Larry Siegel

Larry Siegel (born 1925) is an award-winning American comedy writer and satirist who has written for television, stage, magazines, records, and books. He won three Emmys as Head Writer during four seasons of The Carol Burnett Show along with one Writers Guild award and a dozen Emmy and Writers Guild nominations for his work in television comedy on shows like Burnett and Laugh-In. He was also one of Mad Magazine's top movie satire writers, and a proud member of the "usual gang of idiots" for almost 33 years as well as one of the earliest humor and satire writers for Playboy Magazine. He is also a WWII Veteran, and the only American comedy writer to have ever won both an Emmy and a Purple Heart.

Early life

Siegel was born in New York City in 1925. His first published work was a poem, Oh Dear What Can Sinatra Be?, which tweaked both the singer and his bobbysoxer fans, and ran in Earl Wilson's syndicated newspaper column in 1943. The verse read in part:

A quivering lip

Blaring lovesick rhyme,

Her insides flip in double time.

A slender frame with sagging knees

Yet garnering fame with uncanny ease

The stricken dame pants the breeze.

Eyes of blue, two hands alike

Stretching forth true

Lovingly to strike

Close to you? No, his mike.

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 GI 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 at first sight with the brainy and beautiful 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 have been happily married ever since.

Career

New York

In the late 1950s, Hugh Hefner would enter his life once again when Siegel found work as Eastern Promotion Manager for Chicago-based Playboy Magazine. Siegel started writing humorous articles and satirical pieces for Playboy, Humbug and Mad Magazine. He wrote nearly 300 articles, which appeared in more than 150 issues. Siegel's output for Mad included nearly 80 movie and television parodies, including "The Oddfather," "Balmy and Claude" and "Flawrence of Arabia" as well as a dozen "primers," 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 that family 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.

California

The world-wide success of The Mad Show brought the Siegel and Hart families to the 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 received one Emmy nomination. Siegel and Hart parted from the Burnett show and 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.

At the age of 93, no longer able to perform onstage, Siegel still retains his legendary sense of humor and love of an audience, and now performs Broadway show tunes and WWII-era songs in his room for anyone who will listen, and some who won't.