Last week The New York Times published another in a three-year string of obituaries of friends or colleagues from the past, all in their ’80s. It’s an increasingly recurring shock as time advances. The most recent celebrates the life of Alfa-Betty Olsen, eminent for her contributions to Mel Brooks’ hilarious comedy The Producers, Get Smart and other projects where she was called upon to help bolster Brooks and Buck Henry’s genius. Olsen, who was typically a behind-the-scenes presence, was mentioned at one of the awards ceremonies where Brooks took home top honors. Before that I didn’t even know about their fruitful collaboration.
I met Olsen when I worked as producer for Sin City Fables (A&W, 1981), written by Olsen and her writing partner, Marshall Efron, and illustrated by Steven Guarnaccia. This was the first of four books that Guarnaccia and I worked on together. As producer of Sin City I was responsible for devising the basic concept (which began as an illustration assignment about an increase in New York subway pandemonium for The New York Times Book Review. I did the design and layout and otherwise ran some interference between the authors and editor. As I recall, the entire process was fun and rewarding … if you don’t count the severely low advance and predictably meager sales.
Guarnaccia had invited Efron, the co-creator of PBS’ “The Great American Dream Machine,” to join us. Efron recruited Olsen to help flesh out the Sin City Fables concept. For such a small book we had a large team; it was my first and only experience working in a mythic comedy “writers’ room.” Between art directing with Guarnaccia, I gave my nod to the brilliant situations that Efron and Olsen effortlessly produced. It picked up on the vibe of NYC’s slide into madness and was so witty that we were even approached by a famous director to buy the rights for a speculative film (that never materialized).
When I sent the obituary to Guarnaccia, he jokingly pointed out that our book was not noted as a credit: “What was Sin City Fables, chopped liver?” I told him that for old-time sake I’d reprise its memory along with a brief tribute to Alfa-Betty (her name is Norwegian) in this column. He asked if I recalled that we stumbled on the idea for the book after failing to sell another on rabbit lore. If anyone’s interested, I still have that dummy and proposal. Although our co-author recently passed away, we’re still hoping (hopping) to finish it.
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