Eliot Wald, 57; Comedy Writer for Film,TV and Stage

Eliot Wald, a comedy writer for screen, television and stage who had the serious idea to match two competing film critics for what became “Siskel & Ebert,” has died. He was 57.

Wald, who wrote for “Saturday Night Live” in the days of Eddie Murphy and Billy Crystal, died Saturday in Los Angeles of liver cancer, said his wife, attorney Jane Shay Wald.

His screen credits, along with writing partner Andrew Kurtzman, included Disney’s “Camp Nowhere” in 1994 with Christopher Lloyd as the token adult presiding over a kid-devised neighborhood summer camp, and “Down Periscope” in 1996 with Kelsey Grammer heading a submarine crew of misfits.

The two writers, who met while working on “SNL” in the late 1980s, were also among the credited writers for the 1989 motion picture comedy “See No Evil, Hear No Evil” starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder.

For television, the team wrote the movie “Hot Paint” in 1988 starring John Larroquette.

But Wald, a writer who also worked on Chicago’s underground newspaper the Seed and for the improvisation troupe Second City, was perhaps most famous for his contribution to televised review programs about motion pictures.

He was working for Chicago’s PBS station WTTW in 1975 when he proposed matching competitive newspaper movie critics to debate the merits of coming films in a televised face-off. Given the go-ahead, Wald spent $400 of his $500 budget to hire two reluctant co-stars -- Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times.

The remaining $100 was spent on set design -- a row of theater seats. The resulting program was called “Coming Soon to a Theater Near You.”

Wald, whose writing resume veered frequently to what he always called “a new possibility,” soon left the show, which was renamed “Sneak Previews.” By the time it went national, the sparring reviewer format Wald conceived became “Siskel & Ebert.”

Born in New York City, Wald graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, which was designed to educate, as one contemporary described it, “smart nerds.” Wald later graduated from Hofstra University and roamed the country, stopping in San Francisco and in Chicago to demonstrate outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

In addition to the Seed and television stations in Chicago, Wald worked as a rock music critic for the Sun-Times and radio and television critic for the now defunct Chicago Daily News.

Of all his writing endeavors, Wald seemed to relish his days in Hollywood creating scripts. He called partner Kurtzman and himself the “comedy commandos.”

His was the perfect job, he told the Chicago Tribune in a 1994 interview, explaining: “I sit on a couch and make jokes.”

In addition to his wife, Wald is survived by a brother, Donald, of Stone Ridge, N.Y.

The family has asked that memorial contributions be made to Doctors Without Borders.