Today we toot a horn for the much-missed comedian David Brenner (1936-2014). (It’s also Charles Lindbergh’s birthday but that anti-Semite can wait his turn.)
Brenner was ubiquitous on television when I was a kid in the ’70s and early ’80s. I can summon his voice, his manner, and his comic style in the mind’s eye at a moment’s notice. Somehow he sported all the visual markers of the age, the bling, the floral print shirts, and faux leather jackets without seeming sleezy. Yet he remained brash and urban, which was the preferred style at the time. He loved to talk about his native Philly. We are delighted to learn that his father had been in vaudeville, using the name Lou Murphy.
Brenner’s own migration to the stand-up stage was roundabout. First he went into the service, then he majored in communications at Temple, and then he became a documentary maker for Westinghouse and Metromedia, winning an Emmy for his efforts. He began performing in clubs in the late ’60s, and it led pretty rapidly to television. He debuted on the The Tonight Show in 1971, and went on to appear on the program over 150 more times, half of those appearances as guest host, which stood for a time as a record. He was frequently on Merv, Mike Douglas, and Dinah, and Hollywood Squares et al, as well as hipper shows like The Midnight Special.
In 1976, Brenner co-starred with Lesley Ann Warren in a sit-com called Snip, created by James Komack, the creator of Chico and the Man and Welcome Back Kotter, and partially inspired by the recent hit movie Shampoo, set at a hair salon. This looked like a next level thing for me, but at the very last minute the show was cancelled because the network got cold feet because one of the characters (Brenner’s boss at the beauty parlor) was openly gay, unprecedented at the time. This was at NBC. Irritatingly, Soap featuring Billy Crystal’s gay character premiered on ABC the following year, and ran for years. Despite a big build up, Snip’s six episodes never aired in the U.S.
Brenner got another couple of similar shots about a decade later. In 1986, he was tried in a syndicated late night talk show called Nightlife. This was around the same time that his friend Joan Rivers got her talk show on Fox. Brenner’s couldn’t compete in the glutted market and ended after one season. In 1989 he appeared in a small role in the movie Worth Winning, with Mark Harmon and Madeleine Stowe. The film’s Philly setting undoubtedly a factor!
Through the ’90s he continued to appear live in night clubs and appear on the shows of Letterman, Conan, Howard Stern, and so forth. During this period I always felt he had gotten eclipsed by Jerry Seinfeld. Seinfeld’s act and persona were extraordinarily similar to Brenner’s — definitely an apple off his tree. With Seinfeld so major on the landscape, Brenner, who was so heavily identified with the ’70s, seemed a throwback. As he grew older, he developed a certain physical resemblance to Henny Youngman, not known for being young and hip. He was one of the many comedians included in The Aristocrats (2005), one of his last high profile appearances. He was 78 when he died of pancreatic cancer in 2014.
To find out more about vaudeville and the variety arts (including tv variety) consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
