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:
“Humanity has passed through a long history of one-sidedness and of a social condition that has always contained the potential of destruction, despite its creative achievements in technology. The great project of our time must be to open the other eye: to see all-sidedly and wholly, to heal and transcend the cleavage between humanity and nature that came with early wisdom.”
—Murray Bookchin (b. 1941)
“There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)