Herbert Finn

CROSBY AND Hope. Amos and Andy. Fred and Wilma. Whether it was sitcoms, sketches, stand-up routines or cartoon series like The Flintstones, Herbie Finn's nimble brain produced a steady flow of comedy lines and ideas in a career lasting more than 50 years.

Herbert Finn, writer: born Boston, Massachusetts 1913; married; died Burbank, California 28 May 2002.

Crosby and Hope. Amos and Andy. Fred and Wilma. Whether it was sitcoms, sketches, stand-up routines or cartoon series like The Flintstones, Herbie Finn's nimble brain produced a steady flow of comedy lines and ideas in a career lasting more than 50 years.

The Boston-born Finn began his career in radio. Although he wrote for many series, including the top-rated Amos and Andy Show, his proudest boast was "I worked on Duffy's Tavern and lived to tell about it". One of the best-written, most consistently funny radio shows of the 1940s, Duffy's Tavern was fabled for such manglings of the English language as "Dis Sherlock Holmes story is better than Cohn and Doyle put together!"

It was also fabled for its alarmingly rapid turnover in scriptwriters; the show's star, creator, producer and editor was the formidable Ed Gardner, of whom it was said, "Ed changes writers like he changes clothes." Others who slaved over Duffy's scripts (often all night) were Bill Manhoff, future author of the hit play The Owl and the Pussycat, Abe Burrows, future librettist of Guys and Dolls, Larry Gelbart, future librettist of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and (briefly) Alan Jay Lerner, future librettist of My Fair Lady.

On another, less successful radio series, Finn worked with the young, shy Neil Simon. "I'm ashamed to say this," confessed Finn later, "but I told him to get out of writing and earn a real living."

One Friday in 1955, the Hollywood-based Finn received a telephone call from his agent, telling him to be in New York the following Monday to join five other writers on The Honeymooners, a sitcom revolving around the stocky, bumbling New York bus driver Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) and his long-suffering wife Alice (Audrey Meadows). "Monday there was a story meeting," said Finn. "Gleason was having a manicure there. We shook hands, and everybody looked. It was the first time he ever shook hands with a writer, apparently."

Gleason paired Finn with A.J. Russell, whose speciality was story structure. "When they teamed me up with Herb, I learned a lot about writing jokes," said Russell. "He was great for the gags and the lines and the little things." Although there were only 39 episodes (the show was cancelled after being beaten in the ratings by The Perry Como Show), The Honeymooners became the most popular programme in the history of syndication, enjoying more than 30 years of reruns.

When the cartoon moguls William Hanna and Joseph Barbera chose Herbert Finn to write for The Flintstones, they made one of the few astute decisions in the history of television, as the Stone Age Fred and Wilma were based on Ralph and Alice Kramden. "The model for Fred's dopey pal Barney Rubble was Ed Norton, the character Art Carney played in Honeymooners," said Finn. "I always figured he was called Barney because it rhymed with Carney." Although panned by most of the critics (Jack Gould of The New York Times called it "inked disaster"), The Flintstones was the first cartoon series to become a prime-time hit, launching two spin-offs and as many feature films.

Finn also wrote television material for Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Garry Moore, and for such durable sitcoms as Dennis the Menace, The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island. At the age of 72, he finally followed in the footsteps of his fellow scriptwriters Gelbart, Simon, Burrows, Manhoff and Lerner, and turned to the theatre, winning the Mobil Playwriting Competition Award of 1985 for his play The Almoster.

Dick Vosburgh