Nonstop Laughs

By Barbara Isenberg/Los Angeles

Larry Gelbart is a Hollywood rarity. In a youth-obsessed town, Gelbart, an accomplished screenwriter and playwright, is busier than ever at 75. There's the film about Pancho Villa for HBO. A jazz song cycle at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum. The sequel to The Candidate for Robert Redford. A new musical about Napoleon. A Las Vegas spectacular about Busby Berkeley.

Hectic, yes. And that's just how he likes it. Gelbart knows that in his business, too much work beats no work at all. "Experience has taught me that they [his projects] are not all going to happen," he says. "Each one is sort of a fire escape to the next."

In an industry in which few make it--and even fewer make it big--Gelbart has been richly rewarded. His successes include the hit television show M*A*S*H (1972 to 1983), the Oscar-nominated Tootsie (1982) and the Tony Award--winning City of Angels (1989). By now Gelbart would be forgiven if he gracefully bowed out of show business and spent the rest of his days lying by the pool in Palm Desert, Calif., where he has a second home. But that's not in the script. For Gelbart, the show goes on--and on and on and on.

Gelbart started early in show biz when his father, barber to the stars, persuaded client Danny Thomas to give Larry, then 16, a shot writing comedy. Gelbart, who has called writing "the perfect medium for shy extroverts," was soon a scribe for Jack Paar, Red Buttons and Bob Hope. As a writer on the legendary Caesar's Hour, Gelbart "popped jokes like popcorn," recalls colleague Carl Reiner. "Once Sid [Caesar] got a call from Bob Hope, offering an oil well to get Larry back."

Gelbart soon branched out from radio and television to theater and movies. He won his first Tony in 1963 for co-authoring A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and was nominated for an Oscar in 1978 for Oh, God! In 1974 he took home an Emmy for M*A*S*H.

These days Gelbart works in an office suite adjacent to his Beverly Hills house. To talk with him is to watch the writing process in action. He continually tosses out clever phrases only to edit himself aloud until he strikes upon even more clever phrases. He seems almost ageless with his ready laugh and animated, unlined face. As for his good health, he credits genetics--his dad lived to 90--but quips that his only diet and exercise regimen is "to keep working and try not to get too hungry or sedentary."

Gelbart usually rises early and heads straight for his keyboard. But every Tuesday afternoon at 2, he has a standing date with his grandson Adam, 6. Occasionally he will meet a friend for lunch--usually at a sushi bar where, he says, "a waiter can't come up and spoil a punch line"--but concedes, "I don't have much of a social life. As you get older, God takes away your peers and gives you playmates."

Although Gelbart and his wife Pat, whom he married in 1956, usually spend half the week at their Palm Desert retreat, they rarely miss Monday-night dinner with their children, grandchildren and great-grandchild. Gelbart bobs up and down at the table, changing seats to talk with as many family members as possible. The conversation stays light, centered on family events and happenings.

Family time gives Gelbart a respite from his writing and busy schedule in L.A., where, as on Wall Street, past performance does not guarantee future success. Gelbart still has his share of disappointments. Just last year his series The Corsairs, about ruthless media moguls, was not picked up by ABC. "Truthfully, mathematically, I've had more disappointments than--what's the opposite of disappointments?--appointments? in these last few years than I've ever known before," admits Gelbart. "I find myself going to a lot of meetings with people who take a tour around me like I'm Norma Desmond's house, and they make deals with me because they like what I did. Then I do what I did and they say, 'We hoped you would do something different.'"

Asked if M*A*S*H would fly today, Gelbart shoots back, "You don't need it. You've got CNN. Any artifice would look as though we were trivializing it. So if this isn't the war to end all wars, maybe it's the war to end all shows about war."

But the setbacks haven't soured Gelbart enough to slow down his frenzied work pace. In September HBO will air And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself, with Antonio Banderas as Villa. Gelbart wrote the fact-based screenplay that sounds more like fiction. It's the tale of the Mexican revolutionary general who in 1914 twice sold rights to the Mutual Film Corp. to film his battles. Gelbart's screenplay effectively tapped the humor inherent in that situation, observes Keri Putnam, senior vice president of production and development at HBO Films. "Larry is the rare writer particularly suited to write smart, funny material with a political context. There's a depth to his work as well as an entertainment value. It's a wonderful combination."

According to Gelbart, the Mutual Film Corp. not only suggested when Villa should and should not fight but also insisted he get some modern, better-looking artillery and supplied him with uniforms. "They were forgetting that people were getting killed," says Gelbart. "They were forgetting why they were there."

Gelbart is good at reminding us of things like that--especially with productions like his 1989 political satire Mastergate, which spoofed the Iran-contra hearings with lines like "What did the President know, and does he have any idea that he knew it?"

For Gelbart, however, writing isn't just a way to be clever. It can also be a therapeutic release for the frustration he has felt in Hollywood. He began writing City of Angels while he was in the throes of working on Tootsie--a project during which he was angered by "the constant meddling" with his script. He spun his ire into a tale of an abused screenwriter named Stine (Gelbart's alter ego). Poor Stine is plagued by a producer who boasts that he could trim 10 seconds from the Minute Waltz; he's also rewritten by nearly everybody else who crosses the stage.

And therein lies one of the keys to Gelbart's longevity in the business. Better to transfer the rage to his keyboard than to his duodenum, he observes. Still restive and passionate about the art he produces, he has no plans to walk away from his computer any time soon. "I'd only retire if I could be assured there is show business after death," says Gelbart. "Then I simply would think of retiring as a hiatus."