Michael Barrier explains a little-known chunk of animation history — two Dr. Seuss cartoons made by Warner Brothers at their short-lived New York cartoon studio.

Ken Levine remembers his friend and employer Larry Gelbart.

Ken's right about how good Larry was at getting back to people, returning calls, etc. I did a couple of minor favors for him and every time, he sent me either an appreciative note or an appreciative note and an autographed copy of the script for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. I have at least three of them. I had one more but I gave it to a friend of mine named Mark who also loves the show.

One time, the "favor" was as follows. The Nathan Lane version of Forum was about to open in New York. I was back there that week and Larry arranged for me to get house seats for a performance that had been "sold out" for weeks. Being the co-author, he got great house seats: Second row on the center aisle. Any closer and I'd have had to play a courtesan. Anyway, since I was going to see the production before he did, he asked me — if I had a moment — to drop him an e-mail after and tell him what I thought of it. I sent him a message that evening that just said, "Needs more Jews." Then I followed it up the next day with a more detailed critique.

In the above case, common sense would suggest that he'd done me a much larger favor than I'd done for him. But Larry didn't see it that way. He sent another copy of Forum, wittily inscribed.

Speaking of Forum: It's my favorite musical and the Reprise group is staging in next March up at UCLA. They do a lecture series up there in conjunction with each show, and I'm one of the folks who lectures. We'd been talking about me interviewing Larry there after it opens, and he'd agreed. I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to that.

One other thing. Larry was active on the Internet, especially on the newsgroup, alt.tv.mash where he answered questions and corrected misinfo. His handle was "elsig" and if you want to read some of his messages, this search should locate some threads in which he participated.

If you browse, you may stumble across a particularly poignant exchange. Larry Linville, who played Frank Burns on M*A*S*H, popped in one day to report he was home following cancer surgery…

Feb 25, 1998

Just wanted to say hi and thanks to all those who've sent cards, letters, whatever, since my "grand opening." Thank God Ferret Face wasn't operating! I'm home now, and doing well. My wife says I'm looking good, but what does she
know. Much love and all the best.

Larry "Frank Burns" Linville

It brought the following public reply from the other Larry…

Feb 28, 1998

So good to hear from you, Ferret Face, and to know that your spirit and your good humor are not deserting you in confrontation with cancer.

I know I speak for every in this newsgroup in wishing you the speediest of recoveries.

It's no hardship for any of us to do this. "It's nice to be nice to the nice."

Love,
Larry Gelbart

Mr. Linville passed away a little more than two years after this exchange…and now we've lost Larry G. to cancer, as well. I'll bet you his spirit and good humor never deserted him in his own confrontation, either.

Several folks have written to tell me that the Big Daddy version of the Star Wars theme is more in the style of Duane Eddy than The Ventures. Okay.

The arguing on the political boards this A.M. mainly seems to be about the size of the turnout for yesterday's anti-Obama rally in Washington. A basic rule of such events is that those who believe in the cause of a public protest always wildly exaggerate its size, those who oppose the cause always underestimate it, reporters make wild guesses and the police and other non-partisan authorities usually get it right. But the accurate estimate gets generally ignored because it isn't of much use to anyone.

So today, you have the anti-Obama crowd claiming 1.5 to 2 million, you have the pro-Obama folks saying 20,000 to 30,000 and you have the D.C. fire department saying 60,000 to 70,000. Interestingly, you have the Washington Times (which is a right-wing paper) and the Washington Post (which has been turning into one) both saying, "tens of thousands." Super-statistician Nate Silver explains a little more about the wide disparity in claims…and seems to side with the fire department.

I'm watching (via TiVo) the memorial service for Walter Cronkite that C-Span has been airing. It's a nice gathering of biggies in network news, saying a lot of incisive things about the departed and also about their profession. Presidents Clinton and Obama also spoke. If you'd like to catch it, it airs again tomorrow on C-Span 1 from 3:30 PM to 6:00 PM Eastern Time.

Earlier, I watched Obama's speech about health care in Minneapolis. Quite nice, though he did tell the "fired up" anecdote for about the six hundredth time.

If you have a moment, go watch Craig Ferguson talk about Joe Wilson's little self-promoting outburst. And take a gander at a funny Jay Leno promo that is running now in movie theaters.

Robert Elisberg remembers Larry Gelbart.

Here's a memory of Larry that keeps popping back into my head today. Back in 1996, there was a special event at the Writers Guild — a gathering of most of the major writers who'd written for Sid Caesar — Neil and Danny Simon, Mel Brooks, Mel Tolkin, Aaron Ruben, Sheldon Keller, Gary Belkin and Larry. Sid was on the panel, as was Carl Reiner, and my pal Bob Claster was the host/interviewer. It was a very nice evening that was taped and broadcast later on PBS. Caesar's Writers, they called it.

Before the event, some of us had dinner at a restaurant across the street and I got to sit in at a table with several of the above folks. At one point, they were talking about stage shows in New York and I don't remember how it was relevant but Carl Reiner said, "Milton Berle was at the Paramount Theater."

And without missing a beat, Larry Gelbart added, "Yeah…and his cock was at the Bijou."

The L.A. Times archives contain many clippings by and about Larry Gelbart. If you're interested in the man and his work, you'll want to take a gander at these.

And if you feel like watching three and a half hours of Larry being interviewed, you'll want to go to this page.

There are many things that should be said about Larry Gelbart, who has just been taken from us by cancer at the age of 81. One is that he was funny. He was funny on the screen. He was funny on the page. He was funny when you spoke with him in person. Every time I talked with him, he said one of those things that makes you think, "I wish I'd said that…and if it's at all possible, I will."

He was also funny at age 81. He still had it. Which is one of the reasons why he still worked as much as he wanted to…and maybe even a little bit more than that.

He was a role model. In this line of work, you often have to ask yourself, one way or the other, "Who's career would I like?" Among folks who write comedy, I'd guess the number one answer the last few decades has been Larry Gelbart.

He was also a tireless fighter, not only on behalf of his own interests but those of writers everywhere. He was active in the Writers Guild…and I have to tell you, it was not comfy to find yourself, as I did once in a while, on the opposite side of an issue from him. He was, after all, Larry Gelbart — a man with impeccable credentials and a withering way with a quip. His very presence among the opposition made you think maybe you were wrong. But he was (almost) always a gentleman.

He was a solid, serious Liberal Democrat and I'm glad he got to live long enough to see the last election.

Obits like this one will give you his major credits but he had hundreds of minor ones or unknown ones, and they're all interesting. Every one of them. The worst thing of his I ever saw was a movie called Blame it on Rio, and even that has some moments worthy of the name of Gelbart. (I never saw Neighbors, a film he told everyone he wished he'd taken his name off. A producer at Sony once told me that among his dream projects was to remake that film, following Larry's screenplay exactly.)

He was enormously nice to me whenever our lives crossed. I think everyone who ever met him would say something of the sort unless they were an inept network exec, studio head or a director or writer who wanted to change his words. There's a lot of autobiography at work in his Broadway hit, City of Angels, which is about a novelist trying to preserve his artistic integrity in the movie business.

Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the music for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, believes that the book (by Burt Shevelove and Larry) is the best farce comedy ever written on this planet. He's probably right about that.

I'll probably think of other things that should be said. As you can tell, this was a very important, talented man and he meant a lot to a lot of people.

One of the all-time great comedy writers and wits has left us. He worked for Sid Caesar. He co-authored A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He wrote the book for many Broadway shows including City of Angels. He developed, produced and wrote the TV series, M*A*S*H. He wrote or co-wrote funny movies like Oh God, Movie Movie and Tootsie. He was a major force in the Writers Guild and a friend, mentor and role model to so many.

I'll have more thoughts about Larry later. I'm just thinking that if they have a memorial service and people get up there and start quoting funny things the man said, we're going to be there for a month.

I briefly felt like I should try to write something profound here about this anniversary…but scanning the web, I don't see that anyone else has. We're all pretty much on the same page that it was a tragedy and here and there, I sense a certain sensation of loss that it doesn't chill us today the same way it did then. But then again, it's not supposed to. Back then, we were saying that things would never be the same again and we meant it in a different way than you get from the normal passing of time. I don't know about you but it feels to me like things got a lot closer to "the same" than I expected, a lot sooner than I expected. Few of us think about 9/11 except on anniversaries like this, when there are important (we think) political points to make or when we're at the airport and being forced to take off our shoes.

I'm not sure that's altogether a bad thing. The greatest damage of that day was, of course, the loss of human life followed by two things, and I'm not sure which is second and which is third. One was the destruction of property and damage to the economy. The other was to scare the hell out of us and make up panic and operate out of fear. The monetary devastation can never be undone but I don't think we've done a bad job of moving past the other thing.