Late-night comedians pay loving tribute to Garry Shandling

If you want to get a sense of Garry Shandling, the groundbreaking comedian who died suddenly on Thursday at age 66, you could do a lot worse than watching his very recent drive down memory road with Jerry Seinfeld in an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee titled, ironically, "It's Great That Garry Shandling Is Still Alive." Among other stories, Shandling told Seinfeld about the night Johnny Carson's "gatekeeper" saw his stand-up show, invited him on The Tonight Show, and instantly changed his life and career trajectory. Shandling is maybe best known for his 1990s HBO show The Larry Sanders Show, about a fictional late-night talk show. Those are just some of Shandling's connections to late-night TV, and the late-night comedians paid their respects.

On Friday's Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon honored Shandling as "one of the greatest stand-up comedians ever." Then he played a clip of Shandling's 1981 Tonight Show debut, and finished up by singing the opening theme to The Larry Sanders Show:

All those great things you will hear and read about Shandling are true, Conan O'Brien said in his very personal, heartfelt remembrance on Thursday's show. "He was a masterful writer, a performer who went on to create incredibly groundbreaking comedy shows that inspired an entire generation of comedians, myself included," he said. "But right now I'm not thinking of that aspect of Garry Shandling, I'm thinking about Garry Shandling the person. He was obviously hysterically funny pretty much all the time, but he was also extremely sensitive, he was complicated, and he had a ton of empathy for other people," something that is "very rare" in the comedy business. To illustrate his point, Conan told a story about how "Garry just magically appeared" at a very difficult period in his life, after he lost The Tonight Show "in this crazy, f'd up, spectacular fashion."

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Seth Meyers did not know Shandling personally, he said on Late Night, so he focused on what he learned about late-night comedy from the late comedian. "Growing up, watching Carson, Letterman, and Conan, those were all people that made me want to host a talk show," Meyers said. "Watching The Larry Sanders Show made me think, 'Oh, I don't think I want to host a talk show — I think that looks like a very scary place to work.'"

Conan also played a clip of Shandling appearing on his show in 2007. You can watch below. Peter Weber