Garry Shandling

Garry Shandling (born November 29, 1949, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died March 24, 2016, Los Angeles, California) was an American actor, writer, and comedian who often incorporated his real life into his work, both as a stand-up comic and as the creator and star of the television series It’s Garry Shandling’s Show (1986–90) and The Larry Sanders Show (1992–98).

Shandling grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and later earned a degree in marketing from the University of Arizona. In the early 1970s he moved to Los Angeles, where he wrote (1975–76) for the TV series Sanford and Son and Welcome Back, Kotter. Frustrated by the situation comedies’ formulaic writing, he began doing stand-up comedy that featured his whining self-deprecation and self-absorption. Shandling made his television stand-up debut on The Tonight Show in 1981, and by 1983 he was a frequent guest host and considered a possible successor to regular host Johnny Carson. In 1986 It’s Garry Shandling’s Show debuted. The innovative and subversive series starred Shandling as a character named Garry Shandling who knew he was on a television sitcom and often broke the “fourth wall,” addressing the audience while he strolled from one set to another. The show ran until 1990.

In 1992, instead of becoming the host of his own “real” talk show, Shandling became the host of The Larry Sanders Show for the HBO cable channel. Though the program itself was fictional, the series was set in the real entertainment world, offering a razor-sharp look at the siege mentality of television production, including narcissistic celebrities, greedy agents, misanthropic writers, and long-suffering staff; Jeffrey Tambor starred as Sanders’s unaware sidekick, and Rip Torn portrayed the overbearing producer. Shandling convinced his show-business friends to appear on the series as themselves, and about 200 celebrities accepted his invitation. The show was a critical success, earning Emmy Award nominations for outstanding comedy series for each of its six seasons on the air. In addition, Shandling and writer Peter Tolan won the 1998 Emmy for outstanding writing for a comedy series.

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Shandling acted in a number of movies, including Hurlyburly (1998) and Trust the Man (2005). He provided the voice of a turtle in the animated Over the Hedge (2006) and the voice of a computer-animated porcupine in the live-action The Jungle Book (2016). He wrote and starred in What Planet Are You From? (2000), but the science-fiction comedy failed to find an audience. Confessions of a Late Night Talk Show Host, Larry Sanders’s autobiography “as told to Garry Shandling,” was published in 1998. Two years after Shandling’s 2016 death, the documentary The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling appeared; the two-part chronicle of his life and career was directed by Judd Apatow.