Larry Sloan

Lloyd Lawrence "Larry" Sloan (1922 – October 14, 2012) was an American publisher of Mad Libs and co-founder of the Los Angeles publishing company, Price Stern Sloan, which opened in the early 1960s.

Sloan was born Lloyd Lawrence Solomon to Joseph Solomon and Freida Lewis Solomon in New York City in 1922. His mother opened a clothing business and his father was a graduate of Columbia Law School 1908lawyer. Sloan and his parents moved to Los Angeles after his only sibling, Grenna Sloan, moved to California to pursue an acting career. Larry Sloan initially studied at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), but soon left college to enlist in the United States Army following the outbreak of World War II. He later attended Stanford University, where he studied Chinese language.

He returned to Los Angeles after the war. Sloan became a columnist for the Hollywood Citizen News and a reporter for several magazines covering Hollywood's entertainment and gossip industries. Sloan's connections led to a career transition as a press agent and publicist representing Carol Channing, Mae West, and Elizabeth Taylor, among others.

In 1958, television writer Leonard B. Stern and comedian Roger Price launched Mad Libs, a word game book series which the duo had first invented in 1953. Stern and Price had named the game "Mad Libs" after overhearing an argument between an actor and talent agent at a New York City restaurant. In the 1960s, Price and Stern partnered with Larry Sloan, a friend from high school, to found Price Stern Sloan, a publishing company based in Los Angeles which published Mad Libs. Sloan served as the company's first CEO. Stern later noted in a 1994 Washington Post interview that Sloan "eventually became the business man behind Mad Libs." The company headquartered on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood.

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