2008 Catch Up

November 27, 2008, 10:51 am ‘Miracle Worker’ Playwright Dies By New York Times

William Gibson, who wrote the play “The Miracle Worker,” about the relationship between Helen Keller and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, died on Tuesday, his agent, Mary Ann Anderson, said Thursday. He was 94 and lived in Stockbridge, Mass.First written for television and aired in 1957, “The Miracle Worker” was adapted for Broadway in 1959 and won the 1960 Tony Award for best play. Nearly half a century later, it is still performed at regional theaters around the country. Mr. Gibson’s other works include “Two for the Seesaw,” which opened on Broadway in 1958, the book for a musical adaptation of “Golden Boy” by Clifford Odets, “Golda’s Balcony” and “The Monday After the Miracle,” a sequel to “The Miracle Worker” that had a brief run on Broadway in 1982. A full obituary will appear later.

Michael Higgins, who performed on Broadway and Off-Broadway stages from the 1940s to the 1980s, winning two Obie Awards in the process, died Nov. 5 in Manhattan, where he lived.

Mr. Higgins received his first of two Obies in 1958, when the Village Voice had just begun to hand out the awards, which honored work in the rising world of Off-Broadway. He won for his performance as John Proctor in The Crucible by Arthur Miller. The second came 22 years later, in 1980, for his work in David Mamet's Reunion.In 1978, he received a Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play for Molly.The Brooklyn-born actor made his Broadway debut in 1946, in a Guthrie McClintic-Katharine Cornell production of Antigone. Cornell was a very mature Antigone; he was the Third Guard. In 1951, he played Benvolio in a production of Romeo and Juliet starring Olivia de Havilland. In 1955, he performed opposite Julie Harris in Jean Anouilh's Joan of Arc tale, The Lark. He was Larry Slade in a famous 1973 Circle in the Square revival of O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh starring James Earl Jones as Hickey.Hr. Higgins was the father of disturbed teenager Alan Strang in Broadway's original Equus. His final Broadway appearance was in Mixed Couples in 1980, again with Julie Harris.

His first appearances on the small screen date to the early days of live television, and "Studio One" and "Kraft Television Theatre." He performed on the series "Ben Casey," "Gunsmoke," "The Defenders" and "The Andy Griffith Show." Films include "The Conversation,""The Stepford Wives," "The Seduction of Joe Tynan," "The Black Stallion,""Staying Alive," "Rumble Fish," "1918," "Death Becomes Her," "State and Main," "School Ties" and the recent "Synecdoche, New York."Besides his daughter, Deirdre Higgins, Mr. Higgins is survived by his wife, the former Elizabeth Lee Goodwin; and two sons, Sean and Christopher.

Irving Brecher dies at 94; Comedy writer got an Oscar nod for 'Meet Me in St. Louis'; also created 'The Life of Riley' and wrote for Milton Berle and the Marx Brothers.
By Dennis McLellan November 19, 2008

Comedy writer Larry Gelbart, a longtime friend, remembered Brecher for his great wit."He was always a treat whenever he spoke," Gelbart told The Times on Tuesday. "I, for one, am sorry he didn't do more [writing]. He had had such success so early."

Born in the Bronx on Jan. 17, 1914, Brecher was a teenage usher at a movie theater on 57th Street in Manhattan when he began sending one-liners on penny postcards to columnists Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan.

Occasionally, some of his funny lines showed up in print with his name included.When he found he could make money selling lines to vaudeville comedians, he and a friend -- fledgling comedy writer Al Schwartz -- ran a small ad in Variety offering their gag-writing services.

Brecher said in an interview for Jordan Young's 1999 book "The Laugh Crafters" that at the time, a brash young comedian named Milton Berle had a self-promoted reputation for stealing other people's material. Brecher and Schwartz's ad offered "positively Berle-proof gags, so bad not even Milton will steal them."Their first customer: Milton Berle, who paid them $50 for a page of one-liners.Brecher, then 19, continued to write gags for Berle and other acts before he turned to radio.When Berle was signed by CBS in 1936 to do a radio program, "The Gillette Original Community Sing," Brecher became the program's only writer.And when Berle went to Hollywood to costar in the movie "New Faces of 1937," the radio show went west with him. So did Brecher, who continued to write the program as well as the final script for the movie.

Brecher was soon under personal contract to producer-director Mervyn LeRoy, who took him to MGM, where he wrote the screenplays for the Marx Brothers' "At the Circus" (1939) and "Go West" (1940) and shared an Oscar nomination for the screenplay for "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944).

Among his other screenwriting credits are "Shadow of the Thin Man," "Du Barry Was a Lady," "Yolanda and the Thief," "Cry for Happy" and "Bye Bye Birdie.

"In the early '40s, Brecher also created, wrote and produced the radio series "The Life of Riley," starring William Bendix.

Brecher wrote and directed a 1949 feature film version of "The Life of Riley," and the show became an Emmy Award-winning TV series with Jackie Gleason as bumbling working-class everyman Chester A. Riley before Bendix took over the role he played on radio.

Brecher's directing credits include the 1952 Betty Hutton musical "Somebody Loves Me" and the 1961 Robert Wagner comedy "Sail a Crooked Ship," which was Ernie Kovacs' last picture.He also created and co-produced (with George Burns) "The People's Choice," a 1955-58 sitcom starring Jackie Cooper, which featured a pet basset hound named Cleo whose voice only the audience could hear.

Brecher recently wrote a book about the Hollywood figures he knew and wrote for -- "The Wicked Wit of the West," as told to Hank Rosenfeld -- to be published in January by Ben Yehuda Press.I t is subtitled "The Last Great Golden-Age Screenwriter Shares the Hilarity and Heartaches of Working with Groucho, Garland, Gleason, Burns, Berle, Benny & Many More."

Brecher met Groucho Marx in 1938 after LeRoy hired Brecher to punch up the comedy scenes in "The Wizard of Oz." As Brecher recalled in a 2001 interview with The Times: "The straw man, the tin man, the lion -- Mervyn LeRoy said, 'They're not funny enough.' "When LeRoy took Brecher into his office, Marx was sitting at LeRoy's desk, Brecher recalled in 2001 in the Newark Star-Ledger."I said, 'Hello, Mr. Marx.' He said, 'Hello? That's supposed to be a funny line? Is this the guy who's supposed to write our movie?' I probably turned white."Then I said, 'Well, I saw you say hello in one of your movies, and I thought it was so funny I'd steal it and use it now.' Grouch smiled, then he bought me lunch,"

Brecher said.In the 2001 interview with The Times, Brecher said he found it easiest to write for Groucho."I'm a complainer, a dissenter and a put-downer," he said. "He was my alter ego. I liked the anarchism."Brecher was preceded in death by his first wife, Eve Bennett; and his two children, Joanna Giallelis and Keon Brecher.In addition to Norma, his wife of 25 years, he is survived by his stepchildren Jane Ulman, Ellen Zoschak and Michael Waxenberg; and eight grandchildren.A funeral service will be held at 1 p.m. Thursday at Hillside Memorial Park.McLellan is a Times staff writer.

Composer Irving Gertz dies at 93. Wrote score for 'It Came From Outer Space'

By JON BURLINGAME

Irving Gertz, composer for dozens of B movies and sci-fi TV in the 1950s and '60s, died Nov. 14 in Los Angeles. He was 93.Gertz contributed music to more than 200 films, often without screen credit. His most notable efforts were in the science-fiction and horror genres, including "It Came From Outer Space," "The Monolith Monsters," "The Alligator People," "The Creature Walks Among Us" and "The Incredible Shrinking Man."He also penned music for TV, including scores for "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea," "The Invaders," "Land of the Giants" and "Daniel Boone"; and for radio, including NBC's "Screen Directors Playhouse."

Gertz was born in Providence, R.I., and studied at the Providence College of Music. After serving in the Army Signal Corps during World War II, he studed with noted West Coast composers Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Ernst Toch. He began writing music for films in 1947, working for Columbia, Universal, United Artists, RKO and 20th Century-Fox, as well as independent producers, through the late 1960s.He also penned a number of concert works, including a setting of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" for chorus and orchestra.Survivors include his wife of 64 years, Dorothy; two daughters and four grandchildren.

Following a long bout with illness, Ennio De Concini died yesterday November 17 at the age of 84. La Stampa broke the news. Born December 9, 1923 DeConcini was a prolific Italian screenwriter and film director, winning the Academy Award in 1962 for the "Best Original Screenplay" for Divorce, Italian Style. He was the co-screenwriter of The Red Tent a 1969 film starring Sean Connery which was based on Umberto Nobile's disastrous 1928 expedition to the North Pole in the airship Italia. Among the 60 films to his credit are The Four of the Apocalypse (1975), Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973), Battle of the Worlds (1961), Black Sunday (1960), Long Night in 1943 (1960), Il Grido (1957), War and Peace (1956), and Mambo (1954).