Very sad news. The LA Times is reporting that prolific TV and screenwriter Larry Gelbart died this morning at his home in Beverly Hills:

Jack Lemmon once described the genial, quick-witted Gelbart as “one of the greatest writers of comedy to have graced the arts in this century.”

Gelbart’s more than 60-year career began in radio during World War II when he was a 16-year-old student at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles. He wrote for “Duffy’s Tavern” and radio shows starring Eddie Cantor, Joan Davis, Jack Paar, Jack Carson and Bob Hope, with whom he traveled overseas when Hope entertained the troops.

Here is a GITS post from June 6th of this year featuring an interview with Gelbart:

Larry Gelbart began his professional writing career in 1952 on “The Red Buttons Show”, wrote 139 episodes of the comedy TV classic “Your Show of Shows”, and then penned 57 episodes — including the pilot — for little TV series called “M*A*S*H”. Then there are his movie credits including Oh, God!, Tootsie, and Blame It on Rio. Clearly Gelbart is a writer with talent — and lots of wisdom.

In this interview, Gelbart covers a lot of territory. A few excerpts:

GP: Would you say this is a good or bad time for satire, then?

LG: It’s a tough time for satire, because so much that happens in real life is so satirical. The daily headlines from Washington almost seem satirical. So much behavior is outrageous.

GP: And how does a comedian operate when real life seems fairly comedic?

LG: Well, you just have to dip your pen a little deeper in the acid and deal with it as you see it. It’s not some official job, although some people do make it their job to punch holes in the pompous, in the preposterous, in the unfair, in the unkind, in the greedy. So, if the real-life behavior is that much more outrageous, you make your comments that much sharper.

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GP: As a writer, you don’t get the same sort of feedback that a stand-up comedian gets on stage. So how do you know when something is funny? Do you have an internal voice in your head that critiques what you write?

LG: Yup. That voice is experience, and instinct, and a sense of humor, I hope. And the voice can be giving me a wrong message, telling me that something is funny that audiences don’t share. That’s why theater is a very good place to do comedy, or anything for that matter, because you’re collaborating with an audience every night, and they’ll tell you what’s funny and what’s not. With television, you can either sweeten things or put on a laugh track, so you never really know whether a human audience would have laughed at it; and in motion pictures, of course, you have to take a chance and release it in front of the audience [and hope they think it's funny].

The interview is a transcript of a February, 2001 episode of PBS’ series “Great Performances.”

Godspeed, Larry Gelbart.