Garry Shandling, the American comedian best known for The Larry Sanders Show, has not been remembered at the 2017 Oscars in Los Angeles.
Shandling made 17 films, and starred in a handful, such as Warren Beatty’s 2006 comedy Town and Country, but he had high-profile cameos in the likes of Zoolander and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. He was also a Hollywood staple, frequently hosting programmes such as the Grammys, Emmys and Saturday Night Live.
In a recent interview ahead of his hosting stint at the Oscars, Jimmy Kimmel said that Shandling’s turn hosting Emmys had inspired his own style for the evening. He said:
Garry Shandling did a great thing on the Emmys once where he blindfolded this young couple, and they didn’t know they were coming to the Emmys, and he brought them out on stage and unmasked them and got their real reaction to suddenly being on stage at the Emmys. And that’s something that you don’t know how it’s going to go. It’s a real swing, and I like to take a couple of those.
Shandling’s satire on the chat show circuit, The Larry Sanders Show, also involved multiple real-life movie stars joining he and sidekick Hank (Jeffrey Tambor) on the sofa. The series has been acclaimed as one of the best – and most groundbreaking – comedies of all time.
Shandling died aged 66 last March of a heart attack caused by a blood clot. His final screen credit was as the voice of a porcupine in Jon Favreau’s highly successful remake of The Jungle Book, which won the Oscar for best visual effects.
