Garry Shandling

Some kids saw Elvis or The Beatles on TV and wanted to be rock stars. For Garry Shandling, it was… sorta like that. He saw Woody Allen doing stand up on TV, and it had that same “Hey! I wanna do that!” affect on him. (Yes! Woody did stand up before he went into movies.)

Garry grew up to have two TV shows, both of which were great, but the second one was a much bigger hit. The first, “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show,” made fun of sitcoms. He got the idea for his first show writing for classic sitcoms like Sanford and Sons, Three’s Company, and Welcome Back Kotter, which starred Jewish comic Gabe Kaplan.

The second, “The Larry Sanders Show,” made fun of late-night chat shows... but featured real actors as themselves! After surviving a car crash, he went back to his first love, stand-up comedy. But that got him right back on TV! He started guest-hosting The Tonight Show. Which is where he got his idea for his second show.

You might not expect to see a comic like Garry in a comic-book movie like Iron Man 2, but he's there, as a senator.

After the famous relationship book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus came out, Garry wrote a movie that asked— well, what if that were really true?! He wrote and starred in a movie called What Planet Are You From? about an alien man who tries to date Earth women. His other movies include Town & Country with Goldie Hawn and Mixed Nuts, with… well, we listed them all once already!

Garry also has done some voice work. He was a pigeon in the Eddie Murphy version of Doctor Dolittle (his piegon wife was played by Julie Kavner). He was a turtle in one of our Movies of the Month, Over the Hedge, which also had Eugene Levy as a porcupine and William Shatner as a possum. And in a reversal of Larry Sanders, he was a guest on Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist. That animated show is about a social worker who mostly has famous stand-up comics as patients! That’s handy when you’re looking for guest stars!

Garry grew up in Tucson, Arizona and was one of the only Jewish kids in his school, he told an LA Jewish newspaper: “I was made fun of because I was Jewish… and the defense mechanism that came into play for me was my sense of humor. I was always able to make the other children laugh. Perhaps that is why I became a comedian.”

His family took Judaism very seriously. In fact, when he was a kid, the family cat once followed Garry to Shabbat services! Oy! What would Mary and her lamb say?

Bonus:

Garry is one of a long line of Jewish (and other) comics to transition from stand-up to sit-com. One of the earlier ones was Gabe Kaplan, who starred as Gabe Kotter in Welcome Back, Kotter, about a guy who returns to his old high school years later as a teacher. Like Bill Cosby, Gabe turned his city-boy childhood stories first into stand-up material, then into sitcom gold. He also started every episode by telling his wife a joke!

It was the show that made a star of one of today’s most famous faces: John Travolta! It had a Jewish character, too, named Juan Epstein. The famous theme song was written and sung by John Sebastian. He’s not Jewish, but he has a band called The Lovin’ Spoonful, whose guitarist, Zal Yanovsky, is.

Today, Gabe combines his TV chops with his obsession, poker, as the co-host of High Stakes Poker on the Game Show Network. This also helps Gabe with his competitive streak, as he originally wanted to be a baseball player. He didn’t make it, but he got work at a hotel where comics stayed, and they inspired him.

One of his favorites was Jewish comedy legend Groucho Marx, and Gabe’s impression of him is so dead-on, he even did a live and video one-person show as Groucho!