Peter O’Toole was famed for his commanding, Oscar-nominated turns. Mark Linn-Baker was a fledgling stage actor. Richard Benjamin, who’d made a leading-man splash in “Portnoy’s Complaint” and “Westworld,” had a few TV directing credits.
The sum of these unlikely parts was the zesty 1982 movie comedy “My Favorite Year,” starring O’Toole and Linn-Baker, directed by Benjamin and produced by Mel Brooks. It paid loving tribute to the original golden age of TV in the mid-20th century and the variety shows that were the “Saturday Night Live” hits of their day.
