The Full Biography
David Letterman. Host. The Indianapolis weatherman who made late night a raised eyebrow for thirty-three years and then left before the eyebrow became a wax museum.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a gap in the teeth, a mug, a camera that swings to the hallway, a Top Ten list read as if it were a civic duty. The years were 1982 to 2015. What the still cannot show is David Michael Letterman of Indianapolis, a Ball State graduate who failed at morning television, a man who built two late-night shows around the idea that the show itself was the joke, and a later life of a shed, a son, a heart, and interviews on Netflix that are quieter than the mug ever allowed.
He was born on April 12, 1947, in Indianapolis, to Harry Joseph Letterman, a florist, and Dorothy Hofert. Broad Ripple High School. Ball State University, class of 1969, radio and television — the campus that now has his name on a building. Local weatherman at WLWI, where he treated the forecast as a chance to drop the map and hail hailstones as canned vegetables. He hosted a late movie. He went west. The Starland Vocal Band’s variety hour and a Mary Tyler Moore variety experiment, Mary, did not want what he was selling. He wrote. He stood in for other people. The David Letterman Show, a morning program on NBC in the summer of 1980, was cancelled in months and still won Emmys — a failure that was also a calling card. Johnny Carson had him on as a guest, then as a guest host, and treated him as a possible heir. The network did not choose him for Carson’s desk. That refusal is the plot of the next thirty years, whether he shrugged it or not.
The 12:30 years, 1982 to 1993, are the laboratory people still steal from. Stupid pet tricks. Viewer mail. A camera in the hallway. A host who threw pencils at the lens and meant it. Larry “Bud” Melman on the street. Chris Elliott under the seats. Merrill Markoe’s architecture. Paul Shaffer’s band. A Top Ten that treated the news as a grocery list. The show was about the show. Writers who passed through that room still talk about it as a graduate school with cue cards. When NBC handed 11:30 to Leno, the laboratory moved to Broadway and became a monument without quite agreeing to be warm.
The CBS years added a city out the window, a theater with a history, and a host who had to fill 11:30 without becoming Carson. He did not become Carson. He became Letterman at 11:30: the mug, the gap, a generosity to a nervous actor and a cruelty to a powerful one in the same segment. The bypass in 2000. The 2001 monologue. Harry in 2003. The 2009 confession. The 2015 exit. Colbert took the building. The shed and the ranch and the Netflix chair took the man. That is the remaining plot, and he wrote it by leaving.
NBC gave him 12:30. Late Night with David Letterman (February 1, 1982–September 1993) invented a grammar: stupid pet tricks, a window onto 30 Rockefeller Plaza, irony that was not yet a default setting for a whole country, Calvert DeForest as Larry “Bud” Melman, a camera sent into the hallway, a host who threw pencils at the lens. Viewer mail. A top ten list that treated the news as a grocery receipt. Merrill Markoe, the first head writer and for years his partner, helped build the house. Paul Shaffer ran the band. Chris Elliott wandered the halls. Writers who passed through that room — a generation of them — still talk about it as a graduate school with cue cards. The show was about the show. That was the joke and the method.
When Carson announced his exit, Letterman wanted the 11:30 desk. NBC gave it to Jay Leno. The shrug that followed lasted twenty-two years and was not a shrug. He took CBS’s 11:30, moved into the Ed Sullivan Theater, and spent the next two decades pretending not to care that he had wanted the other building. The first CBS months were rocky. Then the grammar transferred: the mug, the gap in the teeth, the city out the window, a host who could be generous to a nervous actor and cruel to a powerful one in the same segment. Oprah, a long feud and a long thaw. A stupid human trick. A Top Ten that became a civic form. The 12:30 laboratory had become an 11:30 monument without quite agreeing to be warm.
The Late Show with David Letterman (August 30, 1993–May 20, 2015) is the long monument: the Ed Sullivan Theater, Shaffer still at the keyboards, a city out the window, a host who could be generous to a nervous actor and cruel to a powerful one in the same segment. Top Ten lists became a civic form. After September 11, 2001, he came back with a monologue that was not a joke first. It is the clip people send when they want to remember that the eyebrow had a heart. In January 2000 he underwent a quadruple bypass and announced it with the same deadpan he used on a stupid pet. A son, Harry, was born in 2003 to Regina Lasko, whom he married in 2009. In October 2009 an extortion case forced him to confess affairs on the air — a year no host wants and few would have handled without a press secretary’s fog. He used the camera. He survived.
There’s no off position on the genius switch.David Letterman, a line he used on others and, sometimes, as a warning to himself
The turn is the decision to leave while the show could still stand. In 2015 he handed the Sullivan Theater to Stephen Colbert and walked off before the format finished eating its young. My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, on Netflix from 2018, is the afterlife: long conversations, a beard, a man who does not have to hit a commercial.
Six things most people never knew
- The weatherman years in Indianapolis are the first irony. The map drop predates the mug.
- Morning television fired the future of late night. Failure first. Carson’s couch second. 12:30 third.
- He wanted Carson’s job and did not get it. The CBS years are a thirty-year shrug over that fact.
- The post-9/11 monologue is the masterpiece of the host, not of the Top Ten. A civic adult in a clown’s time slot.
- The 2009 on-air confession is part of the life. Not a footnote. A man using the only instrument he trusted.
- He left while the show could still stand. 2015. The shed, the son, the guest show. No farewell that became a residency.
Regina Lasko and Harry are the private weather he has actually protected. He races cars a little, tends to a ranch and a reputation for being kinder off-camera than the smirk advertised, and keeps Indiana in the vowels. Friends from the old writing rooms describe a boss who was loyal, exacting, and not always easy at 4 p.m. The easy part was 11:35.
The later years
The remaining chapter is the Netflix conversations, a few public fights on behalf of a staffer or a joke, and a long refusal to become a nightly hostage again. He has aged into a face the country now reads as uncle instead of ironist. He does not seem to mind. The Top Ten is a format everyone stole. He does not need to police it. He needs to pick up his son and, sometimes, sit across from a guest until something true happens.
He is in his late seventies. The Sullivan Theater is someone else’s problem. Ball State has his name on a building. Indianapolis still claims the weatherman. My Next Guest Needs No Introduction put him in a chair without a band and without a commercial break: Obama, George Clooney, Liz Cheney, ordinary hours that run long. The beard is new. The raised eyebrow is not. He has used the show to be curious rather than to win the night. That is a host’s old age, and it is a better use of the instrument than a residency of Top Tens would have been.
He has taken the Mark Twain Prize (2017) and the Kennedy Center Honors as receipts, not as a personality. He has spoken for staff and for a kind of comedy that does not require a partisan hour. He has not become a cable combatant. He has not become a museum of 1982. He drops into Indianapolis 500 weather and into a shed in Chappaqua and into a Montana horizon and then, when the guest is booked, he sits down and listens longer than the old clock would have allowed. Harry is the reason the remaining calendar is guarded. The 2009 confession is still in the file. He did not ask the audience to forget it. He asked them to watch the next thing.
What he has not done is go back every night. That refusal is the whole remaining craft. Late night became a partisan hour and a YouTube clip farm. His version — a show about a show — looks, in retrospect, like a last moment before the feed. He left before the mug became a relic he had to hold at 11:35. The weatherman who dropped the map got to put the map down. That is a complete remaining geography: Ball State, the Sullivan Theater emptied, a son, a ranch, a guest who does not need an introduction, and a man who no longer has to win Tuesday.
The remaining public work is the long conversation. My Next Guest Needs No Introduction put him across from presidents and actors and, sometimes, a person the old clock would not have allowed. He has used the beard and the lack of a band as permission to sit still. He has not used them as a brand of wisdom. He still drops a joke that sounds like 1984. He still protects Harry from the feed. He still talks like Indianapolis when the vowels get loose. The Mark Twain Prize and the Kennedy Center Honors are on a shelf. The 2009 confession is still in the file. The 2001 monologue is still the clip people send when they want a late-night adult. He does not police any of that. He picks up his son. He sits down when the guest is booked. He leaves again.
Colbert has the Sullivan Theater. Leno has the argument that will not die. Letterman has a ranch, a shed, a Netflix chair, and the unfashionable right not to work five nights a week. Friends from the old writing rooms say he is kinder off-camera than the smirk advertised and still not easy at 4 p.m. The easy part was 11:35. The remaining part is quieter, and he seems to prefer it. That is a host’s old age. He earned it by leaving while the show could still stand.
After the spotlight moved
Late night became a partisan hour and a YouTube clip farm. His version — a show about a show — looks, in retrospect, like a last moment before the feed. Young hosts still steal the hallway cam and the dumb list. The 9/11 monologue still plays when the country needs a late-night adult. The rest is reruns of a man throwing pencils at a camera and somehow meaning it.
He came out of Indianapolis, dropped a weather map, failed in the morning, built 12:30, lost 11:30 at NBC, took it at CBS, told the truth after a Tuesday in September, confessed on his own air, and left before the mug became a relic he had to hold every night. If you only remember the Top Ten, you have the format. If you remember the map, Leno’s desk, and the 2001 monologue, you have him.
The remaining broadcast is quieter than the mug. Young hosts still steal the hallway cam and the dumb list. The 9/11 monologue still plays when the country needs a late-night adult. The 2009 confession is still in the file. Colbert has the Sullivan Theater. Netflix has the beard and the long conversation. Ball State has the building. Indianapolis has the weatherman. Harry has a father who left before the format finished eating its young. That split is the whole remaining geography. He does not police it. He picks up his son. He sits down when the guest is booked. He leaves again. The map is down. The show about the show is over. The man who built it is still here, and he does not have to win Tuesday. Ball State has the building. The Sullivan Theater has Colbert. Harry has a father who left while the format could still stand. That is a complete remaining map. Indianapolis still claims the weatherman. The Top Ten still belongs to everyone who stole it. He does not police the theft. He left. The mug is down.
Portrait: Zach Catanzareti Photo · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons