Letterman always spoke from the heart

David Letterman is a broadcaster before he is anything else. Before he is television star, before he is a late night talk show host, before he is a stand-up comic, before his Midwestern sensibility, before Top Ten lists and Stupid Pet Tricks, he is a broadcaster.

When Letterman had quintuple bypass surgery in 2000, removing doubt that there was a ticker in there somewhere, he introduced the doctors and nurses who cared for him. “So it was five weeks ago today that these men and women right here saved my life,” he said. He broke down, and a new Letterman emerged — one with better blood flow, more heart.

His desk was a bully pulpit. When John McCain “suspended” his presidential campaign and canceled his Late Show appearance in 2008, Letterman exposed him as a phony. When Jay Leno undermined Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show two years later, Letterman called it “vintage Jay.” When he became the victim of a blackmail attempt, Letterman admitted to affairs with staff members and apologized to his wife, because Jack Dall’s No. 1 rule of show business is: Look ’em in the eye and speak from the heart.

But Letterman’s finest moment was his eight-minute monologue on Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the terrorist attacks of September 11.

“The reason we were attacked, the reason these people are dead …” he said. “As I understand it, and my understanding of this is vague at best, another smaller group of people stole some airplanes and crashed them into buildings, and we’re told they were zealots, fueled by religious fervor … and if you live to be a thousand years old, will that make any sense to you? Will that make any goddamn sense?”



David Letterman, late night talk show host for 33 years — first on Late Night (1982-93) and then Late Show (1993-2015) — the biggest television star since Johnny Carson and the “comedian broadcaster who is the best there ever was,” according to Jon Stewart, will retire Wednesday.

On CBS, every night at 11:35, Letterman has been as reliable as a public utility, a man who won’t be fully appreciated until he’s gone. He didn’t beat Jay Leno in the ratings, but by any real measure of greatness — originality, versatility, breadth of influence — he has no challengers. In the final season of The Larry Sanders Show, Rip Torn called Larry “one of those goddamn creatures out of Greek mythology — half-man, half-desk.” That’s Letterman.

But before CBS, before the Ed Sullivan Theater, before a 20-year-old Drew Barrymore danced on his desk and before he kissed Julia Roberts again and again, Letterman played host in a studio, at 12:30 in the morning on NBC.

Late Night with David Letterman was comedy anarchy. He wore suits made of Velcro and Alka Seltzer. There were theme shows like “Summer Time Sunshine Happy Hour” and “The Late Night Morning Show.” Top Ten lists and Stupid Pet Tricks became standards. Chris Elliott and Larry “Bud” Melman were odd supporting players. His best moments were storming General Electric’s corporate offices with a fruit basket and screaming via megaphone at Bryant Gumbel during a live Today Show: “This prime time program was my idea, and I’m not wearing pants!”



A stunning variety of guests visited Late Night — from the avant-garde like Sandra Bernhard and John Waters to human oddities like Pee-Wee Herman and Richard Simmons to his broadcasting equal Howard Stern. Letterman was confrontational with Charles Grodin and Harvey Pekar, and he delighted in annoying the delightful Teri Garr. Stand-up comedians like Richard Lewis and Bill Hicks proved their mettle. Jerry Lawler slapped Andy Kaufman and Cher called Letterman an “asshole.”

Letterman’s favorite guest may have been Jay Leno, who made more than 30 appearances on Late Night. The two came of age together at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, writing jokes for Jimmie Walker. Leno’s agent later engineered the palace coup of Johnny Carson, making him host of The Tonight Show — Letterman’s lifelong dream. The controversy inspired a book and movie. Letterman and Leno, their relationship Shakespearean, their histories forever intertwined, have spoken only a few times since 1992.



With Saturday Night Live and then Late Night, the Baby Boomers had crashed the party. The first generation raised on television were now the hippest people on it. Letterman and Bill Murray — his first guest in 1982 and 1993 and one of his last this Tuesday — ushered in the Age of Irony. They mocked show business sincerity. On television and in life, there are those who speak with tongues-in-cheek while keeping a straight face. They are aping Letterman.

Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert all worship at the Altar of Dave. Kimmel celebrated his 16th birthday with a Late Night cake, and the license plate on his first car read “L8 NITE.” Letterman “was more important than sleep,” he said. Conan said Late Night was “wrong” — but in all the right ways. Stewart invited Letterman to be the last guest on his short-lived MTV talk show. Stephen Colbert, who will replace Letterman on Sept. 8, said of college: “I learned more from watching Dave than I did from going to my classes.”



My favorite thing ever produced on Late Night was “They Took My Show Away,” a goof on those old ABC afterschool specials.

The short film was about Jimmy, a young boy who is heartbroken by the cancellation of Voyagers, his favorite television show. Letterman breaks the news to him.

DAVE | Do you know what it means for a show to be canceled, Jimmy?

JIMMY | No, I don’t think so.

DAVE | Well, it’s when a bunch of executives at a television network decide that a TV show shouldn’t be on the air anymore, and then they take it off and replace it with something new. Sometimes that’s a good idea, because the show is filled with bad acting and bad writing, and sometimes it’s the executives who have been bad.

JIMMY | This canceled business — it could never happened to Voyagers, could it?

DAVE | Yes, Jimmy, and I’m afraid it has.

Jimmy runs away, and when Letterman finds him, he is ripping up a TV Guide. This was Late Night at its best, making fun of television and honoring it all at once.

JIMMY | I don’t think I’ll ever watch TV again.

DAVE | Jimmy, don’t ever say that. Not even as a joke.

Ultimately, Jimmy finds consolation in NBC’s new fall schedule.

But life is not an afterschool special.

David Letterman cannot be replaced.

They took my show away.

The story originally appeared on Raleigh & Company.

Jan Hooks, 1957-2014

Jan Hooks played first ladies Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton, martyred wives Tammy Faye Bakker and Ivana Trump, sexy icons Ann-Margret and Sally Kellerman, along with Sinead O’Connor, Kathie Lee Gifford, Jessica Hahn, Bette Davis, Diane Sawyer and Tammy Wynette during her five seasons on Saturday Night Live (1986-91).

A virtuoso impressionist and the ultimate utility player, Hooks disappeared into characters on a show built around men and superstars like Dana Carvey and Mike Myers. She was the glue girl. Only the absence of a breakout character separated Hooks from greater fame. The closest she came was Candy Sweeney, one half of the lounge singing Sweeney Sisters.



Jan Hooks died yesterday from an undisclosed illness. She was 57.

Hooks joined the cast of SNL during the 1986-87 season with Carvey, Phil Hartman, Kevin Nealon, Nora Dunn and Victoria Jackson. Jon Lovitz and Dennis Miller were holdovers from the previous season. That group revived the iconic series, which was on the verge of cancellation.

“That show changed my life,” Hooks said in the book Live from New York, an oral history of the show.

In the same book, Jackson said: “In my audition, when Lorne [Michaels] said I think you’re weak in characters, I said, ‘Oh, well, you know who’s the greatest female character in America? Jan Hooks.’ She would just go into these people and I thought she was, like, great. … I thought she was, like, a genius, so I told Lorne.”

Hooks was such a genius and so underrated that it is worth wondering what her work on SNL might have looked like in the 21st century, when the series has been dominated by women. Tina Fey was one of the show’s head writers from 1999 to 2006, an era that featured Molly Shannon, Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph. Kristen Wiig was the unquestioned star of her tenure (2005-12). The current cast includes Vanessa Bayer, Cecily Strong and Kate McKinnon, the kind of do-everything performer reminiscent of Hooks.
— Kevin Brewer

Joan Rivers, 1933-2014

Joan Rivers was as relentless as her comedy.

“I’ll show you fear,” Rivers says in the 2010 documentary A Piece of Work as she points at an empty date book. “That’s fear. If my book ever looked like this, it would mean nobody wants me, that everything I ever tried to do in life didn’t work, nobody cared, and I’ve been totally forgotten.”

That never happened, because she never stopped working. Rivers hosted the long-running E! network’s Fashion Police and an online talk show In Bed with Joan, starred in the reality series Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? with her daughter and wrote Diary of a Mad Diva, which she promoted on more than a dozen talk shows — and that was this year alone. Her upcoming stand-up tour was to be called “Before They Close the Lid.” More than 20 dates were scheduled



The indefatigable Rivers died Thursday. She was 81 years old.

On Feb. 17, 1965, when Rivers was 31 years old, she made her first appearance on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. She wore a black Jax dress, a string of pearls and a pink boa. She told jokes about being single and problems with her car. “God, you’re funny,” Carson said on the air. “You’re going to be a star.”

A month later, Rivers was the lead guest on the show and quickly became one of Carson’s favorites, making more than 50 appearances. In 1983, she became the first permanent guest host of The Tonight Show. Three years later, she signed a five-year, $15 million contract with the new Fox network to host her own show.

“The first person I called was Johnny Carson,” Rivers said in A Piece of Work. “He slammed the phone down. I called him again, and he slammed it down again and never spoke to me again — ever.”

Rivers told this story so often and with such conviction that it became accepted as truth, mostly because Carson never spoke of Rivers publicly, except for a few veiled references in his monologue, and partly because Rivers outlived him by nine years.



But Carson already knew of Rivers’ impending move when she made the call, according to King of the Night by Laurence Leamer. Her mistake, Carson felt, was in not telling him sooner. If she had, Carson might have wished her well on the air, as he had done with David Brenner and Alan Thicke and later with Pat Sajak and Arsenio Hall when they began their competing shows.

“I’m not taking her call,” Carson said. “It was a little late in arriving … about three months late.”

In the following months, Rivers tried to hire away some of Carson’s top personnel, including longtime producer Peter Lassally and a highly regarded talent coordinator. Carson gave them more money to stay.

The Late Show starring Joan Rivers premiered on Oct. 9, 1986 at 11 p.m., a half-hour before Carson. Her guests were David Lee Roth, Pee-wee Herman, Elton John and Cher. John, Cher and Rivers sang “The Bitch is Back.” Rivers beat Carson in the ratings in New York and San Francisco.



“The Fox show, even before we went on the air, was a nightmare,” Rivers said. Her husband, manager and executive producer, Edgar Rosenberg, constantly fought with Fox executives Rupert Murdoch and Barry Diller. When Rivers refused to fire her husband, Fox fired both of them. Her last show was on May 15, 1987.

Three months later, Rosenberg committed suicide. “He left me with no career and a lot of debt,” said Rivers, who became depressed and bulimic and contemplated suicide herself.

Then Rivers worked. She was the center square on Hollywood Squares (1987-89) and hosted a daytime talk show (1989-93) for which she won an Emmy. In 1994, she was nominated for a Tony Award for playing Lenny Bruce’s mother in Sally Marr … and Her Escorts. She wrote 12 books, including one about her many plastic surgeries. She peddled her own line of jewelry and clothing on QVC, selling more than $1 billion in merchandise. She was omnipresent on the red carpet of awards shows for E! and later the TV Guide Channel. She won Celebrity Apprentice.



On Jimmy Fallon’s first night as host of The Tonight Show in February, a series of celebrities made cameos, handing him $100 to settle a bet — Robert De Niro, Tina Fey, Seth Rogen, Stephen Colbert … and on and on. Among them was Rivers, making her first Tonight Show appearance since 1986.

A month later, she returned, making jokes about the Holocaust and vagina rings. Fallon held up a black and white photo of Carson and Rivers from that first appearance in 1965. “He said you’re going to be a star,” said Rivers, pointing at Carson in the photo. “It changed my life.”