It's been a bad few months for comedy writers and for folks affiliated with the Sid Caesar TV shows. My friend Gary Belkin was both.
That's Gary at a 1996 event called "Caesar's Writers" held at the Writers Guild Theater. He was seated one person away from Danny Simon, who passed away last week. When Gary got the invite, he scanned the names — Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart and others, including himself — and remarked, "My God. I'm the only one on here I've never heard of." Actually, a bunch of us had to practically threaten Gary to get him to the event. His wife had passed away not long before and he'd become something of a hermit. But he went.
Writing for Sid Caesar was only one of Gary's many credits. He wrote for Danny Kaye. He wrote for Carol Burnett. Some of his other credits are listed in this obit and yes, it's true. Gary even wrote for Muhammad Ali. He was engaged, at what he described as a handsome salary, to pen the rhyming quips for which Ali was once so famous. He also worked as a "troubleshooter" for comedy-related projects. One of the leading agents of stand-up comedians used to hire Gary to midwife new comics through their early appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He'd help them select and edit their material and he'd critique their rehearsal sets. I remember running into him once outside the Improv and he dragged me in to hear a set by a new comic named Ellen DeGeneres. He was helping her to get ready to make her debut with Mr. Carson.
One credit you won't find in that article is MAD Magazine, but that was okay. Gary didn't often mention that he was one of the earlier writers for MAD after Al Feldstein assumed editorship of the publication from Harvey Kurtzman. His job there didn't last long, as he quarreled with publisher Bill Gaines over MAD's insistence on owning all rights and refusing to pay royalties or reprint fees.
You may notice in the obit that Gary was nominated for an Emmy in 1985 for his work on Sesame Street. One of the other people nominated in that category (Best Writing in a Program for Children) was me. At the ceremony, I went up to him and asked him how much he'd want to throw the Emmys. He quoted a bargain price — I think it was fifty bucks — then asked, "Now, how does one go about throwing the Emmys?" I told him he should commit an act of vulgar, distasteful sexual deviancy that would cause the Academy to shun him. Gary said, "Yeah, but that's what I was nominated for!" (We both lost, by the way…to Mr. Rogers. But it was okay, especially for Gary. He had a shelf full of awards.)
As a comedy writer, he was a clever man with an acerbic, cynical sense of humor…kind of like the way Buddy Sorrell would be if everyone in the world was Mel Cooley. He was quietly outraged about a great many things in the world, most recently the Iraq War and the Bush administration. But before that, I heard him spend entire lunches railing about the Writers Guild and its neglect of his main area, the writing of variety shows and specials. And he really disliked (with good reason) a producer we both once worked for. Out of a spirit of justice, not greed, he kept after the guy to pay us every nickel he owed us. Every so often, he'd call to say that the shows we'd written had, he learned, aired in Venezuela and we were owed eight dollars for that and, by God, he'd go after that money and I'd eventually receive a check for my share of the eight dollars.
That's far from the only reason I already miss Gary. I just spent a few minutes looking back through my e-mailbox for old communications from him. The next to last came on May 24, right after our mutual friend Howie Morris died. Gary wrote to me about it, and I think this is the only message he wrote that didn't have a punch line. The entire thing read as follows, typos and all…
I just learned that Howie died. In recent months I've been in touch with Delores (so I know who sick he was) but you're the one I thought of to whom express my condolences. Lovely man, always a pleasure to see him.
One could say the same of Gary: Lovely man, always a pleasure to see him.