David Steinberg

David Steinberg was born on August 9, 1942, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the son of Rabbi Yasha Steinberg, a Romanian-born rabbi, and Ruth Steinberg. He has two brothers, Hymie and Fishy Steinberg, and a sister, Tammy Lazer. His older brother Hymie was killed in action during World War II at the age of 19. Steinberg initially studied theology in Israel before enrolling at the University of Chicago to study English literature. A performance by Lenny Bruce prompted him to pursue comedy as a career. After completing his studies, he was discovered by one of the founders of The Second City in Chicago, which he joined in 1964. During his six years with the group, he performed alongside Robert Klein, Fred Willard, Peter Boyle, and Joe Flaherty.

Steinberg made his Broadway debut in 1967 in Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights, followed in 1968 by Little Murders. Both productions closed within one week of opening. His stage career overlapped with a period of rapid rise in his national profile as a comedian. By the late 1960s and into the mid-1970s, he was among the most recognized comics in the United States. He appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson more than 130 times, a figure second only to Bob Hope, and served as guest host on twelve occasions, making him the youngest person to have guest-hosted the program.

One of the defining moments of Steinberg's early career came in October 1968 on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, where he delivered satirical sermons that generated a record volume of complaints to CBS. The network responded by instituting a policy of providing local affiliates with advance closed-circuit screenings of each episode. CBS permitted Steinberg to return to the program only on the condition that he not repeat the sermons, but Tommy Smothers invited him to do so anyway. The resulting sermon, which included a joke about Old and New Testament scholars and the story of Jonah, was never broadcast by CBS and contributed to the cancellation of the show.

In 1969 and 1970, Steinberg served as the most frequent host of the ABC pop and rock music program The Music Scene, which featured performances by artists including Joe Cocker and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. In 1972, he wrote and starred in The David Steinberg Show, a five-week summer replacement sketch comedy series in the United States. That same year, he served as best man at the wedding of Crazy Joe Gallo. In 1975, he hosted Noonday, a short-lived midday talk show on NBC.

In 1976, Steinberg returned to Canada to produce a second series also titled The David Steinberg Show, a hybrid sitcom and variety program modeled loosely on The Jack Benny Program. The regular cast included future SCTV performers Joe Flaherty, John Candy, Dave Thomas, and Martin Short, with Andrea Martin appearing in a non-regular capacity. The series ran for one season. Steinberg also released four comedy albums during the 1960s and 1970s, among them The Incredible Shrinking God, recorded live at Second City and released in 1968, which featured ten comedic sermons and mini-sermons from his stand-up routine. He hosted the 1977 Juno Awards and was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2003.

Steinberg built a substantial career as a television director, working on episodes of Seinfeld, Friends, Mad About You, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Golden Girls, and Designing Women. He received two Directors Guild of America Award nominations for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series: one in 1991 for the Seinfeld episode The Tape, and another in 1996 for the Mad About You episode The Finale: Parts II and III. He earned five Emmy Award nominations and won two as a writer on Academy Awards programs in 1991 and 1992. A CableACE Award followed in 1992 for his stand-up special Cats, Cops and Stuff. He also received a Canadian Comedy Award nomination in 2000 and a Gemini nomination in 2001, and his parody of the novel Ragtime earned him a Playboy Humor Award.

From 2005 to 2007, Steinberg hosted Sit Down Comedy with David Steinberg on TV Land, an interview-format program filmed before an audience at UCLA in which he spoke with prominent comedians and comic actors over two seasons. Guests included Mike Myers, Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams, Martin Short, and Jon Stewart, among others. He later hosted Inside Comedy on the Showtime network. In 2010, he directed and produced the Canadian cable comedy series Living in Your Car. His first book, The Book of David, was published by Simon and Schuster in June 2007. In December 2016, Steinberg was named a Member of the Order of Canada.

Steinberg married Judy Marcione in 1973, and the couple had two daughters before divorcing in 1997. He married Robyn Todd in 2005.