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Late Night with David Letterman

Late Night with David Letterman is an American late-night talk show hosted by David Letterman on NBC, the first iteration of the Late Night franchise. It premiered on February 1, 1982,[1] and was produced by Letterman's production company, Space Age Meats, and Carson Productions. Letterman had previously hosted his own morning talk show on NBC from June to October 1980. The show's house band, The World's Most Dangerous Band, was led by music director Paul Shaffer. In 1993, Letterman announced that he would leave NBC to host the Late Show with David Letterman on CBS. The final episode of Late Night was broadcast on June 25, 1993. The series has continued as Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers.

This article is about the NBC program. For the later CBS show, see Late Show with David Letterman. For the morning show, see The David Letterman Show.

Late Night with David Letterman

Late Night (franchise brand)

David Letterman

David Letterman

Paul Shaffer
and The World's Most Dangerous Band

Bill Wendell

United States

English

11

1,819

Studio 6A, NBC Studios, New York, New York

Multi-camera

42–43 minutes

NBC

February 1, 1982 (1982-02-01) –
June 25, 1993 (1993-06-25)

In 2013, this series and Late Show with David Letterman were ranked No. 41 on TV Guide's 60 Best Series of All Time.[2] During its run, the show was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Series 11 times. It was also nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series 14 times, winning 4, and won one Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Variety Series out of 7 nominations.

One early episode showed everything from Dave's eye view with Markoe and others coming at Dave to pitch ideas as he walked onto the stage, and the audience was shown from Dave's view during the monologue and the opening segments.

In another show, the picture turned like a clock, eventually being seen upside down halfway through.

There were segments where Letterman was dressed in a suit of Velcro and stuck (thrown) to a Velcro wall, a suit of chips and dunked into a vat of chip dip, a suit of Rice Krispies and doused with gallons of milk while lying in a huge bowl, a suit of tablets and dunked in water, a suit of suet and placed in a cage with farm animals, etc.

Alka Seltzer

Visual segments showing things being crushed by a hydraulic press, thrown through fluorescent lights or dropped off an office building to smash on the ground, were also common.

Letterman's desk featured a control panel where he could operate a bubble machine, a confetti cannon, "radioactive" steam, a belch of New York soot or strange lighting.

When he threw his pencils through the fake window scene behind him, a sound effect of breaking glass was always heard. Occasionally, if sound effects technician Howard Vinitisky was slow in triggering the appropriate breaking glass sound effect, Letterman would mockingly chide Vinitisky for the error (he would also occasionally congratulate Vinitisky when the sound effect was especially well-timed).

A robotic arm for a while delivered the Top Ten List, and for another week or so, a complicated series of tubes would produce swirling coffee to eventually land in his cup on the desk.

Cameras mounted on a chimpanzee's back (Late Night Monkey Cam) or on the roof (Roof Cam) would show odd viewpoints of the set and its participants.

Like most other late-night talk shows, the show featured at least two or three guests each night, usually including a comedian or musical guest.


Letterman frequently used crew members in his comedy bits, so viewers got to know the writers and crew members of the show. Common contributors included bandleader Paul Shaffer, Chris Elliott, Calvert DeForest as "Larry 'Bud' Melman," announcer Bill Wendell, writer Adam Resnick, scenic designer Kathleen Ankers, stage manager Biff Henderson, producer Robert Morton, director Hal Gurnee, associate director Peter Fatovich, stage hand Al Maher, camera operator Baily Stortz, production manager Elmer Gorry as NBC President Grant Tinker,[23] and the "production twins," Barbara Gaines and Jude Brennan. The cramped quarters of 30 Rockefeller Plaza also often played into the humor of the show.


Letterman's show established a reputation for being unpredictable. A number of celebrities had even stated that they were afraid of appearing on the show. This reputation was born out of moments like Letterman's verbal sparring matches with Cher, Shirley MacLaine and Harvey Pekar.


The show had its frequent favorite guests including Pee Wee Herman, Steve Martin, Charles Grodin, George Carlin and Jay Leno. Female guests Teri Garr and Sandra Bernhard were frequently booked, with Garr appearing 32 times and Bernhard appearing 28 times.


Because of the creativity of staff writers like Merrill Markoe, Letterman's NBC show, in its first few years especially, had innovative segments and theme shows that were new and different from other talk shows of the time. Some were visual gags that owed a debt to pioneers like Ernie Kovacs and Steve Allen. Among the highlights were:


Other show format innovations related to the way individual episodes or segments were presented:

Outstanding Writing in a Variety, Comedy or Music Program

1982–83

Outstanding Writing in a Variety, Comedy or Music Program

1983–84

Outstanding Writing in a Variety, Comedy or Music Program

1984–85

Outstanding Writing in a Variety, Comedy or Music Program

1985–86

Outstanding Directing in a Variety, Comedy or Music Program

1989–90

List of late-night American network TV programs

at IMDb

Late Night with David Letterman

at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television

Late Night with David Letterman