SubscribeLest we forget: Irving Brecher
Brecher, one of the last remaining links to the golden age of Hollywood, passed away on Monday at the age of 94. He had been a scriptwriter for some of th great comedies of TV and the big screen, including Marx Brothers pictures and The Life of Riley, as well memorable musicals such as Bye, Bye Birdie and Meet Me. in St. Louis.
I could kick myself. I have a preview of his memoirs, The Wicked Wit of the West, sitting in front of me. The publisher sent it months ago and I was planning on doing an interview with Mr. Brecher and his “as told to” guy, Hank Rosenfeld, but I kept putting it off, timing it to be closer to the book’s release date of next Jan. 17, which would have been the Irving’s 95th birthday.
I had a similar experience last year with Eliot Asinof, author of Eight Men Out, the seminal book on the 1919 Black Sox scandal. An acquaintance gave me his phone number just a few days before his demise last June.
Fortunately I did get to speak with Mickey Rutner, who had a cup of coffee with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1947, and who, at the time we spoke, was the oldest living Jewish ex-major leaguer. I mailed him a card from the set of Jewish Major leaguers that featured him and Lou Limmer (the second oldest; he had already signed it). It came back a few days later with a note from his widow that he had died a couple of days before. Asinof had played in the minors with Rutner and used him as the inspiration for his novel Man on Spikes.
But I digress…
In his book, Brecher, who lived in the Los Angeles area, wrote about some of his experiences as a baseball fan.
In 1948, I went with Groucho and Julius Epstein to a baseball game, semi-pro, at Gilmore Stadium, which is now the Grove shopping mall on Third and Fairax. We’re sitting there watching the game when some fellow comes up and he says: “Did you hear on the radio? The state of Palestine has just announced they have a new name: ‘Israel.’”
Julie says: “In another six months, they’ll change it to Irving.”
By the way, Epstein was the great uncle of Theo Epstein, the general manager for the Boston Red Sox.
Brecher also talks about his friend lyricist Harry Ruby’s mania for the game:
[His] dream was to be a big league ballplayer. Once in the 1930s, he even had a tryout with the Washington Senators. He trotted out to centerfield and one of the coaches hit a fungo out to him. Harry moved eagerly forward, stuck out his glove, and the ball hit him in the head and knocked him down. he got up and quite baseball.
That scenario was “documented” in the film Three Little Words, with Red Skelton playing the role of Harry Ruby.
Brecher also briefly touches on the joys of watching the New York Giants beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1951 playoff game, thanks to Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard ’round the world.”
If there’s a lesson to be learned here, boys and girls, it’s “don’t wait.” If you want to call some old friend to catch up, don’t wait. If you get an opportunity to do something fun and different, don’t wait.
It’s never a good time to die, but nonagenarians seem more inclined than most to shuffle off this mortal coil. I’m glad Irv got to hold a galley of his book in his hand, and even happier that he lived to see the defeat of the nemesis of his later years, George W. Bush.
His was truly a remarkable life. A decade after the first talking movie, he was in Hollywood, writing for his idols, the Marx Brothers. He started in an era when newspaper columnists published jokes mailed to them on postcards, and lived long enough to record a popular YouTube video in support of the Writer’s Strike last year.
Irv knew he was near death’s door, and wasn’t really expecting to make it to 95 and the book’s publication date. Of course, the book would have been published sooner had he not been revising the galley–inevitably improving it. Somewhere between the first galley and the final text, he “punched up” the final line of the book. His c-author, Hank, asks Irv for an epitaph.
Irv’s suggestion, in the final edit, was this: “Here lies Irving Brecher, who doesn’t recommend it.”
According to IMDB:
The real Harry Ruby appears in a bit part as one of the baseball players. He is the one who catches the ball thrown by Red Skelton (as Harry Ruby) and tells “Ruby” to take it easy.
Good “catch,” ASC.