Irving Brecher

Irv Brecher, writer of many Golden Age film musicals and radio comedies, has died at the age of 94. Ivan at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, a huge fan of Brecher's The Life Of Riley radio series, has a great tribute.

His autobiography, in the works for many years, was completed before he died and will be pubished posthumously in January 2009.

Brecher was one of the great Old Hollywood talking heads, a guy who loved to talk in that perfect comedy-writer's accent of his, and kept you spellbound with wonderful, vividly told stories about every star he'd ever worked with. I first saw him on Saturday Night At the Movies talking about his two films with the Marx Brothers. (When, oh, when is TVO going to make their archive of interviews available to the public?) His scripts for the Marx Brothers were not really among the best they worked with -- but his stories about them were always great. Last year, during the writer's strike, the 93-going-on-94 Brecher appeared in a YouTube video for the WGA, still energetic and intelligent and proud of being a writer.