Marty Nadler, screenwriter and stand-up comic, dies at 80 

Updated August 28.

Martin (“Marty”) Nadler, who brought laughter to audiences through screenwriting and stand-up comedy, died on Wednesday, August 26, at HCA Florida Northwest Hospital due to complications related to myasthenia gravis. He was 80 years old. 

Nadler was a longtime Oak Bluffs resident who spent years as a screenwriter, actor, and stand-up comic. He moved full-time to Martha’s Vineyard in 1992 before splitting the seasons between the Island and Margate, Florida, where he retired roughly 20 years ago. 

“Sadly this is the first year he didn’t make it to the Vineyard since he was a Vineyard player,” Charlie Nadler, Marty’s son, said.

Marty was born in 1945 in the Bronx, where he was raised. His first visit to the Island came after he joined the Vineyard Players, a group of theater students from Ithaca College who seasonally performed on the Island, in 1966. 

“He was one of a kind,” Jeffrey Kramer, Marty’s best friend and an Emmy-award winning television producer and actor who played Deputy Hendricks in “Jaws,” said. 

Kramer, who has his own Vineyard history as grandson of Henry Cronig (founder of Cronig’s Real Estate and co-founder of Cronig’s Market), recalled that hilarity would often ensue when Marty was involved, including the first time the two friends met at an Ithaca College freshman dance, where Marty burned his beanie. From there, Kramer would introduce Nadler to the “magic” of the Vineyard, a locale Kramer described as a “sacred space.”  

In this sacred space, Marty found ways to bring laughter to community members, but he also gave much of himself to the community in other ways. He was a substitute teacher at the Oak Bluffs School, volunteered his time through town committees and emceeing charity events, and supporting local causes like scholarship funds. He was, Charlie and Kramer said, an “unofficial mayor” of the Island. 

“It’s a big loss,” Kramer said. 

Charlie said his father “really cut his teeth” into comedy in Manhattan, especially when the scene was just emerging at America’s first comedy club, Improvisation in Hell’s Kitchen. It’s where the likes of Jay Leno and Richard Pryor started out as well as Nadler. According to Charlie, Nadler was a  “comic’s comic” and sold many jokes and acts to comedians during his “salad-eating days.” 

But he eventually left New York, and, after a stint in radio at Cincinnati, Nadler took a one-way ticket in the 1970s to California where he was taken under the wing of screenwriter and director Gary Marshall, who recognized the comedian’s talent as a writer. 

Nadler was a screenwriter through the 1980s and early ‘90s, including for television shows like “Happy Days” and “The Hogan Family.” He also performed side roles in several movies, including the 1990 hit “Pretty Woman.” 

While working on “Laverne & Shirley” in the early ‘80s, Marty met Holly Nadler, who was a freelance writer at the time. They got married on land they formerly owned on the Island by Seth’s Pond, and the ceremony was “officiated by a Unitarian minister who warned us and our guests about Hollywood marriages,” Holly wrote in a Times column in 2024. Holly frequently contributed pieces to The Times, including a column series called “Woodside Story.”

After living out a “Hollywood marriage,” the two divorced in 2002 but remained close friends who shared cherished memories together. Charlie said his father would describe his mother as his “winter wife” because of her visits to Florida. 

“And I’m here to say this about old, old couples reuniting in elder years: It’s great to have all those memories — golden, funny memories; to enjoy weekly phone chats, and to share huge belly laughs during trips to each other’s homes, Marty here at Woodside and me at his condo in Florida, about half-hour drive west of Fort Lauderdale,” Holly wrote. 

Nadler, a self-proclaimed “Vineyard addict,” moved to the Island full-time in 1992. Charlie said his father helped manage the Old Stone Bakery, now Backdoor Donuts in Oak Bluffs, and took summer roles at the Chilmark Store before reentering show business when Charlie entered middle school, writing jokes for Marshall’s productions. 

The Vineyard is where Nadler’s career came full circle, performing comedy at different venues on the Island and working with comedians on the rise. Nadler’s one-man shows were seen by many at places like the Mansion House and the Tabernacle. As Gwyn McAllistor put it in 2010, “the local papers provide some of Mr. Nadler’s favorite material. He notes that he doesn’t even have to embellish many of the news items, which reflect the quirkiness of life in a small isolated community.”

And comedy permeated Nadler’s daily life as “someone who always made people laugh,” Charlie said. A joke he recalled was his father carrying a McDonald’s cup and giving the false impression to ignorant tourists that the fast-food chain was on the Vineyard. 

Kramer also recalled various moments of Marty’s quick wit and gags. 

“He just looked at life in a very different way and just lovely,” Kramer said. 

Charlie also said his father’s qualities made him an Island fixture and a friend to numerous people. He recalled how it would take a particularly long time to walk down Circuit Avenue because of the people who would come up to greet and talk with his father. 

Despite retirement, Charlie said Nadler kept up a “very lively and busy life,” contributed by his incredible sociability.

With a return to stand-up comedy, the father-son duo collaborated on projects after Charlie followed his father’s footsteps into show business as a stand-up comedian and scriptwriter. 

Before his death, Nadler was working on a comedy special with his son called “A Boomer & A Millenial Walk into a Special,” which is planned to be released early next year. 

“It was the last time we performed together,” Charlie told The Times. “We didn’t realize that at the time.” 

Charlie said his father is survived by his “beloved ex-wife,” Holly Nadler, his son and daughter-in-law Cary Kandel, and “countless loved ones and friends.”

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story stated Marty and Holly Nadler divorced in 1991.