A writer, Gelbart specialized in comedy, first working in the 1940s — at age 16 — on Danny Thomas’s radio show, and later for Bob Hope and Jack Paar. In the 1950s he moved to television, working on the Sid Caesar Comedy Hour. In the 1960s he wrote the farce A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. And in the 1970s, he helped turn a successful film into a TV show: M*A*S*H was set in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in the Korean War as an allegory to the Vietnam War, which was too fresh in American minds for comic treatment.
Gelbart co-created the series, and in the first four seasons wrote 57 episodes and produced 72. The show lasted 11 years (1972–1983), even though the shooting portion of the Korean War only lasted for three, and its finale was the most-watched TV episode in history — a record which still stands. After leaving the show, Gelbart went on to write for films (including Tootsie, Oh God!, and Blame it on Rio). He died September 11 from cancer. He was 81.