Marvin Kitman, 1929-2023

Some Memories of America's First Great TV Critic

"The Marvin Kitman Show" has been canceled.

The obituaries say that Mr. Kitman died today (June 29) of cancer, age 93. Sam Roberts, ace of the New York Times obit desk, captures both the details of the life and examples of Kitman's disheveled genius here. Personally, I think Marvin found an uninhabited UHF channel to occupy, or will be going into permanent reruns on one of those cable channels none of us know we have, but I could be wrong.

But I knew Marvin Kitman as a colleague and mentor, and once as a farcical  victim of mistaken identity (I'll get to that later). And to address him as "Mr. Kitman" would be a little hoity-toity. You might be at one of those moderately fancy Italian restaurants near Newsday's original office on Stewart Avenue in Garden City, L.I., and the maitre'd might say, "good afternoon Mr. Kitman." And Marvin would literally hit you in the side with his elbow, and chuckle, under his breath: "Didja hear that? Mr. Kitman!" As if to say, "What a schmuck." Actually, spotting of Marvin Kitman in any Newsday office was a rare sight. He preferred to work from home in Leonia, N.J., and in fact, it could be said that Kitman invented the now popular fashion of "telecommuting."

Marvin Kitman was a humorist and satirist who found the perfect outlet for his ravings as the television columnist for Newsday, for which he wrote for 35 years, from 1969-2004. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism in 1982.

He was Long Island's great public anti-intellectual. Back in the day, TV was still the "vast wasteland" as Newton Minow, former FCC commissioner would put it. Not too vast for Marvin Kitman, though: It was a humongous wasteland, which he thought hilarious since it was the funhouse mirror through which America watched itself. And Marvin reveled in all of TV's glorious stupidity.

He was especially loved chewing over the remains of comedy duds like "Joanie Loves Chachi." I don't know why that stands out in my memory; perhaps because it was one of the most terrible TV shows ever made, and Kitman made a point of humorously skewering such shows until they were dead and cancelled during its first season.

Then, of course, Marvin would change his tune, and begin a campaign to save the show. He'd write public letters in the form of columns to the head of the network, be it ABC, CBS, or NBC, the three consortiums that dominated television in the shaky antenna era before cable TV, and demand they reinstate the program.

He'd call for a write in campaign, and bundles of letters would appear at Newsday's office . . . to be taken to Leonia, N.J., where Kitman's TV cave was located. Then he'd write more columns, quoting liberally from the letters from his readers: "As Caspar Patigliano of North Babylon writes..." I thought filling space with quotes from readers was a great idea, and I did so whenever possible: The readers loved it, and it took some of the stress off however many columns we had to write a week.

Kitman had the satirist's gift of understanding intuitively that television was too important to be taken seriously. He had a special love-hate relationship with the chiefs of the networks, titans of television, the network suits. And as I recall, the Fred Silvermans of the world liked being given the Kitman razzberry.

He was much loved by Newsday's editor Dave Laventhol, a taciturn man who ruled so quietly you hardly heard his footsteps. Once, at my desk in the New York office, where many of the arts writers were based, I looked up and saw Laventhol standing at my desk. Laventhol wanted to know if I had ever heard of a British punk or new wave artist, possibly named King Kurt. I didn't want to appear uninformed, but I didn't want to lie, so I admitted I hadn't. He said one of the guys was his nephew. I told them I'd check them out as soon as I could, and he said kind of "no worries, only if they come up on your radar."

But he made Laventhol laugh, as he made Long Island laugh, for so many years. Laventhol's support gave Marvin a great deal of confidence, so much so that there is a story about how he renovated his house in Leonia, where, of course, he needed a much updated TV den and while he was at it, a kind of really big home renovation, running well into the tens of thousands of dollars. Marvin just put the costs on his weekly expense account, with receipts, of course. I don't know whether this was a suburban legend or a true story, but in any case, some sort of accommodation was made without Newsday actually paying for the entire renovation. Maybe a new TV and a viewing couch, I don't know. That was just another case in which Marvin made the boss laugh.

This expense account thing was a bit of an obsession for Marvin. One of his many books was a work of historical non-fiction in which he pored over George Washington's Expense Account. And like General Washington, he apparently suffered over which expenses were personal and which were part of the job. A Times writer at the time quoted Kitman writing that our future first president “usually resolved the issue in favor of himself.”

Marvin's nationally syndicated column was called "The Marvin Kitman Show," and his head shot appeared with the column with the identifying words: "Executive Producer."

One day around 1986, I wrote a column about Bette Midler appearing at Radio City Music Hall. The review ran on the back page of the Saturday paper. The review appeared, with my byline, but there was a screw up on the copy desk: It had Kitman's head shot with the words "Executive Producer."

Marvin was about 20 years older than me. It was at this time that I had started dating my future wife, Maureen. Maureen had told her mother she was seeing me, and Maureen's mother called her, half hysterical. "Who is this alter kocke [Yiddish for old man] you're dating? Maureen explained it wasn't really my picture. But Kitman thought it was hilarious, and on Monday there was a note from him attached to my review with his picture: "Wayne, you keep getting more handsome by the day."