Marty Nadler

Martin "Marty" Nadler was born in the Bronx on 13 October 1945 and became one of the durable comic craftsmen of American network sitcom television and a longtime creative partner of Garry Marshall. His father, Max, was a traveling salesman who died when Marty was three, leaving him to be raised by his mother, Betty, an immigrant from Russia. Even as a child he gravitated toward performance. In a 2024 interview cited by The Hollywood Reporter he recalled being funny in class, appearing in school plays, and deciding at eight that he wanted a life in show business.

He sharpened that instinct as a summer-camp counselor and as a theater major at Ithaca College, where stand-up comedy took hold. After college he returned to New York City, pursued acting, and became a regular at The Improv during the club's formative years. There he worked in the orbit of comics such as Jay Leno, Richard Lewis, and Jimmie Walker and earned a reputation as a "comic's comic," the kind of performer other comedians respected for craft. On New Year's Eve he became a local legend of sorts by bursting into the club as the New Year's baby, wearing a diaper over blue skin after coming in from the freezing night.

College friend Jeffrey Kramer, later known for playing Deputy Hendricks in the first two Jaws films, introduced Nadler to the Vineyard Players summer-stock company on Martha's Vineyard. After one performance, Penny Marshall and then-husband Rob Reiner came backstage and offered help if he ever came west. When he did, Penny picked him up at the airport, put him up for a few weeks, and introduced him to her brother Garry. Garry Marshall read a Nadler spec script and began a professional relationship that would last more than four decades.

From the 1970s onward Nadler wrote and produced across Marshall's sitcom universe and beyond. He worked on Happy Days while it topped the ratings, contributed to The Odd Couple era Marshall comedy culture, and became closely associated with Laverne & Shirley as writer, consultant, supervising producer, and producer, including a 1976 acting credit. He was lead writer on Marshall-produced shows such as Who's Watching the Kids and Blansky's Beauties and often warmed up studio audiences before tapings. Away from Marshall he wrote or produced for That's My Mama, Chico and the Man, The Last Resort, Love, Sidney, She's the Sheriff, The Redd Foxx Show, Perfect Strangers, The Hogan Family, and Amen.

Marshall also treated Nadler as a film-set good-luck charm. Nadler contributed jokes to multiple Marshall features and received cameos in them, including Pretty Woman (1990), Frankie and Johnny (1991), Runaway Bride (1999), The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), Valentine's Day (2010), and Mother's Day (2016). Trade obituaries describe joke contributions across nine Marshall films.

In 1976, while writing for Laverne & Shirley, Nadler met writer Holly Mascott when she pitched story ideas at Paramount. They married on Martha's Vineyard in 1978, bought a home there in 1984, and raised their son Charlie, who later became a comedian and writer. Nadler and Mascott divorced in 2002 but remained close. Nadler moved full-time to the Vineyard in 1992, helped manage the Old Stone Bakery (later Backdoor Donuts) in Oak Bluffs, worked summer shifts at the Chilmark Store, and later split seasons between the Island and Margate, Florida. In later years he returned to joke-writing for Marshall productions as Charlie entered middle school, and he served as an executive producer of the 2022 film iMordecai starring Judd Hirsch and Carol Kane.

Father and son eventually built a joint stand-up partnership that toured theaters across the country. They recorded their act at the Garry Marshall Theatre in Burbank under the title A Boomer & a Millennial Walk Into a Special, scheduled for early-2027 release by Comedy Dynamics. Charlie later said the recording night gathered family, friends, and colleagues from every chapter of his father's life, and that it was their last performance together.

Marty Nadler died on 26 August 2026 at HCA Florida Northwest Hospital in Margate, Florida, from complications of myasthenia gravis. He was 80. He is survived by Holly (Mascott) Nadler, son Charlie Nadler, and daughter-in-law Cary Kandel. He was to be interred on Martha's Vineyard, with celebrations of life planned in multiple locations. The family requested donations to the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America.

This memorial is for Marty Nadler (born Martin Nadler, 1945-2026), the Bronx-born US sitcom writer, producer, and stand-up comedian; Garry Marshall collaborator; father of Charlie Nadler. Do not confuse him with Congressman Jerrold Nadler or other people named Nadler.