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Willie Gilbert
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pen name of William "Willie" Gomberg, born 1916 in Cleveland, Ohio, died 1980 in New York City.
Willie's proclivity for creating gags emerged as the humor writer for the Glenville High School "Torch," on which he worked alongside future playwright Jerome Lawrence and the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. After earning a BS in education he moved to New York City to pursue a career as a comedian. There he discovered that his physician, Jack Weinstock, had a skill for writing, and soon the two were contributing sketch comedy to night-club performers including Kaye Ballard and Eileen Barton, and then to the Broadway review Tickets Please. They worked extensively in early television, particularly the children's programs Howdy Doody and Tom Corbett Space Cadet, although they also sold material to such mainstream performers as Jackie Gleason. They achieved their first Broadway success as coauthors of the book for How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying in 1962, for which they shared in two Tony Awards. Later Gilbert and Weinstock wrote the books for Hot Spot and Catch Me If You Can. Weinstock died in 1969, as the team was writing another Broadway musical, "The Candy Store." In the 1970s Gilbert returned to children's television, writing gags for Yogi Bear, Scooby Doo and other Hanna-Barbera characters.