Alex Gottlieb

Birthday: December 21, 1906 in Zhitomir, Russian Empire [now Zhytomyr, Ukraine]

Screenwriter/producer Alex Gottlieb got into show business writing gags and scripts for such radio stars as Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor. He went to work for Universal Pictures as a writer, mostly of &q ...Show More

Screenwriter/producer Alex Gottlieb got into show business writing gags and scripts for such radio stars as Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor. He went to work for Universal Pictures as a writer, mostly of "B" westerns and action pictures. He let it be known that he wanted to become a producer, and in 1941 Universal execs called him in and told him that they were giving him a chance to produce the debut film of a new comedy duo the studio was grooming for stardom--Bud Abbott and Lou Costello (Gottlieb later recalled that he had never heard of them before and in fact thought that the execs were talking about a prominent ice-skating team at the time, one of whose members was named Costello). Gottlieb took the job and the result was Deux nigauds soldats (1941), which turned out to be one of the studio's biggest hits of the year, raking in more than $4 million on a $180,000 budget. Gottlieb produced nine of the team's films altogether, the last being Les joyeux pirates (1952) in 1952. He was also a producer on their TV series, The Abbott and Costello Show (1952), and soon got into TV in a big way, writing and producing such series as The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna (1956), Dear Phoebe (1954) and Sugarfoot (1957), among others.He died in Los Angeles at age 81 on October 9, 1988. Hide