Garry Shandling - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Shandling was born in Chicago, Illinois, into a Jewish family. He grew up in Tucson, Arizona, the son of Muriel, a pet store proprietor, and Irving Shandling, a print shop owner. He had an older brother, Barry, who died of cystic fibrosis when Garry was 10. Shandling attended Palo Verde High School. After graduation, he attended the University of Arizona, at first majoring in electrical engineering, but eventually completing a degree in marketing and pursuing a year of postgraduate studies in creative writing.

In 1973, Shandling moved to Los Angeles, California. He worked at an advertising agency for a time, and then sold a script for the popular NBC sitcom Sanford and Son. Shandling's script became the November 21, 1975 episode titled "Sanford and the Rising Son," in which Ah Chew (played by Pat Morita) turned junkyard owner Fred Sanford's (played by Redd Foxx) house into a Japanese restaurant. Shandling also wrote the script for the Sanford and Son episode, "The Committee Man", in which Fred Sanford represents the community of Watts on the Los Angeles Mayor's Committee. In addition to Sanford and Son, Shandling wrote scripts for the sitcoms Welcome Back, Kotter and Three's Company.

In 1977, Shandling was involved in an auto accident in Beverly Hills that left him in critical condition for weeks. He later turned the accident into part of his stand-up comedy

Read more about this topic:  Garry Shandling

Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:

    Pray be always in motion. Early in the morning go and see things; and the rest of the day go and see people. If you stay but a week at a place, and that an insignificant one, see, however, all that is to be seen there; know as many people, and get into as many houses as ever you can.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    Taking food alone tends to make one hard and coarse. Those accustomed to it must lead a Spartan life if they are not to go downhill. Hermits have observed, if for only this reason, a frugal diet. For it is only in company that eating is done justice; food must be divided and distributed if it is to be well received.
    Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)

    What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.
    Arlie Hochschild (20th century)