Larry Siegel – RIP
He was not on the list.
Lawrence Harvey (Larry) Siegel
October 29, 1925 – August 20, 2019
From the Larry Siegel Facebook page:
It is with great sadness that I have to share the news that my father, Larry Siegel passed away last night at the age of 93 after a long battle with Parkinson’s. He was a fighter until the end and as of last weekend, still singing his beloved Frank Sinatra songs and his favorite WWII era song “Brother, Can you Spare a Dime.” As one of the original comedy writers for Mad Magazine, Playboy, The Carol Burnett show and Laugh-In, his comedy writing will live on forever, and his infectious sense of humor and love of life will be remembered by all those who loved him and were lucky enough to share a laugh with him over the years. He loved to tell people about his career and was proud of his 3 Emmys, but never, ever talked about his time in WWII where he was a decorated war hero and won a Purple Heart along with a slew of other medals.
At the age of 18, Siegel was drafted into the Army soon after his contribution to Wilson's column. In early 1944, after concluding infantry basic training in Georgia, he volunteered for additional stateside training with the 10th Mountain Division. The 10th landed in Naples, Italy for battle in January 1945. Siegel became an Army Rifleman and decorated war hero who received a Purple Heart, Bronze Star Medal, American Theater Ribbon, EAME Theater Ribbon with two Bronze Stars, Victory Medal, Combat Infantry Badge, and a Good Conduct ribbon.
After the war ended, Siegel enrolled at the University of Illinois on the G.I. Bill. He wrote for the school humor magazine, Shaft, for two years. He became editor of the publication when his predecessor, Hugh Hefner, graduated, a college connection that would influence his future comedy career. While at college, Siegel had stories published in Fantasy and Science Fiction and American Legion Magazine. Siegel graduated and returned to his family in New York in 1950.
In 1955, while on vacation in Nantucket, Siegel fell in love with Helen Hartman, an aide in the office of United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld in New York. He proposed on their first date and they were married until Siegel's death.
Larry Siegel was one of the famed MAD writers for three decades from 1958 to 1990, some of its most successful years. It is difficult to pick just one sample from all that comedy, but I’ll take an excerpt from his and Jack Davis‘ satire of Hogan’s Heroes. I don’t think Larry found it particularly fitting to feature Nazis in a sitcom just twenty years after WWII.
Larry ended the Hokum’s Heroes satire with a spin-off – Hochman’s Heroes:
Just before hooking up with MAD, Larry had met and began contributing to former MAD editor and creator Harvey Kurtzman’s efforts. In 1957 and 1958 Larry offered readers funny stuff like “Fun with Hamlet and His Friends” (Humbug #7).
Ten years later (1965-69) he would team up with Kurtzman once again, helping to write Playboy’s Little Annie Fanny.
From a 2002 Gary Groth interview with Will Elder:
GROTH: At some point a writer by the name of Larry Siegel must have helped write the strip.
ELDER: Yeah. He did the writing. He’s a very humorous guy with a straight face.
GROTH: Why was he brought in to do some of the writing?
ELDER: Because Harvey had written a litany of stories, and he subjected them to scrutiny by Hefner and his gang. They didn’t like them. They returned them and asked for another way of doing it. Time was being lost because of this back-and-forth business and he needed someone to help him with a humorous story. Larry Siegel was right there at the right time.
Larry did more than comics.
He was an Emmy Award-winning writer for television, among other endeavors.
In the late 1950s, Hugh Hefner would enter his life once again when Siegel found work as Eastern Promotion Manager for Chicago-based Playboy. Siegel started writing humorous articles and satirical pieces for Playboy, Humbug and Mad Magazine. He wrote nearly 300 articles for the latter, which appeared in more than 150 issues.[3] Siegel's output for Mad included nearly 80 movie and television parodies, including "The Oddfather," "Balmy and Clod" and "Flawrence of Arabia" as well as a dozen "primers," and several imaginary magazine parodies on topics ranging from medicine, to 1960s protesters, to "gun nuts." Siegel also wrote song parodies, including several of those in the Mad special issue which ultimately provoked a failed lawsuit by Irving Berlin and other composers which established certain copyright law protections that endure to this day.
In 1965, at the behest of composer Mary Rodgers and Mad publisher William Gaines, Siegel collaborated with Stan Hart on The Mad Show.
The world-wide success of The Mad Show brought the Siegel and Hart families to Los Angeles in 1968. There, they wrote a Flip Wilson special for NBC and a pilot for 20th Century Fox producer David Gerber called Oh Nurse!
In 1970, Siegel was hired by producer George Schlatter to write for Laugh-In. He later broke contract to write for Carol Burnett with Stan Hart. The team spent three years with Burnett, during which they won two Emmys and were nominated for another. Siegel and Hart parted from the Burnett show in 1974, and Siegel helped launch That's My Mama on ABC. He returned for the final season of Carol Burnett's show in 1977 and won a third Emmy.
In the early 1980s, Siegel was hired as part of a team of writers to pen a sequel of sorts to the hit LP record The First Family. Titled The First Family Rides Again and highlighting mimic Rich Little, the follow-up dealt with the life of Ronald Reagan.
During the 1990s, Siegel spent three years teaching comedy writing at UCLA before turning to acting and joining the Screen Actors Guild. He did commercials for companies including IBM and Northwest Airlines and also performed in stage musicals in the Los Angeles area. At the age of 87, Siegel was still doing improvisational comedy, writing, and performing in sketches for shows at the Broad Theater in Santa Monica, California. He died on August 20, 2019, at the age of 93.
Rest in Peace, Larry.
Writer
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1977
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story
teleplay
1977
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1976
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The Fosters (1976)
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1976
1 episode
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1976
1 episode
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1974
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written by
1974
1 episode
Oh, Nurse!
6.6
TV Movie
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1972
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1967)
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
8.0
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written by
1970–1971
16 episodes
Love, American Style (1969)
Love, American Style
6.8
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written by (segment Love and the High School Flop-Out)
1969
1 episode
Wonder Woman: Who's Afraid of Diana Prince? (1967)
Wonder Woman: Who's Afraid of Diana Prince?
3.3
TV Short
Writer
1967
Steve Allen, 1965 - Copyright 1968, 2000 MPTV.NET - photo
credit: Gabi Rona
That Was the Week That Was
8.0
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Writer
1964
3 episodes
The Bob Newhart Show (1961)
The Bob Newhart Show
7.8
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Writer
1961–1962
2 episodes
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Teddy Wilson in That's My Mama (1974)
That's My Mama
7.0
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story editor
1974–1975
13 episodes
Script and Continuity Department
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Teddy Wilson in That's My Mama (1974)
That's My Mama
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script consultant
1974
3 episodes
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