Herb Gardner (December 28, 1934 in Brooklyn - September 25, 2003) commercial artist, cartoonist, playwright, and screenwriter. His cartoon characters, eventually seen in the comic strip The Nebbishes, largely forgotten now, were a huge hit in the 1950s and a mainstay of office wall decorations. He is best known for his 1962 play A Thousand Clowns, which ran for two years. He received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay for the successful 1965 movie adaptation. The play was revived in 1996 and 2001. Both the 1962 play and the movie starred Jason Robards, Jr. as Murray Burns, a charming, out-of-work writer with Peter Pan syndrome. He is forced to choose between social conformity and the probable loss of custody of his eleven-year-old nephew. The Robards character was in part based on Gardner's friend at that time, humorist Jean Shepherd. Gardner's biggest commercial success was the 1985 play I'm Not Rappaport, which ran for two years, won the Tony Award for Best Play, and became a 1996 movie. Other Broadway credits include The Goodbye People (1968), Thieves (1974), and Conversations with My Father (1992). He collaborated with Jule Styne on the ill-fated 1980 musical One Night Stand. Gardner was the screenwriter and co-producer of the 1971 motion picture Who Is Harry Kellerman, and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? which starred Dustin Hoffman. Gardner made a brief screen appearance as Rabbi Pierce in the 1987 motion picture Ishtar. Gardner was married to actress Rita Gardner; the union ended in divorce. He is a graduate of Antioch College. Gardener was a graduate of New York's High School of Performing Arts. Gardner was brother to R. Allen Gardner who still works in comparative psychology at the University of Nevada, Reno, but is most famous for conducting project washoe (i.e. the attempt to teach ASL to a chimpanzee named Washoe) with his wife.
