09 March 2011

Comedy Greats: Garry Shandling - 1983

"Sold my last house for $85,000... 
my landlord was real upset about that"


Garry Shandling (11.29.1949) is an American comedian, actor and writer best known for his work in It's Garry Shandling's Show and The Larry Sanders Show. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Chicago, Shandling was then raised in Tucson, AZ. Later as a young adult he moved-on to LA, starting out a creative career at an ad agency, writing scripts... 

Garry Shandling soon broke into TV by successfully submitting an unsolicited script for a Sanford and Son episode (this became the one where Fred turns his junkyard into a Japanese restaurant lol). He came  to write for other top network TV shows such as Three's Company and Welcome Back, Kotter

Later Shandling made a successful stand-up performance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and subsequently became a frequent guest-host on the show throughout the early 80s. Shandling eventually evolved into the leading contender to replace Carson as host upon his pending retirement, a position that instead went to Jay Leno. 

In 1986 Shandling created It's Garry Shandling's Show for the pay cable channel Showtime, which was nominated for four Emmy Awards- it ran four seasons.

His second effort at a series -The Larry Sanders Show- hit the air on HBO in 1992, and was considerably more successful. Shandling was nominated for and impressive 18 Emmy Awards for the show and won in 1998, along with Peter Tolan, for writing the series finale.

During his three-decade career, Shandling has been nominated for 19 Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, 11 CableACE Awards, a BAFTA Award, three American Comedy Awards, two Writers' Guild of America Award nominations, and two Satellite Award nominations, and more.

I myself was fortunate enough to have caught the stand up act live cca 1984, and he just killed- imo Garry Shandling's a comedy genius. Here's an appearance on the then-new Letterman show... he really shook-up the formula and inspired many other stand up acts that followed to think outside the box a little bit:


Previous Comedy Greats features archived -here-