Few writers conquered mediums the way Larry Gelbart did: he was a leading sketch writer for radio then television, wrote the book of some superb musicals, developed one of the great television series in history, wrote some wonderful screenplays. It would be nice to add "and now he conquers books" - he doesn't really, though his memoirs are entertaining, brisk.
He seems to lack confidence - there are all these explanatory inserts from an editor, putting things in context and making comments. We don't care! It's Larry Gelbart!
There's also little chapters where Gelbart talks about people he admires such as Neil Simon and Woody Allen - sort of interesting but not really. And extracts of some of his work - a large chunk of Mastergate which does read brilliantly but surely the place for it is in a published edition of the whole script? And Gelbart falls into the trap that a lot of old comic writers fall into - going on about how better the old days were (which seems strange for someone who enjoyed success over such a long period of time - Gelbart's work remained fresh and young).
I most enjoyed Gelbart's behind the scenes accounts of making Oh, God!, Tootsie, Movie Movie, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Some stories of the failures are interesting, too, like the series United States. But it's certainly not the book you know it could have been.
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