Biographie

According to "The Garner Files", the autobiography of James Garner, Garner once got into a physical altercation with Larson on the Universal lot. After Larson had copied a number of scripts from Deux cent dollars plus les frais (1974) and used them for his own shows, Garner's company complained to the The Writer's Guild who proceeded to fine Larson for plagiarism. However, this didn't deter Larson who then ripped-off the theme tune from The Rockford Files for one of his own shows. When Larson approached Garner and asked him if there were any hard feelings, Garner claims that he punched Larson so hard that it knocked him right across a curb, into a motor home and out the other side (The Garner Files, p.129, ISBN 978-1-4516-4260-5.).

Due to his reputation for stealing ideas from successful movies and making small screen "knock-offs" of them, Larson was nicknamed 'Glen Larceny'.

Attended and graduated from Hollywood High School in Los Angeles, California.

35 girls and not one boy showed up to audition for the annual Hollywood High School talent show in the fall of 1955. The next day, the school bulletin pleaded for "any guys out there who can do anything" and a show business story began that sounds a little like an MGM musical. Unable to resist such amorously appealing odds, four talented and highly-motivated teenagers in the school choir, lead singer Bruce Belland, baritone Glen Larson, bass Ed Cobb and high tenor Marvin Ingram, literally formed a quartet overnight and stepped into the crinoline void as The Four Preps. After stealing the show with choice hits by their idols, The Crew Cuts and The Four Lads, they quickly found themselves in demand for every kind of event imaginable. "We didn't turn anything down", Bruce Belland remembers. "We once performed on the back of a flatbed truck for the opening of a parking lot. They paid us $75.00; enough to buy gas and our first matching sport coats. We were totally stoked". A short time later, legendary Capitol Records producer Voyle Gilmore, who recorded stars like Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra and Louis Prima & Keely Smith, heard a tape of a live performance by The Four Preps and signed them to a long-term recording contract. At the time, the Preps were the youngest act ever to sign with a major record label. (In an article about their signing, Variety dubbed them "Capitol's jolly juveniles".) While The Preps started searching for a hit, their old HHS classmate, Ricky Nelson, was launching a recording career of his own. As his records began to burn up the airwaves, he and The Four Preps embarked on their first nationwide personal appearance tour which kicked off the very week that Nelson's picture was on the cover of LIFE magazine, with the caption - "RICKY NELSON - Teen Idol" - a phrase the Editors had created expressly for him. The group was picked up by Capitol Records and scored a hit in 1957 with "26 Miles (Santa Catalina), co-written by Larson. But Larson wanted to be a television writer, and he turned out scripts he hoped to sell, while The Four Preps toured extensively. Glen Larson's first story credit came in 1966 for an episode of Le fugitif (1963). He rose quickly in the television business, becoming an associate producer on Opération vol (1968) in 1968.

Many of the hit television shows Glen Larson produced found little favor with critics, including B.J. and the Bear (1978), about a trucker and his pet monkey. And despite his success, sometimes with multiple series running simultaneously, Larson never won an EMMY. But Larson felt he knew what viewers wanted, and he was proved right in many cases. "I'm proudest of the fact that I fell in-step with an audience taste level, that I knew how to judge and maybe deliver for, and consistently", he said in a 2009 oral history interview by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. "It wasn't a one-shot. It wasn't a lucky this or a that. There's a consistent body of work here that has some symmetry to it in terms of why it worked and how it worked". Larson's formula was derived, in part, from studying both dramatic programs and comedies. He felt humor worked best when it was closely embedded in a protagonist's unexpected situation. "I call it predicament humor", Larson said. "You don't do anything that cuts the star off at the knees or worse. You make him intelligent, you give him great ideas and great things to do. But sometimes, things happen". Except for some 1990s shows that received disappointing receptions - including Waikiki Ouest (1994), which made its debut in 1994 - he felt vindicated by his career. "There's nothing that could dampen my enthusiasm", he said, "for how much fun it has been to do programs that the audience seems to have enjoyed, and enjoyed a lot".