Another Morty Gunty Writer Speaks

I was very fortunate a few months ago to have comedy writer Arnie Kogen, of TV and MAD Magazine fame, visit this blog and relieve my concern that I may have played a role in the demise of comedian Morty Gunty’s NY TV show for kids back in 1965. Gunty was the first comic who Kogen wrote for, and later the same was true for writer Alan Zweibel, best known for his stint on the original writing team of Saturday Night Live. He helped develop the characters Roseanne Roseannadanna and Emily Litella for the late Gilda Radner.

It all started when Alan Zweibel’s mother chatted up a comedian she saw open for Engelbert Humperdinck. Zweibel laughs at the thought of it. “She just went up and approached him, and said, ‘My son can write jokes.’ And pretty soon I was writing for $7 a gag for a comic named Morty Gunty.”

Alan Zweibel: The History of Me is a one-man show Zweibel has been performing at various venues throughout this year. Friday night he was in South Orange New Jersey, as featured in this newspaper article.

I’d like to embed a video excerpt of Zweibel doing The History of Me, but YouTube says it can’t be embedded. So instead here’s a picture of Zweibel you can click to take you to YouTube.