Comedy and script writer Irving Brecher died 17 November 2008, following a series of heart attacks. Born 17 January 1914 in the Bronx, New York City, he was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay of Meet Me in St. Louis (1944).
Brecher got his start as a Hollywood gag writer in New York at the age of 19. He learned that he could make money writing jokes for comedians, and knew that Milton Berle had a reputation for stealing jokes, so he ran an ad in Variety that said “positively Berle-proof gags. So bad not even Milton will steal them.” Berle hired him. Brecher also wrote for Henny Youngman, the Marx Brothers, radio, television, and film. He created the long-lived radio series The Life of Riley, turned it into a feature film, and then made it into a television series.
Brecher’s genre credits include The Wizard of Oz (1939), for which he was an uncredited script doctor, and Yolanda and the Thief (1945), for which he wrote the screenplay.
His first wife, Eve Bennett, died in 1981. Brecher is survived by his second wife, Norma, and three stepchildren. The New York Times has an amusing obituary here.