David Brenner
His first paying job was at Pips in Brooklyn. For that show, Brenner earned $30 for eight performances. Just short of eighteen months later, Brenner made his debut on The Tonight Show. He has since become the most frequent guest on the show, with over 158 appearances, not including the times he was the guest host. Since the majority of his jokes deal with current events, mostly political, Brenner has also become a popular political pundit on radio programs like Howard Stern.
He has appeared on numerous news-oriented shows, like MSNBC with Chris Matthews, CNN and The Fox Network. He has been a frequent guest on Greg Kilborn, Jon Stewart, Hollywood Squares and Bill O'Reilly. In fact, The Book of Lists #2 recognizes Brenner as one of the most frequent guest on late-night talk TV.
Prior to any experience with stand-up comedy, Benner wrote and produced 115 documentary films. He also headed the documentary departments of Westinghouse Broadcasting and Metromedia Broadcasting. His documentary work earned him nearly thirty awards, including an Emmy Award for his documentary, On Call: Dr. Amato. In 1985, he was honored by the Broadcast Pioneers as Man of the Year for his contributions to the documentary field.
In 1976 he was to co-star as a divorced hairdresser in the stort-lived NBC sitcom Snip, a takeoff on the Warren Beatty movie Shampoo. Just before its scheduled ebut, NBC canceled the show. The rumor was that NBC cancelled the show because one of the main characters was openly gay. Had Snip premiered, it would have been a first on American series TV to feature an openly gay lead character. The series did air in Australia, all seven episodes, and it became the highest rated show in Australian history at that time.
In 1983, Brenner wrote his first, mostly autobiographical, book, Soft Pretzels With Mustard. The book was a bestseller that went into multiple hardcover and paperback printings. His second book entitled Revenge Is The Best Exercise looked into our health conscious society. His third book, Nobody Ever Sees You Eat Tuna Fish was once again more autobiographical, containing numerous anecdotes about his life. Brenner's fourth book called If God Wanted Us to Travel was a humorous look at all aspects of travel.
In 1989, Brenner starred in his own one-man show on Broadway. The Laughs and Times of David Brenner. It was a two-hour autobiographical show that took the audience from Brenner's birth, right up to the current day. Then, in 1991, Brenner took a four-year professional hiatus to engage in a bitter court battle for legal custody of his son Cole from a former casual relationship. "I had to cut my career back severely so I wouldn't be deemed an absentee father," he said at the time, "but I'd do it all over again. I have my son."
His married Elizabeth Slater on February 19th, 2000. The couple was married in Las Vegas during Brenner's live HBO comedy special. They had two children but divorced after less than a year. At the time, Brenner terminated a forty-eight week engagement in Las Vegas to go on a nationwide tour he entitled Laughter to The People in 2001. That tour took him away from what Brenner described as a "cushy" job to do nightly gigs on the road that would eventually bring him to almost all fifty states. According to Brenner it was worth the sacrifice. "In the more than thirty years that I have been a comedian, I have never had such appreciative audiences. People rushed the stage to shake my hand and to thank me for making them laugh again, something a lot of Americans had forgotten how to do."
That tour was supposed to end in January of 2002 after five performances in Madison Square Garden. But, when a young New York City fireman told Brenner that this was the first time since September 11th that he laughed at anything Brenner was so moved that he extended the tour until 2003. That night may have also inspired his latest book There's Terrorism in my Soup. The book tries to pull the humor out of more complex world problems like current events, aging, money, terrorism and war.
Benner has performed four HBO Specials, including his most recent, David Brenner: Back With A Vengeance in 2000. The special was one of HBO's highest rated specials. Since then he has also appeared on Extra, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Comics Unleashed, which has been called by some comics the new Premium Blend, three times.
In 2004 Comedy Central ranked Brenner #53 on its list of the 100 Greatest Stand-Up Comics of all time. He is currently hosting The David Brenner Show. The weekly radio program includes topical issues spiced up with a lot of laughs added on top. Recently, he was also appointed Honorary President of the Children's Rights Council, a non-profit organization that works to help children of separation and divorce.
Recent Brenner weighed in on the Carlos Mencia controversy. For those of you living in a cage, Mencia is accused of stealing from tons of comedians including a very famous bit from Bill Cosby's incredible HBO Special, Bill Cosby Himself. When asked about joke thieves Brenner replied, "You have a better chance of stopping a serial killer than a serial thief in comedy. If we could protect our jokes, I'd be a retired billionaire in Europe somewhere - and what I just said is original."
He also recently became engaged to Olympic figure skater Tai Babilonia. He has David three sons: Cole, Slade and Wyatt; she has one. When asked why the couple isn't married yet Brenner replied, "I have marital claustrophobia. We've seen too many people blow it when they get married. If we get along so famously and it's so good, why ruin it?"
