Written By April/May 2009

AMan for little of people. There’s always a little less to be thought.” The place is San Francisco during the 1800s, the play Y Sly Fox, and that particular line’s mixture of acerbic insight, lit with an upbeat smile, is the distilled essence of its au- thor, Larry Gelbart—that there is “always a little less to be thought” of people bespeaks a buoyant inverse optimism. We’re used to crediting Gelbart as the co-screenwriter of such hit films as Oh, God! and Tootsie, or celebrat- ing him as the prime mover of the landmark TV series M*A*S*H. Less directly celebrated and certainly less studied are Gelbart’s deeper, more daring, more political, and often more deeply funny solo works for the stage— Sly Fox (1976), City of Angels (1989), Mastergate (1989), Power Failure (1991), Lysistrata: Sex and the City-State (2002)—and his television features, And Starring Pan- cho Villa As Himself (2003) and Barbarians at the Gate (1993). We have the privilege of presenting an excerpt of the pilot for what might be his boldest and darkest work ever, a TV series called Pinnacle, set among filmmakers who are suffering and, to their conscious horror, at times cooperating in the rise of a lethal, tyrannical social order. jokeS of deStiny “You put your trust in luck,” the Sly Fox warns his pupil, Able: “I’m not a great believer in either.” A subtle set of distinctions inform this little line. Gelbart denies neither the virtue of trust nor the ex- istence of luck. Good fortune has certainly played an enormous role in his life and career, from the moment he began writing professionally at age 16—yet he is ou’re going to learn the underbelly of human na- ture, today,” grins the great conman Foxwell J. Sly to his indentured apprentice: “Never think too ll Seasons chronicling the conscience of larry Gelbart Written by f.X. feeney careful never to depend on luck, or the kindness of moguls. If anything, his loving parents schooled him early that you should make the most of your opportu- nities, forge your own trustworthiness. “I was an amused, rather than abused, child,” Gelbart has written. His first language was Yiddish; he didn’t speak English until he was five. Words and phrases have the bright character of hard-earned coins when he uses them—often playfully, never wastefully. His mother, Frieda, had a natural facility for making people laugh. His father, Harry, a skilled barber, set a forceful example of “making” luck, first by moving the family from Chicago to Los Angeles when Gelbart was a teenager, then by talk- ing up his son’s talents to his showbiz clients, among them comedian Danny Thomas. “If he’s that funny,” Thomas offered politely, “tell him to send over some jokes.” When he read the results, Thomas hired the boy immediately at $50 per week, an astronomical sum for a 16-year-old in 1944. “[Danny was] a fabulous tipper,” Gelbart quipped in his 1998 memoir, Laughing Matters. Television became Gelbart’s university, the stage his doctoral dissertation. At 22, he flew to Korea as a writer for Bob Hope, just as war broke out—a formative experience that fed the melancholy-comedic balance he later struck when depicting Korea in M*A*S*H. Group effort was the norm for his first 10 years at the trade: Gelbart didn’t even consider himself a “writer,” strictly speaking—he happily remained a contented performer in a nomadic brain trust of gagmen, all bouncing ideas off one another as they cre- ated material for Thomas, Hope, Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, or… ? Name your favorite pioneer of TV comedy. The talent in the room when he worked for Caesar’s Hour was particularly stellar: Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Mel april/ma y 2009 WGAW Written By • 31

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