Film Writer Breslow Dies; Wrote Reagan’s ‘Bonzo’

Screenwriter Lou Breslow, who worked on classic Marx Brothers comedies and co-wrote Ronald Reagan’s hit “Bedtime for Bonzo,” has died. He was 87.

Breslow, of Canoga Park, died of pneumonia Tuesday at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills.

He worked with Val Burton on the 1951 comedy, “Bedtime for Bonzo,” about a man who baby-sits a chimpanzee for a scientific experiment. Breslow didn’t think much of the film or Reagan, who had the lead.

“A lousy picture, a lousy actor,” he told the Washington Post in 1982. “Bonzo was a wonderful chimp. He died in a fire. I cried when Bonzo died.”

Born in Boston, Breslow came to Los Angeles in 1908. In the 1920s he was an extra, cameraman and consultant on silent films. Later he became a contract screenwriter for Paramount Pictures and 20th Century-Fox.

Breslow wrote or assisted on nearly 100 screenplays during his 50-year career, including the Marx Brothers films “Duck Soup” and “Horse Feathers.”

He married actress Marion Byron in 1934. She died in 1985. Breslow is survived by two sons and four grandchildren.