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Hank Bradford, head writer for “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” and “The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers,” died Jan. 18 in Los Angeles of congestive heart failure, his family said. He was 88.

Bradford served as Carson’s head writer from 1970-75.

“As head writer on The Tonight Show, he was admired and beloved by his fellow writers for both his pitch-perfect sense of humor and his relatively-sane leadership style in a job (and profession) which tended toward the weird and chaotic,” Bradford’s family said in a prepared obituary. “Above his desk at The Tonight Show was a sign that read: ‘It left here funny.’”

Bradford later served as head writer for “The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers” between 1986 and 1987. He also wrote episodes for “Mash” and “Three’s Company.”

Before becoming a staff writer, Bradford began his career as a comic. He appeared at nightclubs and opened the show for...

Hank Bradford, the clever stand-up comic who performed a half-dozen times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson before serving a five-year stint as head writer on the program, has died. He was 88.

Bradford died Jan. 18 in Los Angeles, his family announced.

Bradford did uncredited dialogue rewrites on the Burt Reynolds-starring Smokey and the Bandit (1977) — when he got the script, “it wasn’t a comedy,” he revealed to host Mark Malkoff on a 2017 episode of The Carson Podcast — and wrote for such TV shows as M*A*S*H, Private Benjamin and Three’s Company.

The Brooklyn native made his first appearance on the Tonight Show in September 1966 when it was based in New York. He got a spot inside the writers room in 1969, succeeded Marshall Brickman as head writer in 1970 and moved with the show to Burbank in 1972.

Bradford’s role on the fabled NBC late-night program was...