Mickey Rose, Woody Allen’s Original Writing Partner, Dies at 77

Comedy writer Mickey Rose passed away Sunday from cancer at the age of 77, The LA Times reports. Rose is best known for co-writing Woody Allen’s first three movies with Allen: What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, Take the Money and Run, and Bananas. Allen and Rose became friends in high school in Brooklyn in the early 1950s, where they played baseball and in a jazz band together. Allen even set Rose up on a blind date with Judy Wolf, the woman who would become his wife of 40 years, until her death in 2003. Rose and Allen stopped writing together in 1970, when Rose and his family moved to Los Angeles, where his career as a sought-after comedy writer continued. In LA, Rose wrote for The Odd Couple, Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, Happy Days, The Smothers Brothers Show, All in the Family, and dozens more. In a statement released this week, Woody Allen said, “Mickey was one of the funniest humans I know, a true original and a total eccentric and a wonderful first baseman.”

Mickey Rose, Woody Allen’s Original Writing Partner, […]