David Brenner obit

DAVID BRENNER, familiar to millions of Boomers from his 158 appearances on The Tonight Show, roughly half of them subbing for Johnny Carson, died on Saturday at 78 after a battle with cancer. He was 78. The beloved comedian’s best pal was Joan Rivers, who tweeted the affectionate eulogy below. “Brenner was the coolest and the funniest,”Roger Friedman wrote in his Showbiz 411 column. “He was a huge star in the ’60s and ’70s. In the ’80s he had a short-lived syndicated talk show featuring Billy Preston as the band leader. The show filmed in New York; I went to it several times. It was almost too good a talk show, and it couldn’t survive. RIP David, you were one of the very, very best.” (3/17a)