Herbert George Gardner (December 28, 1934 – September 24, 2003) was an American commercial artist, cartoonist, playwright and screenwriter.
[2] His late brother, Robert Allen Gardner, [3] was a professor of comparative psychology at the University of Nevada, Reno and is famous for teaming with his wife Beatrix Gardner on Project Washoe, the attempt to teach American Sign Language to a chimpanzee named Washoe.
[4] Gardner was educated at New York's High School of Performing Arts, Carnegie-Mellon University and Antioch College.
Even before syndication, the Gardner characters were a national craze, marketed on statuettes, studio cards, barware (including cocktail napkins), wall decorations and posters.
Both the 1962 play and the movie starred Jason Robards, Jr. as Murray Burns, a charming, unemployed children's show writer, who is forced to choose between social conformity and the probable loss of custody of his 11-year-old nephew to the Child Welfare Bureau.
Gardner was the screenwriter and co-producer of the 1971 motion picture Who Is Harry Kellerman, and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?, which starred Dustin Hoffman.