Last week The New York Times published another in a string of obituaries that cover notable friends or colleagues, most in their ’80s it is nonetheless increasingly sadly inevitable. The recent one celebrates the life of writer Alfa-Betty Olsen 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 the late Buck Henry’s genius. Olsen, who was 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 collaboration.
I met Olsen when I worked as producer for the humor book Sin City Fables (A&W, 1981), penned by Olsen with her writing partner, Marshall Efron, and illustrated by my pal Steven Guarnaccia. This was the first of four books that Guarnaccia and I published 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 pitifully low advance and embarasingly meager sales.
Guarnaccia invited Efron, the co-creator of PBS’s “The Great American Dream Machine,” to join us. Efron recruited Olsen to help flesh out the Sin City Fables idea. For such a small book we had a large team; it was my first and only experience working in a so-called comedy “writers’ room.” Between art directing with Guarnaccia, I gave my nod to the brilliant comic situations that Efron and Olsen effortlessly produced. Their spot-on fables picked up on the vibe of NYC’s slide into mid 70s-80s 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 little book was not listed as one of he credits: “What was Sin City Fables,” he wrote, “chopped liver?” I decided 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.
Incidentally, we stumbled on the idea for this book after failing to sell one 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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