Alfa-Betty Olsen, an unsung wit who became a trusted accomplice to Mel Brooks in the ridiculous, encouraging the irreverent tone of his sitcom “Get Smart” and his movie “The Producers” — and who was a longtime writing partner to Marshall Efron on projects like the quirky PBS series “The Great American Dream Machine” — died on Oct. 5 in Manhattan. She was 88.
Her cousin Norma Levett confirmed the death, in an assisted living facility.
Ms. Olsen, who had known Mr. Brooks socially, recalled being hired as his recording secretary on a tight deadline as he and Buck Henry were completing the TV pilot episode of the spy spoof “Get Smart.”
“One day, he said, ‘You can type, and I can’t,’” she said in a PBS interview in 2018. “‘And I have to hand this in on Monday.’” Her job, while sitting at a typewriter in the corner of a small office, was to jot down rapid-fire one-liners and bonkers concepts like the shoe phone as “Mel and Buck threw around ideas and jokes and things.”
Asked if the job required more than being a stenographer, she replied, “Whoever runs the typewriter has a lot of power.”
In his 2021 memoir, “All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business,” Mr. Brooks recounted that Ms. Olsen “nailed down every thought and every crazy joke and brushstroke of madness we threw out. Nothing escaped her.”
“Get Smart,” an Emmy Award-winning show starring Don Adams as the bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart, ran on NBC from 1965 to 1969 and on CBS from 1969 to 1970.
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The post Alfa-Betty Olsen, Behind-the-Scenes ‘Comic Conspirator,’ Dies at 88 appeared first on New York Times.
