Irving Brecher, 94; wrote 2 comedies for Marx Brothers

IRVING BRECHER

LOS ANGELES - Irving Brecher, a comedy writer whose career in radio, television, and the movies included writing two Marx Brothers comedies, cowriting the Judy Garland musical "Meet Me in St. Louis," and creating the radio and TV series "The Life of Riley," has died. He was 94.

Mr. Brecher died of age- related causes Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said his wife, Norma.

Comedy writer Larry Gelbart, a longtime friend, remembered Mr. Brecher for his great wit.

"He was always a treat whenever he spoke," Gelbart said Tuesday. "I, for one, am sorry he didn't do more [writing]. He had had such success so early."

Born in the Bronx, Mr. Brecher was a teenage usher at a movie theater on 57th Street in Manhattan in the early 1930s when he began sending one-liners on penny postcards to columnists Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan.

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. Mr. Brecher said in an interview for Jordan Young's 1999 book "The Laugh Crafters" that at the time, a brash comedian named Milton Berle had a self-promoted reputation for stealing other people's material.

Mr. Brecher and Schwartz's ad offered "positively Berle-proof gags, so bad not even Milton will steal them." But their first customer was Berle, who paid them $50 for a page of one-liners. Mr. 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, Mr. Brecher became the program's only writer.

He was soon under 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 co-writing 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," and "Bye Bye Birdie."

Mr. Brecher first met Groucho Marx in 1938 after LeRoy signed Mr. Brecher to punch up comedy scenes in "The Wizard of Oz."

When he entered LeRoy's office, Groucho was at his desk, Mr. Brecher recalled in 2001. "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.' Groucho smiled, then he bought me lunch."