David Brenner

At 78 years old, David Brenner has this physical status:

David Norris Brenner (February 4, 1936 – March 15, 2014) was an American stand-up comedian, actor and author.

The most frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in the 1970s and 1980s, Brenner "was a pioneer of observational comedy."

Early life

Brenner was born to Jewish parents in 1936 and raised in South and West Philadelphia. His father, Louis, was a vaudeville comedian, singer and dancer, performing under the stage name of Lou Murphy, who gave up his career and a film contract to please Brenner's grandfather, a rabbi, who objected to his working on the Sabbath. Once David became successful, he regularly sent his parents on cruises, and both of Brenner's parents would eventually die at advanced ages while on cruises aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2, approximately two years apart.

After high school, Brenner spent two years in the U.S. Army, serving in the 101st Airborne and as a cryptographer of the 595th Signal Corps in Böblingen, Germany. After being discharged, he attended Temple University, where he majored in mass communication and graduated with honors.

Personal life

Brenner had three children—Cole, Slade and Wyatt. He and the mother of Cole, his first son, fought a custody battle for several years. Brenner finally won child custody in 1992. Because family courts would have regarded him as an absentee father if he were away from home more than 50 nights a year, Brenner substantially reduced the number of appearances in his stand-up comedy work, including performances on the Tonight Show, in order to secure and maintain custody of his son. Brenner married Elizabeth Slater of New York, the mother of his sons Slade and Wyatt, in the closing minutes of his David Brenner: Back with a Vengeance! HBO Special recorded in Las Vegas, on February 19, 2000. They divorced a little over a year later with Brenner claiming their first year of marriage was "the best year I had in my whole life ... I was the happiest man in the world" but then she grew "into this new person" and he didn't fit into her new lifestyle. They fought two custody battles, both of which Brenner won. Brenner was engaged to Tai Babilonia in 2005, but they never married. For a while in the 2000s, Brenner lived in Las Vegas.

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Career

Brenner, a writer, director, or producer of 115 television documentaries and oversaw the Westinghouse Broadcasting and Metromedia documentary units, winning nearly 30 awards, including an Emmy, before moving to comedy. In June 1969, he performed at The Improv, and after that he appeared at clubs in Greenwich Village. Brenner was ranked No. 1 in the U.S. Comedy Central Presents the 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time: 99 of the Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time. He had appeared on major television talk shows more often than any other entertainer at one point. He wrote five books and appeared in four HBO Specials.

Is That Paper? Brenner's latest release, Excuse Me. MCA Records 1983 (The name came from a ruse wherein a fellow commuter on a subway asked Brenner if he was reading a newspaper on which he was sitting) originally appeared. Brenner stood up, turned the page, and said, "Well, I am." Brenner wrote five books, including Soft Pretzels With Mustard (1983), Revenge is the Most Exercise (1984), and I Believe There's a Terrorist in My Soup: How to Solve Personal and World Problems With Laughter (1990), which was also available as an audio book.

With 158 appearances, he made his national television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1971. Between 1975 and 1984, he hosted Johnny Carson 75 times, ranking him fifth on the list of Carson's most popular guest hosts.

Brenner was the star of the 1976 TV film Snip, which was influenced by the film Shampoo and set in a hairdressing salon. Shortly before its national premiere, the situation comedy was shelved by NBC because network executives became concerned about a supporting character who would be one of the first gay characters on television in an American sitcom. "They made up all sorts of excuses," Brenner said, but the reason Snip was dismissed was because we had an actor who was gay and played a gay role. They were afraid of seeing a gay on television."

In 1986, King World Entertainment gave Brenner his own 30-minute syndicated late-night talk show Nightlife in an attempt to contend with Carson, but it was cancelled after one season. On 102 stations, the show premiered on September 8, 1986, and was described as "alternative." It was shot in Manhattan and starring a casually dressed Brenner, and it was the first time a late night talk show had no monologue. It gave some comedians, such as Bobby Slayton, their national television premieres.

Brenner appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, The David Frost Show, The Merv Griffin Exhibition, Late Night With David Letterman, and The Late Show With Bill Maher, a frequent visitor on The Howard Stern Show. He appeared on both MSNBC and Fox News Channel shows commenting on current events in the 1990s.

In the 1989 romantic comedy Worth Winning (with Mark Harmon, Madeleine Stowe, and Lesley Ann Warren, who was also Brenner's co-star on Snip).

Brenner hosted a daytime talk-radio show, inheriting the timeslot of the long-running Larry King Show on the Mutual Broadcasting System from 1994 to 1996. In 1985, he appeared on syndicated weekly radio show David Brenner Live, for three months. In 1984, the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia named Brenner their Person of the Year and inducted him into the Hall of Fame in 2003.

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