his first wife comes in.
COLLINGS
Right, and his wife's name is Cathy, and the daughter, the kids are Sasha and Becky.
GELBART
Right. And he sees what he missed, not having babies with this woman, and the new husband's name is Michael.
COLLINGS
Oh, okay.
GELBART
Well, if I live long enough, I'll finish the musical comedy version for the stage of Tootsie and maybe I can get some of that back in.
COLLINGS
It's really a subject matter that has legs, because it's still such an important issue today.
GELBART
Yes, it is. It is.
COLLINGS
It's something that really, when you watch it, it doesn't seem dated or of the eighties or anything.
GELBART
I know, because that situation doesn't go away.
COLLINGS
The line about the cattle prods, do you remember that, where there's a complaint that the doctors on a certain floor are groping the nurses?
GELBART
I remember that.
COLLINGS
She says, "I'm going to—."
GELBART
Oh, your bazoozies or something?
COLLINGS
Yes, she says, "I'm going to issue every nurse on this floor an electric cattle prod." Then she makes a phone call and she's putting in a phone call to a retail farm implement store.
GELBART
Really?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
I don't even remember that. That's not mine.
COLLINGS
That's not yours, okay. Because at that point it just starts to remind me kind of like a Caesar's Hour or something like that.
GELBART
Well, yes, I don't think I had anything to do with it.
COLLINGS
I know that we haven't talked about like everything that you've done, but—
GELBART
Life's too short.
COLLINGS
But I know that you really like the Hawkeye character, but what are some of the other characters that you've written that you really have a good feeling for as characters?
GELBART
I don't even know.
COLLINGS
For you, it's really more sort of like situation?
GELBART
Yes, the situation, they're all in situations, hopefully, but it's all autobiographical in one sense or another. The idealistic and the most negative aspects of a character are, I'm very ready to admit, are all aspects of my own personality. I can be as murderous, lofty, petty, etc., etc., etc., as any of them. I don't know that I— I guess Hawkeye. Hawkeye was kind of a very easy kind of ventriloquist's dummy for me to talk through.
COLLINGS
What do you think you would have done if you hadn't been a writer or in any aspect of entertainment?
GELBART
Well, I wasn't serious enough about my music after a while to have qualified as a musician. I guess I'd have some aspect of some commercial endeavor, I'd have learned it, whether it was real estate or— I don't know why I even say that.
COLLINGS
But something that has to do with people, I would imagine.
GELBART
Or not. I mean, I'm less with people now than ever. I mean you're about the only one I see, Jane. [mutual laughter] Seriously, I am so wrapped up in paper, printing paper, that is, that I'm with people less and less, and the people I'm with tend more and more to be just— Not just, but be members of the family.I can't sell, really. I can't count. I can probably subtract, just by doing multiplication and getting the wrong sum. I don't know what I'd have been. I have absolutely— It's a great question, but I don't have a great answer.
COLLINGS
What are the things that surprise you most about your life?
GELBART
The fact that I'm still surprised by what I should expect. I think my whole life surprised me. I used to go to sleep as a little boy with my hand on my heart waiting for it to stop. I don't know what I thought it would do after that.
COLLINGS
Really? Why did you do that?
GELBART
I just didn't think I was going to live.
COLLINGS
Why?
GELBART
I just seemed fragile and inconsequential and afraid of death and completely ignorant about life. So I think the fact that I'm still alive and that I've seen so much, but over seventy-seven years, between blinks you do get to see a lot of life.I'm amazed that I traveled as much as I did. I'm amazed that I'm surrounded by a family, my own family, that I've been married this long, that I married at all, that I had so much help from so many people, that I still do from my wife. I guess I'm surprised that I turned into anything. I mean I wasn't really— I don't think I was— I was a combination of well treated and maybe not so well treated as a little boy. I don't think I thought much of myself. I don't think of myself now. I think a lot of what I've done I think I can be proud of, but I don't know how I did that. I guess "lucky" is such a strange word. I don't know. I guess that's obvious, the "I don't know" part.
COLLINGS
When you're working, when you are writing, is it like torture for you or is it—
GELBART
Oh, no, it's never torture.
COLLINGS
Or is it sort of captivating and supremely enjoyable?
GELBART
I'm engulfed by the work. It's never torture. There's something that happens to you over the years, beyond the years themselves, and that is that there's a confidence, not a cockiness, but an awareness. I mean, when you're younger, when I was younger, I would think, "What if I can't do this, or what if I can't figure out this problem or what if I don't even know I have a problem?" You start— I start thinking, if I think about it, and I don't, because I know the process that's taking place, I don't have to verbalize it for myself, "if" is replaced by "when." When I figure this out, when this drops into place, when this happens, because I know it will. I guess the biggest— That's too morbid. Never mind.
COLLINGS
No, no, go ahead.
GELBART
I was just thinking one of the biggest cheats, I think, is that I won't be able to see myself after I die, you know, the look on my face. I'm not morbid. I was more morbid when I was younger. But I think that all the things you read about life preparing you for death are true. It just seems as natural as— Or more natural than even being born, at least, and of course I'm surprised by the speed. It's not as though— I mean it's as though every morning is the first morning, that there weren't all these hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of mornings, probably thousands by now. Mostly I know that I'm not thinking anything that no one has ever thought before.
COLLINGS
What are your hobbies?
GELBART
Rewriting. [mutual laughter]
COLLINGS
You seem like such a cerebral person. It's hard for me to imagine you gardening or—
GELBART
I do garden. I do garden. But mostly of the rewriting nature; that is to say weeding and cleaning up. can't start with a seed and a cup of water. I don't know how to do that.The grandkids were my hobby for a long time, but the truth is, the aging process kind of slows you up physically, too. You just haven't got the energy you had, the strength, and I miss that. I miss being more active. But I mean, by the same token, they're growing up and they need less of me than I conned them into thinking they did earlier on.
COLLINGS
Have you sort of introduced your children and your grandchildren to media, how to read media, and sort of tutored them in this subject?
GELBART
I've really only— You say my children?
COLLINGS
Children and grandchildren, yes, along the way.
GELBART
I think I had a lot to say. I know I had a lot to say about my own children when I was younger and they were younger, if only to say I didn't like that because or I liked this because. My wife used to chide me, she'd say, "You're spoiling everything for them."I'd say, "No, no, no. They don't have to like what I like, but I want them to know why." Or dislike. I think for the most part they became quite discerning. I think they've all grown up with a sense of play in language. I mean playful language, and I don't mean becoming clowns or standup comics, but I see that in them and I see that in some of the grandchildren, too, this— This— Are we at that time again? I'm not very good at reflection.
COLLINGS
Okay. Would you like to end?
GELBART
Sure.
COLLINGS
Okay.[End of October 26, 2005 interview]

1.16. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE ONE
January 11, 2006

COLLINGS
Last time we touched on your work And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself, Barbarians at the Gate, Mastergate, Floodgate, Weapons of Distraction, and then there's—
GELBART
There's a new gate, Abrogate.
COLLINGS
Abrogate.
GELBART
I just finished it.
COLLINGS
Okay, because you were alluding to that at some point. So this time we were just going to flesh those out as much as you would like, if you feel that—
GELBART
You give me some fleshy questions.
COLLINGS
All right. Why don't we start with And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself.
GELBART
Okay. And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself, I was asked by HBO to write a screenplay based on some research that they had been doing that was devoted to this insane confluence of early movies—
COLLINGS
It's so fascinating.
GELBART
—and early Mexican Revolution, you know, and it was irresistible. I mean, it's about war and it's about movies, and I kind of fancy both as subjects. So armed with that, we did that film. It so never fails to amaze me that I can speak of it so glibly and so swift. I guess there's not much difference between glib and swift, but I mean it was a project which consumed two and a half years of my life, and a lot of it was talked about right here in this position with dozens of other people.
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
But tell me what else?
COLLINGS
I just wanted to say in your voiceover commentary on the DVD, for example—
GELBART
I've not heard it yet.
COLLINGS
Oh, really? You discuss there's a certain scene where the Father is the father, the priest in this town is the real father and Pancho Villa intervenes.
GELBART
Right.
COLLINGS
He's going to mete out justice, and you put into the voiceover, this is a true story, and it just raises the question, how did you sort through what must have been reams and reams of factual material and start shaping what could and couldn't go into the screenplay?
GELBART
Well, "sort through" is the operative phrase. You look at what you've been provided with in terms of research history, facts, fiction, and you know there's some mechanism which says, "I can use this. I don't need this," and often the material you're drawn to is the more human side of any story as even in Barbarians at the Gate. Statistics don't much matter, history doesn't much matter, geography. Person, personages not so much, personalities yes, character traits.For instance, they left out of the film something I really wanted very much in the film because it was based on historical fact; and that is, the idea that— Not the idea, the fact that President [Victoriano] Huerta was a big pot smoker, and I thought that was just a nice throwaway thing. I just had him dragging on a joint, and for some reason that got lost. But that's a detail that would jump out at you from the research, and anything that gave you a clue. Of course, you're looking at it for notions of sequence and construction, but anything that helps you understand the characters you're going to write, of course, is grist for the mill.
COLLINGS
Frank Thayer was a real person?
GELBART
He was a real person.
COLLINGS
He comes across to me, having just been barely, barely introduced to the material, as kind of like a combination of from looking at the Raoul Walsh book and John Reed book, kind of like almost like an amalgamation of them. Is that at all accurate?
GELBART
Maybe. Maybe. Well, Jack Reed is in the script and fairly well speaks for himself. Walsh's book has proved to be largely fictional in terms of the role he played.
COLLINGS
Oh, really? How interesting.
GELBART
He takes credit for a lot of things that happened even before he was on the scene, the agreements, the contracts between Mutual Films and Pancho Villa.
COLLINGS
Okay, because I was looking at his book and he's sort of presenting himself as the Frank Thayer character. That's why I was wondering.
GELBART
Yeah. Never happened. Never happened. A bit of post-grandiose attachment to the subject. His chief role was to play Pancho as a young man in the film, and that he did do, and of course, he did go on to become a very celebrated motion picture director. But, no, Frank is probably influenced by the fact that there were at least two western— Not westerns, North Americans, gringos, that Pancho Villa had a relationship with or relationships with. But Frank is almost a pure fabrication in terms of what he thought, what he said. There was very little— And he wasn't even, in fact— I can't remember the character's name now. Harry [Aitken], the man who ran Mutual Films.
COLLINGS
His uncle?
GELBART
His uncle. He was not his nephew, it was not his uncle. I just did that, I think, just to probably go along with the convention of nepotism in the movie business.
COLLINGS
Sort of make it why this kind of not outstanding person would have been—
GELBART
Got the nod, right. But he did go down there. He was the link between New York. Griffith, of course, wouldn't expose himself to that danger, wasn't even interested, and the guy who ran the company was just a company man, so there was a Frank Thayer. The real, the closest character, in addition, I think, to Pancho, to the real-life model was—
COLLINGS
Sam Drebbin.
GELBART
Sam Drebbin. In fact, I got a letter from the late Peter Stone, dramatist, whose grandfather employed Sam Drebbin in the family business in Texas.
COLLINGS
Oh, after the Pancho Villa?
GELBART
I think before. I think before.
COLLINGS
Oh, that's interesting. So that whole emerging relationship between Pancho Villa and Frank Thayer was something that you wrote in to just carry the—
GELBART
It was very Hollywood. Yes, I'm not crazy about how it turned out because the last thing I wanted it to be was a buddy picture, but I think eventually too much of that seeped in.
COLLINGS
Now, do you happen to know if Frank Thayer really did do a screening of the film in Mexico?
GELBART
He did not. He did not. That's Beverly Hills license. [mutual laughter]
COLLINGS
One review that I read said that Villa himself did not have like an articulated political philosophy.
GELBART
I don't think he did. I think he just had a social conscience and a sense of social fairness. No, he was not a politician.
COLLINGS
So is that how you painted him?
GELBART
I think so. I think it's reflected that much like it's not so much that history repeats itself, I think we've said this, it's on a loop, you know. He was there for the people, and at no particular financial gain or ambition. I mean, as depicted in the film and was certainly true of life, he felt he wasn't educated enough to run the country.
COLLINGS
Right. That scene where he—
GELBART
He shoots the woman?
COLLINGS
Oh, yes, okay.
GELBART
No, no, go ahead. What were you going to—
COLLINGS
I was just going to say the scene where he tells Frank, "There will never be a President Villa," and Frank Thayer says, "Perhaps it can be a dream sequence," was really funny.
GELBART
Yes, thank you. I liked that, myself.
COLLINGS
Was Pancho Villa as offended by the photoplay as the script suggests? Was there anything in the material that you looked at?
GELBART
No, we don't know. We don't know. We don't know.
COLLINGS
I think that that scene where— I did read something that that whole business about him shooting the woman was fact.
GELBART
It was, and he killed a lot of women. He killed a lot— He raped probably more women than he—[recorder turned off]
GELBART
Yes, he meted out some very rough justice, and it was equal opportunity execution around.
COLLINGS
I think that the way that that was set up as an example of how these images are edited, too, was really, really nicely done.
GELBART
Yes, I liked it, too. I don't often say this, but I have the feeling that the film, in terms of criticism, was kind of shortchanged. I thought it was a better effort. Maybe we didn't succeed.
COLLINGS
I think it's great.
GELBART
I do, too.
COLLINGS
No, I really do. I think it's one of the most fascinating things I've seen in a long time.
GELBART
Yes, but it kind of— More and more, I don't know. Television is like this, this stream that just goes by and you're like a leaf that's caught in the tide and you're gone. What's next and what's next? Nobody ever says, "Why did people do this?" It's not a complaint, but largely the press is interested in what's coming up, not what's been done and not even what's done.I thought [Antonio] Banderas did a wonderful job, who was very handicapped because the Mexicans still hate the Spanish, and he is very Spanish.
COLLINGS
Yes, I was really— Because I don't know Spanish, I was wondering how his accent was coming off.
GELBART
His accent was fine. He got coached, because he probably speaks a better Spanish or a more Spanish Spanish. But I think the best way to describe how his sincerity and how his own personality and his own work ethic and his own sense of fairness, he's very socially conscious and very well read and he's a fabulous guy. But anyway, they kind of gave him the cold shoulder for the first week.
COLLINGS
The crew and the extras?
GELBART
Everybody, the crew, the Mexican population of the show, which was like 100 percent. But by the second week, they were calling him "Generale." They loved him. They loved him. He just wins you, and he doesn't win you by flirting; he wins you with real accomplishment.
COLLINGS
Did he do his own horseback riding?
GELBART
Oh yes, he wanted to buy that horse. For all I know, he did.
COLLINGS
You mention that the original film combined the contrived scenes with the documentary scenes.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Is that from like reviews of the film that—
GELBART
We know that's a fact. We know that's a fact. I don't know about reviews of the film. I probably—
COLLINGS
Or documentation about the making of the film.
GELBART
The documentation says— Yes. They wanted to do it in two parts. They wanted to do the photoplay, as they called it, and they wanted to do the actual action, the battle action in— Isn't this terrible, I've forgotten the name of the town, the big town.
COLLINGS
Torreon.
GELBART
Torreon. Then somehow in the process they decided to merge them and so— I mean we can see how precedental that was, too.
COLLINGS
Yes, indeed. Oh, it would be so fascinating to see that film.
GELBART
I know. It does not exist. It does not exist.
COLLINGS
It's gone.
GELBART
We thought maybe, maybe with the film making its appearance, somebody would say, "Hey, look what I found in the barn."The first battle of— What's the first battle? I forgot. It's— I could never pronounce it properly. The first time they go down there.
COLLINGS
It's probably in John Reed's table of contents here [Insurgent Mexico].
GELBART
The first time they go down to Ojinaga. It's not important. I think that's what it's called. But anyway, that film was given— They wanted to give that film— They did give that film to the [U.S.] Library of Congress. Did I tell you this?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
But the Library of Congress said then, "We're a library. We only store and archive," if there's a difference. I'm sorry, I'm proofreading myself as I talk. "Printed material." So they took the picture and changed it into a series of stills. They printed each still.
COLLINGS
Each frame?
GELBART
Each frame, sorry, each frame, exactly, each frame as a series of still pictures.
COLLINGS
So that can be reconstructed.
GELBART
But that can be reconstructed, but that's just a lot of shooting and smoke and crap. It's not a big thing. It would have been fantastic to have Wolsh as the young Pancho and Pancho as Pancho and to see how they did it.
COLLINGS
Oh, god, it would have been, yes. How interesting that the film has Pancho Villa defending his hacienda.
GELBART
At the end?
COLLINGS
No, as the reason that he started this revolutionary movement, because isn't this the—
GELBART
That's the Hollywood version.
COLLINGS
Yes, exactly, yes.
GELBART
He said, "The only land my father owned was his grave," or, "That's all he was buried with."
COLLINGS
Right, right. So the idea that it would be completely unpalatable to have him just be this poor peasant who's—
GELBART
Of course, of course.
COLLINGS
It really speaks to where we live and what it's all about.
GELBART
But every society seems to. I mean, I used to think that was particularly American and particularly Hollywood, but now I read Michael Apted, the British director, is furious because he was a co-producer of Rome, the HBO series, which was done in financial conjunction with the BBC, and he's complaining because the BBC took the first three episodes, boiled them down to two and loaded it up with mainly sex scenes. He says in an interview, "I thought Hollywood only did that," [inaudible].
COLLINGS
Oh, well. [laughs]
GELBART
Oh well. So much for—
COLLINGS
As goes Hollywood, so goes the BBC, I suppose.Do you remember anything in particular that Kevin Brownlowe recommended for the film, as a film historian?
GELBART
Kevin Brownlowe worked mainly through— Jesus, my memory is—
COLLINGS
Josh Maurer.
GELBART
Bruce Beresford (the director). Bruce Beresford knew Kevin Brownlowe and he got some suggestions from him, and in a couple of cases I challenged Brownlowe's account of events, but I can't remember what those were.Josh Maurer I would rather not discuss, because that turned into a completely negative, terrible experience.
COLLINGS
Oh, okay. Let's see. So we talked about the widow. This is a silly little question, but there's one scene in Frank Thayer's office and there's a poster on the wall for The Life of General Villa. Do you happen to— Is that a real period poster?
GELBART
I think it is, yes.
COLLINGS
It's wonderful. Okay. You had also mentioned in an earlier interview that you don't tend to follow along with the shooting of your film scripts. You were saying that was one of the things that you liked about theater. But in this case, you were right there.
GELBART
I made two trips down there. I could not— I really didn't want to. It's very hard for the writer on the set, you know? For a lot of reasons, and you probably know them all. So I made two trips, and certainly the first trip coincided with the table reading and beginning and making adjustments, script adjustments and just the beginning of the shooting. Then I went down for the Battle of Torreon.Of course, you're in constant touch with people by phone, by fax, by e-mail, with pages, with lines, with thoughts, and you were seeing things being assembled here while they're doing it all down there.
COLLINGS
Wasn't one of the scenes shot on your property here, you said, in the voiceover?
GELBART
It was?
COLLINGS
That's what you said, and that you had all these guys hanging from lampposts. It was sort of the aftermath of the—
GELBART
Oh, it was a joke.
COLLINGS
Oh, okay. I was wondering because I thought, "Well, gee."
GELBART
No, I said this was shot at—
COLLINGS
I've been over there and it doesn't look that big, but you know what they can do with film.
GELBART
No, no. I'm sorry. It was a joke that obviously people take seriously.
COLLINGS
All right. Well, I guess I fell for it.But did Antonio Banderas ad lib a lot?
GELBART
No. He might have in Spanish. In fact, he did in Spanish now and then.
COLLINGS
Because at one point when he's being introduced to Irene Hunt, he says, "Oh my, and now my mother is blonde."
GELBART
Oh, you know what? That is an ad lib.
COLLINGS
Yes, and you've mentioned that in the voiceover and I just wondered if there was—
GELBART
You're quite right, that is an ad lib, and it's there and fine. I think the key word is or the key phrase is "a lot." He didn't do it a lot, but he did it in a couple places where it was actually very helpful. I can't remember another, but there probably is another one or two.
COLLINGS
It's just I really, really like the film because it's—
GELBART
Oh, me, too. I mean I'm thrilled that you liked it.
COLLINGS
I mean the way that it digs into this historical event and shows the kind of the narrative that was built up around that and attempts to recreate that, and in so doing, sheds light on what the media is doing today with news reporting. It's really very, I thought, very skillful.
GELBART
Thank you. That pleases me, I mean because I respect your opinion and because you're so honest and, in this case, so right. [mutual laughter]
COLLINGS
So very right.
GELBART
Yes, and I pride myself on my honesty. Yet some critics said that we were guilty of the same thing, of the same kind of practice, of glamorizing war, of being selective, of casting a Spaniard for a Mexican, of having our way in a way. But that's a game you can play forever, and I can say, "Yes, and you as the press are duplicating the way you work," blah, blah, blah. But thank you. I'm proud of it.
COLLINGS
I don't think it would have been made if it had been as they are suggesting.
GELBART
Right.
COLLINGS
So you have to look at what can really happen.
GELBART
What can really happen, and what can really happen— Of all the— Of all. Of the three things I did at HBO, this one seemed far more vulnerable to other people's subjectivity. I mean, we had a Mexican expert on the set. I was there when she told somebody from the L.A. Times how inaccurate it all was, what a lie it was. I had her banned from any future shooting, because I had the documentation. But she, she disagrees with some of the other historians, so you get into that.The one thing about Pancho is he was either a rapist or a Romeo or George Washington or Adolf Hitler, depending on who you talked to. But Jesus, that made me crazy. And Pancho Villa's granddaughter, and he's got more granddaughters than a Mormon, than Brigham Young, she was saying, "No, that never happened." She was protecting. Well, let's leave her out of this.
COLLINGS
I thought actually that— I'm not sure how this happened, but that Antonio Banderas does a really wonderful job of not— I mean, he's somebody who can come across as very romantic.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
He doesn't do that in this film.
GELBART
No, he took pains to. He all but dirtied his teeth. No, he was wonderful.
COLLINGS
He's almost sort of like holding back from the camera so that he—
GELBART
He'd get so he doesn't court you.
COLLINGS
Exactly. All of that charisma is liked boxed up somewhere. I kept looking for it, oh, Antonio Banderas, but it never came out.
GELBART
Good. Thank you. You're a good audience member.
COLLINGS
Is there anything else that you'd like to—
GELBART
About Pancho?
COLLINGS
Yes. It's a great film.So you did touch a little bit on Barbarians at the Gate last time, and I thought we might expand on it a little bit. You said last time, just in passing, you said that when you read the book a couple of those characters were just irresistible.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
What was irresistible?
GELBART
Well, because you kind of— As you read about people, you actually begin to hear them and you actually do see them on the screen and you actually do envision them in scenes, and certainly that was obvious and people could understand it in the case of Pancho Villa. But in a [F.] Ross Johnson, I could see this flamboyant huckster, smooth operator, transparent to some and not so to others. But it was just the meat of a wonderful character, and I knew from the book that there would be a set of relationships between Johnson and his wife, Johnson and the firm he worked for and the firm he was competing with, and you just can hear the steak sizzling as you read the stuff on them.I think there is a— I don't know the exact measurements and I don't know if you could tell it going through a weighing station, but there are those larger than life, very hefty characters that you want to bite into, in the literary sense. They just stand apart and away and above most lives, sometimes in a negative sense, obviously, especially if you're a Mexican peasant who gets shot right through your temple or you're a company that you're screwing for your own personal advancement. But that's what makes them so attractive.
COLLINGS
Well, there are a lot of scenes with Ross Johnson and his wife, which greatly humanize him. I mean he explains a lot of his motivations.
GELBART
That's right. You know those World War II movies where there was always a guy from Brooklyn, and he'd say, "You mean the Nazis are so—?" It's Mr. Exposition. Well, she was Mrs. Exposition.
COLLINGS
She's not from an upper-class background.
GELBART
No, she's not. No, she's not, and with the most amazing name, Leilani.
COLLINGS
I wondered about that.
GELBART
Yes. She was Leilani Jones? No, Leilani something imponderable (Leilani Sarelle). But Leilani was married to, I found out later, or she did later marry, Miguel Ferrer, who's the spitting and sounding image of his father, José Ferrer, and they've since divorced, but that's not much to talk about anyway. But I didn't know much about his real-life wife.
COLLINGS
Ross Johnson's real-life wife?
GELBART
Ross Johnson's real-life wife.
COLLINGS
But did she come from a— What kind of background, socioeconomic?
GELBART
I can't remember.
COLLINGS
But you wrote her as being kind of out of the world of these high-flying people.
GELBART
Yes, and she might have been.
COLLINGS
But that's something you put in?
GELBART
Maybe. I'm not sure. I know the most useful tip I got from anybody about how to deal with the technical aspects of the script, as say the financial thing, because I really— And I've said this to somebody the other night when we were talking about it, it was such an unlikely world for me to write about because my inclination is to give you tens for a five. I just don't know any math at all. But I said, "What is a leveraged buyout?"And he said, "Well, think of it as taking out a mortgage on your own house." And that was the key to me, because everybody understands that. Even I understood that. So that helped.
COLLINGS
Well, the [Henry] Kravis character, I mean he does come across in some ways like the Darth Vader of the money business world. But he also in the screenplay, anyway, has his own sort of redeeming passion where he wants to get in the game because he's the father of the leveraged buyout.
GELBART
Yes, because he is the game. He invented the game.
COLLINGS
And nobody gets it, and this is sort of an interesting psychological look at him.
GELBART
I thought so. I mean, I love the actor who played him, Jonathan— What's wrong with me today?
COLLINGS
Pryce.
GELBART
Jonathan Pryce, except he's about three feet taller than Henry Kravis, who was quite short.
COLLINGS
Oh, interesting.
GELBART
Yes, and every time I enjoyed him, I said, in spite of that.Kravis— You know, I hit on it very minutely, but if I had to do it all over again, I would have emphasized the real evil in these people insofar as they were death merchants, they were selling a product which they knew to be poisonous, but it didn't really matter. The bottom line was not mortality; it was the bottom line.
COLLINGS
Because F. Ross Johnson talks more about Oreos.
GELBART
Yes, yes, and it wasn't by design, but it just— I think after that, I watched some of the congressional hearings where the tobacco people spoke, and later it was revealed that they were all committing libel and perjury because they all knew what the real dangers were in smoking. I'm sorry I didn't allow myself this golden opportunity to say how really toxic they are.
COLLINGS
In fact, James Garner makes F. Ross Johnson quite likable.
GELBART
That's the problem with— We talked about that, didn't we?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
Well, they talk about certain actors as having a contract with the audience.
COLLINGS
Yes, and he's definitely.
GELBART
He definitely was. [Jack] Nicholson is another one. It's "our Jack." He's a charmer. And when Ross Johnson says, "All I ever cared about were the people who work in our plant," I mean, people took that seriously because Garner was saying it. But Ross Johnson was full of shit, which is why his boss says when he goes up there, "Well, I just figured what F stands for."So that was a minor carp, but a major minor carp, that Jim is so likable.
COLLINGS
How was he playing it? I mean did you ever talk with him about the part?
GELBART
Yes, oh, sure. Yes. But there's just— He's got too much— There's not a paper trail, there's a film trail of stuff where's he's just played this lovable scoundrel and people are not going to not love him.
COLLINGS
No, I know. He comes across as really a sweetheart. [mutual laughter]
GELBART
I know. It's a drawback.
COLLINGS
Also he's like very much that sort of classic, that lovable American scoundrel, as you say, sort of the lovable outlaw who they don't actually do anything harmful, but they are living outside of the constraints of the—
GELBART
Yes, the maverick.
COLLINGS
The maverick, yes. Also the idea is that it's that kind of person who can really take the risks and build a business and build an economy, and so it's seen as sort of a tragedy that the company is taken out of his hands.
GELBART
Yes, exactly, whereas it was a good thing that he was out of there.
COLLINGS
It's a funny scene when they're flying back in first class talking about the sacrifices that they'll have to make from now on.
GELBART
Yes. I think that somewhere in the research there was a reference to the fact that he had to fly back commercial.
COLLINGS
So in the very last scene, he's in his bathrobe standing on his patio, and is he— I couldn't read that scene.
GELBART
You couldn't read the legend?
COLLINGS
No. No, I couldn't tell whether he was like sort of thinking about his next big venture and—
GELBART
Well, it's whatever you think. It's whatever you want. For a guy who is surrounded by so many people, there he is alone.
COLLINGS
In his bathrobe.
GELBART
In his bathrobe, out of his Madison Avenue gear and not at a golf tournament, and for this, he has to— But after taxes, his settlement was what, twenty-six million or something?
COLLINGS
That's right. What it said on that.
GELBART
That's where I got it. So that's all just a postscript.
COLLINGS
Sort of what happened after.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
All right. You also sent me the CDs of a recording of Mastergate.
GELBART
Oh, right.
COLLINGS
I have to tell you, it was just wonderful to hear it performed in front of a live audience, because they were just so responsive.
GELBART
They were ready. [laughs]
COLLINGS
The actors did such a good— Ed Asner was one of the performers in that, and did really just such a wonderful job of bringing out the style of speech of—
GELBART
Yes, they did a better job than the actors did on Showtime, because, one, they could read it and they weren't hobbled by—
COLLINGS
Trying to memorize everything.
GELBART
All of that. It's murder to memorize. They were good, weren't they?
COLLINGS
Yes, they really were. And I really was delighted to be able to see it because I have always been fascinated by these televised proceedings. I think if I were to see them actually live in the congressional chambers, they wouldn't be that interesting to me.
GELBART
I know, it's like a football game.
COLLINGS
Yes. But there just seems to be a whole ritualized aspect to these proceedings, the cadences of the voices, and it's almost like a Kabuki.
GELBART
You're right. You're right.
COLLINGS
Where things just must be followed. Well, of course, there are regulations governing how these things are run.
GELBART
But they, too, are slaves to what they now recognize as the convention, and they're all spiffed up for the cameras.
COLLINGS
Right. Yes. I remember a period when red ties were—
GELBART
They were wearing a flag, literally, weren't they? I mean, the blue suit, the white shirt, the red tie.
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Now they've the got pins.
COLLINGS
Now they've got the actual—
GELBART
So they can wear patterns in their ties.
COLLINGS
We talked about how fascinated you were by the Army-McCarthy hearings.
GELBART
For starters. That was the first.
COLLINGS
I said last time, "What were you thinking about then?" And you said, "Well, it would depend on what I was working on." You must have been working on Caesar's Hour.
GELBART
Might have been.
COLLINGS
Did you do anything with Caesar's Hour with the—
GELBART
No. Caesar's Hour was almost entirely nonpolitical.
COLLINGS
That's what I figured, yes.
GELBART
No. So I think there was a part of me that was longing to do something political. Just what we were talking about a second ago, the ritual aspect of it, the theatrical aspect of it, is so attractive that I couldn't resist. Do you want to know more about it?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
What the—

1.17. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE TWO
January 11, 2006

GELBART
I think we performed it in 19— I know when we did it. It was performed in 1998, I think. It began life at the beginning of the year, though, sometime in maybe late '97. Robert Brustein, who was the artistic director of the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, called and said would I write a political piece, and he suggested a piece by Aristophanes called Peace, P-e-a-c-e, obviously. It's very hard to read those classics, you know, depending on the translation, and you really need to almost be—
COLLINGS
Like in a seminar or something.
GELBART
Exactly. You can't interpret for yourself, and you can't be looking up in the glossary what that meant then and this meant then. So I didn't get it. I mean I understood it. I understood it was a—
COLLINGS
But it didn't grab you.
GELBART
No, and I didn't know. I wasn't interested. But I think the Iran-Contra thing was either going on or had just finished, and I said, "How about if I just do a faux committee hearing," and he thought that was a good idea. Two things drove me; one, the opportunity to do this and have it actually done, and it's easier to do things— It was easier for me to do things with that company than to think of a Broadway thing with financing, with theaters, will all kinds of other madness. The other thing was around that time or just prior to that, I read the accounts of— Twentieth Century Fox had been sold by whoever owned it five minutes before two men, Marvin Davis, who was an oilman, Denver oilman, who just died, and his partner Marc Rich.
COLLINGS
Oh yes.
GELBART
Okay, you know Marc Rich?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Okay. Now, Marc Rich— The Justice Department wanted to talk to Marc Rich. This was way, way, way, way before he ever got his parole, or his pardon, his presidential pardon from Clinton, as we know. But they wanted to talk to him about some of his more nefarious or more obvious crimes, and they asked him to come to Washington, and he said, "No, I'm not coming to Washington." He was hiding somewhere in some little canton in Switzerland. They were fining him something like a hundred thousand dollars a day for not appearing. Among other things, they threatened to take over his half of 20th Century Fox, and I thought that would be the perfect setup. A government bureau running a Hollywood studio, what a marriage, and it was just one of those thoughts, and I didn't do anything with it.But when Brustein said, "Yeah, write something like that," I thought, "Gee, maybe I can marry this opportunity with that situation." So I said to my wife, "I'm going to do a kind of a Watergate thing. What's a good gate? What could I call it, gate? What gate?"So she said, "Mastergate," which I thought was just— Did I tell you this story before?
COLLINGS
About the particular naming, yes.
GELBART
Okay, all right. So then, of course, I named the motion picture studio Master Pictures, and then I had the perfect reason for doing that. Please stop me if I've told you any of this, because I know I've talked a lot.
COLLINGS
Oh, no, no.
GELBART
Anyway, we did a play there. It went exceedingly well. Did I tell you about Frank Rich coming up?
COLLINGS
Yes, you did. That it was in—
GELBART
He loved it, said it must go to Washington first.
COLLINGS
Right, oh, that would have been great.
GELBART
Yes. I tried to get the Kennedy Center to do it. They said it was too political.
COLLINGS
It would have been so perfect.
GELBART
They said it was too political. Can you imagine? So we opened it in New York, and Frank gave it a lesser review, which really broke my heart and a little bit of my wallet.
COLLINGS
Oh, really?
GELBART
Oh yes. I financed that production. It was a major kick in the wallet. Anyway, then the show ran, and then we did it on Showtime. I wasn't terribly pleased with the production. I don't think anybody was.
COLLINGS
I thought it worked— Hearing it on the CD, I thought it worked really well as radio.
GELBART
It does work well as radio.
COLLINGS
It kind of reminded me of Duffy's.
GELBART
Well, yes. I'm right back where I started, screwing up the language.
COLLINGS
Yes, exactly. Yes. I mean, I love the rhythms of these, "resides in a consecutive series of unnumbered houses," you know.
GELBART
Right, yes. Thank you.
COLLINGS
"That is my conviction, based on several of his own." I mean it's very poetic.
GELBART
Well, that's— I like having done Abrogate, because that was written for radio for the BBC, so being British, they being British, of course, I finished the play being an American, quicker than they could execute a contract, so I'm waiting for them to do that, and then I think we'll do it over there. That is even more— It's more biting than Floodgate, actually.
COLLINGS
So do you think of that as kind of a trilogy, Mastergate, Floodgate, Abrogate?
GELBART
Yes, yes, that would be a trilogy enough for me. Three is enough of a crowd.
COLLINGS
So does Abrogate specifically deal with this [George W. Bush] administration you were suggesting?
GELBART
Abrogate, I say on the front page, I say the place is Washington, the time, inevitably, and it's meant— It is at a time when the present minority has become the majority again and they are investigating all that this present administration did to break, bend, and destroy, deconstruct, as they say, the Constitution.
COLLINGS
Well, one can only hope.You say in an interview at the end of that CD that you gave me that something had come up, a possibility of a sequel to The Candidate?
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
Did anything ever pan out with that?
GELBART
Oh yes, that's another two years of my life.
COLLINGS
Oh, that did happen?
GELBART
Did we never, ever talk about The Candidate?
COLLINGS
No. A sequel to The Candidate?
GELBART
Robert Redford, about three years ago or more, called me and said would I be interested in writing a sequel to The Candidate using the same character of Bill McKay, the hero or anti-hero of the first.
COLLINGS
I mean, it's kind of similar in theme to the Pancho Villa in a way.
GELBART
In a way. In a way. So I said yes. I mean it's such an iconic picture, and I worked with him for over two years, and it came to naught. I mean, he's still going to do something, he says. He's kind of famous for taking a long time.
COLLINGS
To think about things?
GELBART
To think about things. I guess it took him two years to think about maybe he should have hired another writer.
COLLINGS
Oh, well. [laughs]
GELBART
But you know, I said to him or somebody close to him, I said, "You know, there was a time when two and a half years was petty cash in my life. That's not the case anymore." So I—
COLLINGS
You spent two and a half years on it, and he's just sitting on it? Oh, that hurts.
GELBART
He's not just sitting on it. Warner Bros. agreed to make it because they agreed to a deal with him for a multiple picture arrangement, but I knew that they were not going to spend a lot of money, and even a one-man movie is a lot of money now on a political picture. The climate is what we know it to be. I did not make it the kind of movie that a Robert Redford fan would expect. It was not ideological, because his sentiments are very well known, although obviously negotiable, since he's in Washington shaking [George W.] Bush's bloody hand, you know, when he received his Kennedy Center Honors, but more about what it is to be the president in any time, the number of people you have to please, the fact that you're still campaigning even though you're in, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't want to go— You know what really is? I have a toothache, and it's—
COLLINGS
Oh, oh.
GELBART
No, no, no. It's so distracting me because it's giving me a headache. But let's continue. I can talk through even my own talk.
COLLINGS
Okay. Well, I think we talked quite a bit about Weapons of Mass Distraction last time.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
That was the one that you talked about most.
GELBART
Right. So we can leave it alone or go back, whatever you want to know.
COLLINGS
If there was anything that you would like, you've thought of later.
GELBART
I don't know what I said, and—
COLLINGS
All right. You gave me a screenplay called The View From Last Thursday.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
I was really struck by how different it is from just everything else that I've seen, because it really seems like something that's— It's a piece in miniature, whereas your other things have these broad— These large political themes or—
GELBART
It's also more emotional and it's also more about relationships. Frankly, I've sort of had myself up to here in words, words, words, and there's some other thoughts, and I'm certainly not going to sit down and write a romantic story, but I think there's a lot in there I just want to write about and think about and not just be still doing Duffy's Tavern in a sense sixty years on.
COLLINGS
I mean there's that one character is—
GELBART
Mick?
COLLINGS
Yes, Nick, right.
GELBART
Mick.
COLLINGS
Mick, Mick.
GELBART
Is it Mick? Did it say Mick?
COLLINGS
I think it is Mick. It's right here.
GELBART
Yes, Mick [inaudible].
COLLINGS
He just seems to be— He's not connected to the world of high finance, and he's not an accomplished surgeon.
GELBART
Was it a letdown for you?
COLLINGS
No, no, it just was like totally different. I would never have even expected a— It's like a sort of a miniature sketch, and it just brings out nuances of his own character that just was surprising. I just wondered what accounts for this turn.
GELBART
I think my own age as a writer, but as a human being, first, just the notion of dying really, or dying before you die, being replaced, being evicted, making way.
COLLINGS
Oh, that's interesting, the theme of the eviction and the gentrification.
GELBART
Exactly. As he says when he quotes [James] Joyce, he says, "Robinson Crusoe had to bury Friday," so this is Thursday, you know.
COLLINGS
Yes. Well, it does have a kind of a larger political theme in that he was a World War II veteran, although he kind of struggles with that because he didn't actually see any combat.
GELBART
That's right. He wanted to, but he—
COLLINGS
He's sort of hidden that from people, and yet then he turns around and he's got this neighbor on the street who's Japanese and this Japanese fellow is so a part of the new economy and born well after World War II, and yet here Mick is seeing him through the lens of this—
GELBART
Through the personal, through the subjective point of view, of course. In terms of— I'm probably inordinately proud of the script, but it's about so many things. It is about the new America that really only would rather have highrises and condos than accommodate people with affordable housing, quick, perhaps unearned fame, as opposed to a lifetime of hard work and nothing near the rewards that the other existence creates for somebody, and just holding on, just holding on and trying to fight for what you believe in, and holding on in one way, in one very positive way, and holding on in a very negative way, holding on to all of that hatred and anger and frustration and rage and being given the opportunity to have a good death, to forgive, and to forgive through a spontaneous act, not seeing the light, being born again, planning to do the right thing, but just instinctively.
COLLINGS
Having an instinctive human reaction.
GELBART
Yes, towards someone he thought of as an enemy. There's not one thing— I think one of the nice things I'm beginning to discern through the miasma caused by this toothache is that my family didn't read the newspapers at all. My father read the racing forms or he'd read the race results. My mother read only in Hebrew or Yiddish, and she would read advice to the lovelorn in the Daily Forward, a Jewish periodical, journal, the newspaper.I can't say that— I mean I think I care about the world only because I'm more aware that I'm in the world and I'm privileged in a way. I earn a living doing something I love. It's brought me a lot of material and non-material, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I care about what's going— I'm interested in what's going on, and when I find something that's going on or did go on and I can put it into a script, whether a word or an idea or a scene or a character, that, in turn, recreates an interest in the world because of some of the subjects covered in the more recent work. I picked up the newspaper and it said seventy-five years later people still don't forget the Japanese. So I say, "Oh, I've talked about that. I'm talking about that." Or just any number of things.In Abrogate, I have as one of the witnesses the son of an immigrant, illegal immigrant, who is fighting, who fought in Iraq, and I turn on the television at three in the morning as part of a ritual that I didn't ask for, and there's a lance corporal—my guy's a lance corporal—giving testimony to a committee about his service in Iraq. It's a kind of a— I think of a push-me, pull-you, a kind of continuous connection with what's going on, then giving my version of what's going on, and then seeing if it's still going on. I'm missing that third piece.
COLLINGS
You're kind of describing a synchronicity between—
GELBART
Between me and them, and et al.
COLLINGS
Right.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
That you're constantly deriving colors for your palette from the—
GELBART
I think so. But there's a kind of— It's amazing, I'm listening to my head not working. I mean, I hear it. I hear it cranking and squeaking and slipping gears.
COLLINGS
This is—
GELBART
No, no, no, don't let me off the hook. I mean there's something happening here. Anyway, we've got it on tape, ladies and gentlemen, and then he keeled over and fell on the floor. Let me not make those the last words.No. There's a— Oh, the notion of how much more precious anything becomes if its threatened or in shorter supply; i.e. I never felt more affection for America than I do now that it's under attack by this administration. I never felt more patriotic in a way—
COLLINGS
Yes, I know what you mean.
GELBART
—for the good things we stand for and the good things we know we are. I think that's directly attributable to this less and less panic-stricken notion of mortality, but with the notion that, you know, my time is far more limited now, and so everything becomes that much more important to me.What was— André Gide. Was it André Gide? No, it was not André Gide, because I don't read André Gide. No, it was— Who was the— Abel Gance, the director of Napoleon. He said— Did I ever say this to you?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
Because it's my credo, he said, or maybe it's slipping. He said, "I take life tragically but never seriously." I love that. Anyway, enough. I can't say enough about me. This is all about me. How do I get off of me here?
COLLINGS
We can either be done, or I have a kind of a like a big-picture question.
GELBART
Go ahead. A big-picture question.
COLLINGS
I don't even know if you're going to bite on this one. But there's a really interesting book— Oh, I don't even have the book with me.
GELBART
That's interesting.
COLLINGS
Yes. It's called Nervous Laughter: Television Situation
GELBART
Nervous?
COLLINGS
Nervous Laughter: Television Situation Comedy and Liberal Democratic Ideology.
GELBART
What, do they have M*A*S*H in there, or not?
COLLINGS
No. That's interesting.
GELBART
Okay.
COLLINGS
But it's just somebody— It's like somebody's dissertation that was published into a book, but anyway.
GELBART
And they say?
COLLINGS
The point is, is that he's talking about how television shows of this period, sitcoms—
GELBART
This period now?
COLLINGS
No. Sitcoms of the, well, fifties through eighties, I guess, were sort of— I guess you could call it kind of the Norman Lear effect, where we're taking subject material that might have possibly been more liberal than a great number of people in America were used to and kind of like introducing it and teaching it and making it more palatable.
GELBART
Did he find that objectionable?
COLLINGS
No, no. He thought that was good. One Day at a Time, he doesn't talk about this, but something else that I read points to One Day at a Time as being one of these teaching kind of shows where they're always talking about—
GELBART
Was that Michael [J.] Fox?
COLLINGS
No.
GELBART
No, that was Bonnie Franklin?
COLLINGS
Yes.
GELBART
Right.
COLLINGS
Where they're like always discussing all of these kinds of liberal issues and kind of teaching them to people. I just wondered, because you did have M*A*S*H and you did Tootsie, which was exploring these gender issues, and so much of your other work, did you ever have a sense of yourself—
GELBART
No.
COLLINGS
—as belonging to an artists' community that was interested in exploring these things?
GELBART
I was aware that I was part of a group. I was aware that— Forgive me. I mean we have talked, not for ages, but for so long I may be repeating myself. But I was aware that we were filling a vacuum, that there was no drama on television, certainly none that we knew about in the early days when it first began, when Paddy Chayefsky was writing and Reggie Rose and J.P. Miller and Horton Foote. Those things had all disappeared. They were replaced by the cowboy shows, the western, the medical shows, the cop shows, so there was no— There was melodrama, but there was no drama. And if there's no drama, where do you discuss all of the— From any point of view, from the liberal, from the conservative, from any point of view, we discuss life and death, love and marriage, children and government, blah, blah, blah. So I was aware that I was part of a group that was supplying another kind of water cooler material for Monday morning America. I was, and proud of it. We weren't immodest about what we were doing. We knew it.
COLLINGS
So you feel that there was a working climate where you'd specifically try to address a certain kind of issue, like, okay, like in M*A*S*H, one of the soldiers marries a Korean and now you're going to address racism.
GELBART
Yes.
COLLINGS
And the people you're working with are in concert with this idea of teaching this material in a sense?
GELBART
Never, never teaching. Just this is good conflict, this is good, this is grist for the mill, for the third time today. This is the stuff of drama, and where there's drama, there's comedy. This is pre-corporate— I mean, television networks and radio networks were certainly corporate affairs, but this was broadcasting owned by broadcasters.
COLLINGS
Yes, pre-conglomerate.
GELBART
Pre-conglomerate, pre-General Electric, pre-Westinghouse, pre-Disney, to the extent that it became Disney, and with a very, very different federal climate. We were not afraid. What we were most afraid was, and we dealt with it quite effectively, you know, through self-censorship and actual censorship or outside censorship, and we welcomed the opportunity to talk about real things.The day of just doing jokes for jokes' sakes had long passed. That sort of got people into the tent in the early days with the Ed Wynn Show and Alan Young and even Your Show of Shows, which brilliant though it was, didn't really attempt it. It was pure art. It was pure entertainment. While Norman [Lear] did create it, he imported it. He was smart enough to bring it over, but I think we've been here, haven't we?
COLLINGS
Yes, that All in the Family was from—
GELBART
That's right, it was from [British] public television, which was the only source of television for a while. But he saw the potential.
COLLINGS
Right. Okay. Shall we leave it there, or with any closing thoughts?
GELBART
I hope I don't have any closing thoughts, because that means I'm closing. [mutual laughter] We can leave it there, and please feel free anywhere in the process—we're old mates by now—to call me and say, "What did you mean by that or can you—?" Blah, blah, blah. Please take—[End of January 11, 2006 interview]


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