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Obituaries

Irving Brecher | Comedy writer, 94

Irving Brecher, who wrote vaudeville one-liners for Milton Berle and scripted Marx Brothers movies, the TV and radio hit The Life of Riley," and the Oscar-nominated musical Meet Me in St. Louis, died Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Mr. Brecher was a teenager in New York when he got his first comedy-writing credits, as columnists Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan named him when they used jokes he sent them on postcards. At 19, he and a friend began a comedy-writing service for entertainers. Berle was their first customer, and he took Mr. Brecher along when he moved into radio and the movies and went to Hollywood, where Mr. Brecher got a contract with Mervyn LeRoy, head of production at MGM. He was an uncredited script doctor on The Wizard of Oz and wrote screenplays for the Marx Brothers movies At the Circus and Go West. - AP

    Inquirer
    Published 

Irving Brecher, who wrote vaudeville one-liners for Milton Berle and scripted Marx Brothers movies, the TV and radio hit

The Life of Riley,"

and the Oscar-nominated musical

Meet Me in St. Louis,

died Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Mr. Brecher was a teenager in New York when he got his first comedy-writing credits, as columnists Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan named him when they used jokes he sent them on postcards. At 19, he and a friend began a comedy-writing service for entertainers.

Berle was their first customer, and he took Mr. Brecher along when he moved into radio and the movies and went to Hollywood, where Mr. Brecher got a contract with Mervyn LeRoy, head of production at MGM. He was an uncredited script doctor on

The Wizard of Oz

and wrote screenplays for the Marx Brothers movies

At the Circus

and

Go West.

- AP

    Inquirer