Arleen Sorkin Remembered: ‘Modern Family’ Co-Creator Christopher Lloyd Pays Loving Tribute to His ‘Big-Hearted Wife’

variety.com:

Christopher Lloyd Guest Columnist When you arrive at home on a Tuesday evening and have to double-check your own address because there is a line of valet parkers in front, one of whom hands you a ticket, and when you proceed into your home of find a crowd of well-dressed people, most of whom you do not know, and an orangutan sitting on your chair at the head of the table — when all of this happens and you’re not really that surprised, there is a better than average chance that you are married to Arleen Sorkin.

The occasion on that Tuesday was a hastily arranged fundraiser for a South African human (and animal) rights organization, and the orangutan was by no means the only luminary I was surprised to find sitting in my chair over the three decades I spent with my big-hearted wife.

Wasn’t it only six months earlier that I’d opened my door to find Fayard Nicholas (seated) and his brother Harold (mopping his brow) — the legendary Nicholas brothers tap dancing team, then in their 80s, who, Arleen had decided, needed a fundraiser.

They had just tapped their thanks. Arleen’s charitable streak had been known to me since literally the day we met, as staff writers on a sitcom.