August 15, 1992…”The Larry Sanders Show” Debuts On HBO
August 15, 1992…”The Larry Sanders Show” Debuts On HBO
It’s hard to believe that it was 24 years ago this week, but it was.
Out of the box, they knew they had a hit with Garry Shandling’s new show. It took us behind the scenes of late night television in a way no one ever has, before or since. With sidekick Jeffrey Tambor as Hank Kingsley, and Rip Torn as the show’s producer as the key cast members, the list of guest stars that came to the show was a who’s who that rivaled the real late night shows.
The show was done at CBS Studio Center on Radford Avenue in Los Angeles and won more awards than you can shake a stick at! There were Writers Guild, Directors Guild, Golden Globes, Emmys, Cable Ace, Peabody, Critics awards and more given in the US, and even more from the UK and international committees. During its six-year run, The Larry Sanders Show won 24 major awards including three Emmys.
After the show ended (May 31,1998), the show received a spot on Time Magazine’s 100 Greatest Shows of All Time. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly ranked The Larry Sanders Show the 28th Greatest Show of the past 25 years. TV Guide named it the 38th Greatest Show of All Time.
Below is a clip from Season 1, Episode 1 called “The Garden Weasel”. In re release, the name of this debut episode was changed to “What Have You Done For Me Lately”. Hey Now! – Bobby Ellerbee
Clips of Larry Sanders reluctantly doing in-show advertisements for the Garden Weasel taken from the first episode of The Larry Sanders Show starring Garry S…
Bob, it was done this way so that the talk show segments would look like “TV” while the filmed ‘behind-the-scenes’ shots would have a documentary look. The two parts of “The Larry Sanders Show” were intentionally shot differently because the producers intended for the them to look different from each other. It was not done for economic reasons.
Another interesting thing about the talk show part was that it was actually done like a real talk show. There was a live audience, a band (a fake band, actors performing as a band), and Garry Shandling would do a monologue at the start of each ‘show’ for the live studio audience.
Here is the CBS Studio Center map. Larry Sanders (Stage 10) and Seinfeld (Stage 9) are located towards the center of the lot. Just wave your cursor over the stages to discover which stages are which. You can also see a more detailed floor plan by clicking your mouse over the stage.
http://www.cbssc.com/map.htm
What a great clip from a great show. Glad HBO is going to rerun it.
The show was filmed/taped on Stage 10…. right next door to Stage 9 where Seinfeld was filmed. The talk show set took up about half of Stage 10 while the remaining sets (the Larry Sanders offices, home, etc.) took up the other half of the stage. Stage 10 is rather large (200 ft by 100 ft). The talk show scenes were shot on video tape while the other scenes were shot on 16mm film. This was done to acheive two different looks (a TV look versus a more documentary feel). The talk show scenes were taped about every three weeks in order to save on the cost of a full time video crew and equipement.