Exit the Clowns, Crying

When comedy writer Martin Ragaway was dying of cancer last April and unable to speak, he wrote a note that said, “Game’s over, we all lose.”

It seemed a bitter little punch line to a life that had been given over to laughter, and I wondered why he had written that.

Not that I expected the man to be up telling jokes a few hours before his death. But I had known Ragaway fairly well and the last note did not fit my image of him.

I began calling others who knew him better, among them Bill Larkin. Larkin and Ragaway had worked for Bob Hope for more than 30 years.

I asked Larkin why Ragaway would write something like that, and he said he really didn’t know.

“It didn’t seem like Marty,” he said. “He was always up. His only goal in life was to entertain. But maybe being up and entertaining just covered his real attitude. Who knows?”

Comedy writers, he said, laughing, were skewed people. You couldn’t predict what they’d do.

Then Larkin proved his point. Not then, last Thursday. He went down into the garage of his Marina del Rey apartment and shot himself to death.

It was Ragaway all over again, in a way. The last time I saw Martin he was as funny and strange as ever. I didn’t realize it then, but he had terminal cancer.

When I talked to Larkin after Ragaway’s death, he was funny and strange too, but maybe a little more reflective about humor masking personal anguish.

That was last April. Larkin, who was 68, had been planning his own death even then, for essentially the same reasons Ragaway wrote that bitter epitaph.

For all their immense talent to make others laugh, comedy would not work for its gifted creators. The clowns left the stage crying.

Larkin began composing a suicide note in 1986 and finally left it last week for a friend, Nan Burrows. He had a heart problem and other ailments, and could no longer taste or smell food.

“I’m so goddamn sick of feeling 98% dead that I really want to die,” he wrote. “I am lonely but no longer have the patience to be around people. I always say I feel fine. People aren’t interested in how you feel and I don’t blame them. Sick people are boring.”

Then he wrote, “While I’ve had a wonderful life and have done so much more than I have ever dreamed of doing, it’s now over. I no longer serve any function. There is no reason for me to exist.”

This is a comedy writer?

“He was so depressed,” writing partner Mort Lachman said of his friend, “but you never knew it to talk to him. When Marty Ragaway died, Billy spoke at his funeral. He was hilarious and wonderful.

“Later at lunch I said, ‘Where’d you get all that stuff on Marty? I don’t remember all that.’ Billy said, ‘He never did all those things. I made them up. I had to do something nice for the guy.’ ”

Larkin was an air traffic controller for the Santa Monica and Bakersfield airports when he began writing comedy in the late 1940s. He loved the Steve Allen radio show and sent in jokes. Allen liked them so much, he hired Larkin.

His credits since then cover two typewritten pages. They include television shows, movies, books, night club acts and even speeches for politicians.

In 1953, Lachman was looking for a writing partner and his agent suggested that he have lunch with Larkin. Later, the agent asked Lachman what he thought and Mort said, “Well, he eats good.”

They became a writing team closer than most marriages, not only traveling and writing for Hope, but also for the best comedy shows of the last three decades.

“We were so close,” Lachman said, “that I could come up with a punch line and Billy with a straight line, and we could put them together for a joke.”

Both Lachman and Nan Burrows say that Larkin was the most organized person they had ever met. Even his maps were filed and labeled. He kept records of who borrowed what from his extensive tool collection.

“What Billy really wanted to be was a funny plumber,” Lachman said. “He wanted to work on pipes and do jokes for housewives in the daytime.”

Larkin’s life brimmed over with comedy, but ended in despair. “I’m actually excited about dying,” his own last note said. “In one instant, I can solve a million little problems.”

The note was found in his very neat apartment. As Lachman put it, “Not a thing was out of place.”

Somebody, I don’t know who, once said, “Dying is easy, comedy’s hard.” For Bill Larkin, living was hard too. Last Thursday, he gave it up.