May 2015
Three for the road: remembering the retiring Bob Schieffer
29/05/15 09:03
Note to readers: Born in Austin and educated at Texas Christian University, Bob Schieffer, 78, is retiring from CBS News this Sunday after 46 years of reporting, anchoring and analyzing.
He’ll say his goodbyes on Face the Nation, which Schieffer has helmed since 1991. We bid him a fond farewell with three stories from the vault. They cover his graceful exit from anchoring the CBS Evening News, a day spent with him -- and Donald Rumsfeld -- at Face the Nation and a memorable experience at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, at which Michael Dukakis became the party’s presidential nominee after a very prolonged set-up speech by then Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.
By ED BARK
(Originally published on July 21, 1988)
ATLANTA -- At a declawed Democratic convention held in a cramped arena, a network floor reporter’s lot is lots of pleasantries and not a lot to do besides scrunch or be scrunched.
“We took several pictures of Dan Rather’s rear end” when he bent over in the overhead anchor booth, a jovial female delegate from Ohio informed CBS’ Bob Schieffer 15 minutes before the network began its prime-time coverage Wednesday. “Would you like to buy the negatives?”
Schieffer, born in Austin, raised in Fort Worth and nearing 20 years’ service with his chosen network, was assured of a hearty laugh that might have served to calm any pre-show jitters or tension, were there any. But Schieffer earlier had described this convention as “kind of like a boat or a car show, where you roll out the new model,” namely the party’s nominee.
“We could have had an enormous story here,” he said of earlier expectations that Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis and the Rev. Jesse Jackson might bang heads. “My sense of it is it’s just as good a story that it didn’t fall apart, but it’s not nearly as hard to report.”
Schieffer’s principal responsibilities during CBS’ prime-time coverage were the Texas, Ohio and Massachusetts delegations. A reporter following his every move from 7:30 p.m. until Dukakis’ name was put in nomination at 9:10 p.m., came away with an appreciation of Schieffer’s unfailingly good nature and an understanding that crash-bang convention floor reporting is the stuff of which nostalgia is made.
Schieffer, accompanied by producer Janet Leissner, was joined by his wife, Pat, shortly after he took the floor. She had mysteriously obtained credentials and intended to take her husband’s picture a few times. The Schieffers’ daughter, Susan, now a CBS page, was born nine months after the raucous 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.
“It just goes to show,” Schieffer said, “that there was more than fighting in the streets that night.”
Climbing the concrete stairway dividing the Texas and Ohio delegations, Schieffer vigorously shook hands with former Texas Gov. Mark White. He otherwise was having a minor problem hearing the instructions coming over his headset from a CBS producer stationed in the network’s anchor booth.
“Do what, do what?” he shouted before asking Leissner, “Turn me up, will ya?”
She reached behind his suit coat to adjust a knob on a battery pack worn around his waist like a corset.
Schieffer next encountered the woman who photographed Rather’s posterior for posterity.
“I’ll ask you a question,” she said. “”What does a ‘media circus’ mean to you?”
“I don’t know,” said Schieffer, “but I must be in one of the rings.”
Schieffer’s first assignment was a “mood piece” at 8:04 p.m. He told Rather that a congenial deal had been made that would allow California to put Dukakis over the top in return for Texas doing likewise for Lloyd Bentsen during Thursday’s balloting for vice president.
After that report, Schieffer inched his way to the front of the Texas delegation to double-check the deal.
“Bob, whatever it is, you’re right,” Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby told him.
Schieffer shook hands with Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price and Houston congressman Mickey Leland before ensuring that Leland would be available for an interview when Jackson’s name was put in nomination.
“I’ve made a career out of making Mickey stand by,” Schieffer said, laughing.
When the moment came, it was a nice moment. Leland had tears in his eyes as delegates chanted, “Jesse -- Hope Alive!”
Schieffer then found himself frozen in place, on a stairway behind Rep. Dick Gephardt and his wife, during an elongated 35-minute nomination speech by Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Gephardt had refused to be interviewed until the speech ended.
“Get the hook out,” Schieffer said as the convention waited for Clinton to at long last put Dukakis’ name in the hat and trigger a delegate demonstration.
Schieffer got Gephardt’s reaction in an on-camera interview and then turned around and shrugged, indicating it was nothing special.
With that, he was plowing ahead again, searching for another angle at a convention without many.
By ED BARK
(Originally published April 3, 2004)
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Presenting a microcosm of a Sunday morning public affairs show, where the rules of combat can be both velvet-gloved and iron-fisted.
The atmosphere initially is collegial, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Face the Nation anchor Bob Schieffer happily exchanging pleasantries and swapping old stories before soberly assuming their positions as newsmaker and newshound.
A half-hour later, Rumsfeld is leaving briskly and somewhat brusquely on this chilly March morning. His 13th appearance on the program has been a bit unsettling for him. Not so for Schieffer, who later remarks, “I think we made some news today.”
Rumsfeld at first bristles when asked about charges made by the Military Officers Association of America. The organization complains that the Bush administration has found a “back-door way to reinstitute the draft” by telling soldiers that their previously agreed-on tours of duty have been extended.
“Everyone serving on active duty is a volunteer, and they volunteered knowing precisely what the rules were,” Rumsfeld says after extended verbal sparring.
Minutes earlier, the defense secretary had told Schieffer that “you and a few other critics are the only people I’ve heard use the phrase “immediate threat” with regard to Iraq under Saddam Hussein . . . It’s become kind of folklore that that’s what happened.”
But Rumsfeld is then read one of his previous quotes: “No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.”
He initially stammers in response before asserting that weapons of mass destruction might still turn up in “a country the size of California.”
This particular sound bite made its way to Wednesday’s premiere of The O’Franken Factor liberal radio show as an example of administration duplicity. But Schieffer takes no joy in playing “gotcha.” In the 50th year of Face the Nation (and his 13th as its anchor), he remains intent on playing the Washington game under gentleman’s rules.
“I’ve been a guest in his home; he’s been a guest in mine,” Schieffer says of Rumsfeld. “In fact, I really like him. He’s fun to be around. But this is major league baseball. He doesn’t expect me to throw him a softball. He expects me to throw him my best stuff.
“Every Cabinet officer that comes on this program knows that’s what the deal is. It doesn’t mean we can’t do it in a civil way. There’s a difference in being aggressive and antagonistic.”
Schieffer says he was surprised, however, that Rumsfeld “seemed unfamiliar” with the Military Officers Association of America, which has a membership of 300,000 retired and active-duty officers. He gave the defense secretary some literature on the organization as he left the studio.
Rumsfeld also had been unfamiliar with The Fog of War, which focused on the Vietnam policies of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and recently won an Oscar as best documentary film. Its director, Errol Morris, then denounced the Bush administration’s Iraqi war policy before a worldwide television audience.
“What is it, a movie or something?” Rumsfeld wonders when Schieffer mentions The Fog of War just before the Face the Nation cameras roll.
“These fellows work awfully long hours. I’ll give him some slack on that one,” Schieffer says after the program. Rumsfeld “works from dawn until well past dark every day. So he probably doesn’t get to see too many movies.”
Face the Nation is still running a solid second in the Sunday morning public affair show ratings wars. It’s doing so despite getting only half the air time of its hour-long competitors -- NBC’s front-running Meet the Press, ABC’s third-place This Week with George Stephanopoulos and fourth-place Fox News Sunday.
“My fondest wish is that someday somehow,we can get another half-hour. If we could, we could really compete,” Schieffer says. “We have the smallest staff in all of network television. We don’t have bells and whistles, and we’re not going to put bells and whistles on. We’ve found that people just don’t want that. They want it straight.”
That means no “food fights,” as he calls it, but ample nourishment. At age 67, the Austin native is too old -- and too smart -- to know any other way.
“We don’t put people on Face the Nation just to see how loud they can scream or because it’s quote, ‘good television,’ “ he says. “We’re trying to get information from a newsmaker involved in a big story of the week. That’s my job. I’m here to keep it like it is.”
By ED BARK
(Originally published Aug. 31, 2006)
His anticipated short chapter as the CBS Evening News standard-bearer turned out to be far closer to a full-length novel. Its happy ending comes tonight, when Bob Schieffer steps down after nearly 18 months as acting anchor.
“It’s been the greatest adventure, I think, of my life,” the Fort Worth-raised newsman says in a telephone interview. “I had no idea this was going to happen And then to have it happen as it did and come out well . . . I still don’t believe it. I got here at a pretty tough time for CBS News.”
Schieffer replaced embattled Dan Rather on March 10th of last year for what was supposed to be a wink, blink and nod. But the search for a permanent anchor kept stretching out like a cheap T-shirt.
CBS clearly had zeroed in on Katie Couric after newly appointed news president Sean McManus found in-house candidates wanting and others not of sufficient star quality. But it took extra time and money to pry her from NBC’s Today.
So Schieffer stayed the course while the third-place Evening News’ ratings steadily inched upward. Last week, the gap between CBS and ABC’s second-place World News with Charles Gibson was just 190,000 viewers. The NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams still led the pack with 1.08 million more viewers than Schieffer’s newscast.
“I don’t mind saying it. Expectations are going to be the difficult part for her,” Schieffer said of Couric’s debut on Tuesday. “To be quite honest, there were no expectations for me. When the ratings went up just a little bit, people said, ‘Wow.’
“She’s literally going to have to jump over the moon or somebody is going to say she isn’t doing as well as they thought she would. And that’s unfair to her. I think she’s going to attract an enormous audience on the first night, and then it will dial back.”
Couric’s opening night wardrobe will be among the many points of interest. Male anchors generally aren’t at the mercy of such scrutiny. As Schieffer notes, “I don’t even know if Walter Cronkite knew what tie he had on as he sat down to do the news. But television is television, and people are going to ask those questions.”
Schieffer wore a purple tie on his first night in honor of alma mater Texas Christian University, whose journalism school is named after him. So what might he do for an encore tonight?
“I was actually thinking of asking Katie if I could borrow one of her outfits,” he says, laughing. “Maybe behind that desk nobody would know. I could wear a little skirt.”
Couric will appear on tonight’s Evening News as a reporter. Her assignment is a farewell story on Schieffer, who says the uptick in the program’s ratings dovetails with its improved quality.
“It came out well for the right reasons. We just put on a better newscast,” he says. “We decided to make the correspondents the stars, and we did that.”
He cites Lara Logan, Byron Pitts and Lee Cowan as underused younger reporters who flourished in more visible roles. All have spent considerable time talking to Schieffer on camera after finishing their dispatches.
“Most people didn’t really know who they were,” he says. “My feeling is that the first step toward credibility is familiarity.”
Schieffer, a cancer survivor, turns 70 on Feb. 25th. He’ll continue to host Sunday morning’s Face the Nation from Washington D.C. while acting as a commentator on Wednesday editions of the Evening News. Analysis on major Washington stories also is part of his post-anchor regimen, but he otherwise won’t regularly cover the nation’s capital. A previously planned retirement at age 70 likely will be pushed back at the network’s request.
“My plan, as of today, is to stay until the (presidential) inauguration in 2009,” he says. “I’m 95 percent sure that’s what I want to do.”
Rather, his old CBS News colleague, is primed to explore new horizons at Mark Cuban’s Dallas-based HDNet. His weekly news program tentatively will premiere in October.
“I think everybody was surprised, but Dan is a great reporter,” Schieffer says. “I think he still has some good stories in him. It doesn’t matter anymore if something doesn’t have a great circulation. If you make news now, it gets picked up by everybody.”
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Mr. Letterman's Neighborhood
07/05/15 13:23
Note to readers: The early years of CBS’ Late Show with David Letterman were marked by frequent remotes that took viewers to various venues in the vicinity of the Ed Sullivan Theater. Mujibur and Sirajul’s Rock America store and Rupert Jee’s Hello Deli were frequent founts of comedy gold. But there were other regulars, too. I visited them all during the show’s first year. Damn, that was fun. (This article was first published on June 13, 1994.)
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
NEW YORK -- Behold the official Letterman Hoagie, available only at the hole-in-the-wall Hello Deli. Its ingredients are listed on a plastic plate displayed next to a head shot of the man himself: turkey, ham, cheese, lettuce, tomatoe (sic) sweet peppers, oil and vinegar. Proprietor Rupert Jee has just fixed one for Michelle Riley, a Baylor University student and member of the touring THEE Power & Light singing group.
Michelle and three friends from the group are patronizing the Hello Deli solely because it has become a bread-and-butter attraction on CBS’ Late Show with David Letterman. They can’t leave without having their picture taken with the famous Rupert.
“Yeah, why not?” he says, agreeably sandwiching himself into a group shot.
Although it’s drizzly and muggy, this is yet another beautiful day in Mr. Letterman’s one-block Broadway neighborhood, where cash registers ring whatever the weather. Most business near the Ed Sullivan Theater have become part of the act since Letterman began taping his show here last August. Hello Deli, K&L’s Rock America, the Longacre Copy Center, Academy Clothes, Flash Dancers -- they’re all bit players in Letterman’s ad hoc repertory company.
All of this seemed scary at first, at least to the show’s producers. For 11 years at NBC, Letterman’s Late Night neighborhood was 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where the fellow tenants were the stars of Today, Donahue, the NBC Nightly News and Saturday Night Live.
“When we moved here, we at first felt isolated and we were quite concerned about it,” says co-executive producer Robert Morton. “What was the show going to be like without having Dave go out and harass the anchorpeople across the hall or steal a guest from the Donahue show?”
Late Night also would be without famed commoner Meg Parsont, the Simon & Schuster Pocketbooks publicist who worked out of an adjacent high-rise office building. Meg did Dave’s bidding on more than a dozen of the old shows.
“We were worried when we lost Meg,” says co-executive producer Peter Lassally. “What were we going to do? Now we don’t even think about Meg anymore. Poor Meg. She had her 15 minutes of fame.”
Late Show’s new star attractions -- souvenir shop workers Mujibur Rahman and Sirajul Islam -- recently began selling T-shirts emblazoned with their pictures and the K&L Rock America logo. They also have been featured in People magazine and have had to join an actors union because of their frequent appearances on Late Show. Each earns between $500 and $1,000 per “guest shot.”
“It just evolved naturally here,” Morton says. “The guy next door at the sandwich shop (Rupert) was quite a character, and then we just hit gold with Mujibur and Sirajul. They were terrific, and the audience just warmed to them instantly. We’ve been very lucky. The neighbors have been very nice to us, and I think we’ve been pretty good to them.”
(Very, very good to Mujibur and Sirajul, who on Monday will launch their series of summertime Coast to Coast reports from America’s “most famous sites, historical landmarks and natural treasures.” The first stop is Niagra Falls.)
On a recent Sunday afternoon, Sirajul is selling Late Show T-shirts at $19 a pop while a fellow employee, unheralded, stamps price tags on miniature Statues of Liberty. “They give limousine, they give hotel. Everything,” Sirajul says of the pair’s recent Late Show excursion to Los Angeles, where they received a standing ovation when Letterman brought them onstage.
Tourists eagerly snap up T-shirts -- the Mujibur-Sirajul edition is the cheapest buy at $16 -- and share the excitement of posing with the Bangladesh-born celebrities. “Next,” says Sirajul, smiling broadly.
“Basically, before David Letterman, this neighborhood was almost like a jungle,” says Mujibur, who has worked at Rock America for three years. “We had a lot of problems. People tried to rob. Muggings. After he moved here, the neighborhood got clean. No more hassling. No more problems here. It is very peaceful and quiet. A lot of decent people come from around the country.”
Rock America is owned by a longtime friend of Mujibur’s. He doesn’t begrudge her the store’s sudden profits.
“She treats me well. I don’t mind working for her,” he says. “It’s too much pressure to have your own business.”
The storefronts of Rock America and other nearby businesses are testaments to Letterman’s most-favored-neighbor status.
The “Top Ten Reasons to Shop at Academy Clothes” include, “Our jackets are well hung” and “Dave window-shops here.”
At the Longacre Copy Center, 15 identical pictures of Letterman’s Xeroxed face are labeled, “The More Daves the Merrier.”
Santino Photo Electronics’ “Famous Wall” includes pictures of Letterman, band leader Paul Shaffer, Sylvester Stallone, Billy Crystal, Michael Jackson and John Forsythe. All are tastefully displayed above a “New York MAFIA” license plate.
“In the beginning we didn’t like him,” Santino employee Joe Russo says of Letterman. “We thought it was gonna hurt the business and everything. He wasn’t doin’ much for us. But it turned out OK. We got no complaints against him. He comes down here and does gigs and stuff. He’s fun to work with, yeah.”
Elliot Chapnick, owner of the Longacre Copy Center, has watched his wife, Fern (“The Copy Lady”) become one of Late Show’s supporting cast. She’s at home this day, but her husband has become practiced in telling how it all began.
“Dave wasn’t actually in the store, but he was talking through the camera. He asked, ‘Who’s in charge here?’ and I pointed to my wife. Since then I haven’t been on the show. My wife really enjoys this stuff, but I get nervous and upset when I have to appear on camera. The reason I tolerate this and do it at all is because my wife gets a kick out of being on TV. It really hasn’t done anything at all for our business. But the area is more active, and they certainly take care of the streets a lot better now. In the winter I don’t have to shovel the sidewalk anymore. Dave’s guys do it for me.”
Across the street at the Flash Dancers strip joint, uniformed doorman John Stancil was first targeted when Letterman had a pizza delivered to him. He since has been given a manicure while on the job and has played himself in a taped “Strongman, Fatman, Genius” sketch. At age 38, Stancil still has ambitions of becoming an actor or songwriter. But first things first.
“My next kind of little goal is to do either People magazine or Playboy or something like that,” he says.
Stancil says he has written a letter to Late Show suggesting “stuff I think would be cool to work with me on.”
“It would be nice if I could be used away from the club in a (Larry “Bud”) Melman-ish type of way. That would probably give me a new career, ya know? That’s my dream, because to be just a doorman at a topless bar the rest of my life isn’t what I aspire to.”
Stancil’s dream is quickly dashed by Late Show’s Morton.
“That’s the biggest danger,” he says. “When you hear that, that kind of queers the deal. It’s very nice when there are two guys who are very happy just working at the T-shirt shop and don’t pretend to be anything else.”
Lassally laughs at a strange set of circumstances in which people with low-paying or dead-end jobs suddenly are faced with “career decisions” about whether to quit or continue being Late Show regulars. Mujibur, for instance, had thoughts of returning to school and becoming a lawyer. Such plans are on hold, he says because “people like us. People want to wave the hand. And Dave is always nice to us. The whole thing is very exciting.”
Morton says the Late Show neighborhood has “limitless” comedic possibilities. “Anything can happen in New York City. There’s always something going on outside these doors.”
Some doors have been broken down. Being on Late Show in particular and television in general isn’t the intimidating big deal it used to be, Morton says. Witness the college student whom Letterman recently summoned off the street to co-host the show with him. She not only survived, but came off as a personable, seasoned pro. The latest word is that MTV wants to make a VJ of her.
“This is a generation that is used to performing before the video camera,” Morton says. “My nephew watches the show, and he looks at Letterman as if he’s just another one of his friends. It’s the same feeling he gets when he watches his birthday party video. Young people just have that camera savvy that our generation didn’t have.”
Indeed, 37-year-old Rupert Jee of the Hello Deli has “kind of lost count” of how many times he’s done Late Show. He has gracefully become an unassuming Somebody making Letterman hoagies and other sandwiches named after the show’s personalities. Interviews with reporters, autographs and picture-posing have become the new side orders of his profession.
“I wouldn’t say it’s disruptive,” Rupert says. “Dave has done a lot for this neighborhood. And the least we can do is reciprocate.”
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
Highly unusual: Letterman meets the press before his CBS Late Show takes wing
07/05/15 09:03
Note to readers: David Letterman does press conferences about as often as Donald Trump admits a mistake. In other words, they’re an extreme rarity. But he flew coast-to-coast in mid-summer 1993 to talk about his big, bold move from NBC to CBS after Peacock execs gave The Tonight Show to Jay Leno. Here’s the way it was at a time when the fates of “Stupid Pet Tricks” and Letterman’s nightly “Top Ten List” remained in the hands of corporate lawyers. (This article was first published on July 20, 1993.)
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
LOS ANGELES -- David Letterman, cigar in one hand and CBS in the palm of the other, stepped to the forefront of the late-night television battle Monday night.
“I don’t find myself in kind of a cloud of anxiety over this,” he told about 150 television critics gathered on a sound stage at CBS Television City. “Of course, I’m full of gin.”
There is a cloud of uncertainty over whether Late Show with David Letterman, which premieres Aug. 30th, can transfer the titles of hallmark comedy segments from his old show on NBC. The network has said it might take legal action if he uses “Stupid Pet Tricks” or “Top Ten Lists,” which NBC claims to own.
Letterman said he plans to do both, but “if they (CBS lawyers) say don’t do it, then obviously we won’t do it.” He expressed confidence, however, that both sides will “find each other all together on the high road.”
“The whole thing has struck me as being silly,” he added. “But if NBC is adamant and holding firm, it’s not gonna break my heart.”
There will be at least one casualty. The name Larry “Bud” Melman, a character played by Calvert DeForrest, is owned by NBC and will have to be changed, Letterman said.
Letterman took the stage with bandleader Paul Shaffer, uncustomarily dressed in a suit and tie, and producers Peter Lassally and Robert Morton. He is being paid $14 million by CBS, a figure he did not dispute, to battle NBC’s Tonight Show this season.
“I’m certainly not worth that kind of dough,” he said.
Letterman, 46, stood with a towering mockup of the New York City skyline behind him and with brightly lit “HOLLYWOOD” letters staring him in the face. A spangled CBS Eye logo hung behind him. Seldom willing to be interviewed during his NBC years, he alternately joked and answered questions seriously for one hour. Letterman even extended the interview session an extra 15 minutes after a CBS publicist tried to end it.
Letterman’s new home base will be the historic Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City. Noting the “clouds of asbestos” permeating the theater, Letterman joked, “I just think it might have been easier to renovate Ed Sullivan than the theater.”
Letterman said he wouldn’t alter his irreverent style to fit an earlier time period. “It’s going to be the same show,” he said. On the NBC program, “I tried not to offend people, but it kept happening.”
CBS began promoting Letterman’s program during last Tuesday’s All-Star baseball game. The tag line is “Same Dave. Better Time. New Station.” The pitchman is Dave himself in more than 80 different on-air spots.
George Schweitzer, the network’s vice president of marketing and communication, calls it “straight-ahead Dave.” Some samples: “Love songs. Nothing but love songs.” “You might remember me as The Fonz on television’s Happy Days. Well, I’m all grown up now.” “Don’t you think that CBS Eye thing is kinda creepy?” “Here’s the good news. We’ve been saving the funny stuff.”
The disquieting news for CBS is Letterman’s late-breaking starting time on one-third of the network’s affiliate stations, including KDFW-TV (Channel 4) in Dallas. Late Show will go head-to-head with NBC’s Tonight Show in only 67 percent of the country.
In the Dallas-Fort worth viewing area, Letterman’s program will begin halfway through Tonight at 11:05 p.m. Channel 4 plans to air reruns of Murphy Brown immediately after its 10 p.m. newscast. The station bought the rights to Murphy more than a year before CBS landed Letterman.
“David Letterman will start with a significant handicap in terms of (station) clearance,” said David Poltrack, CBS’ vice president of planning and research. “Eventually, by year two, it will be a case of the best man winning -- and that will be David Letterman.”
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Dave does Vegas -- and welcomes crossbow artist Hans Pantar
06/05/15 09:43
Note to readers: One of David Letterman’s early road trips, as host of his old NBC Late Night show, took him to Las Vegas for a week. He was more media-accessible back then, as was his idol, Johnny Carson, during the formative stages of his career. A handful of TV critics were invited to join Letterman and his crew in Vegas for interviews, behind-the-scenes access, etc. Here’s how that went down. (This article was first published on May 24, 1987.)
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
LAS VEGAS -- Live from Greenwich Village, it’s the Merv Griffin Show!!!
O-o-o-o-h, stranger in a strange land. But consider the flip side: hip David Letterman on stage with Merv’s motherlode -- Lola Falana, Robert Goulet, crossbow artist Hans Pantar and Clint Carvollo and his Exotic Birds. A fish out of water in the land of the jumbo shrimp cocktail -- Late Night with David Letterman meets Vegas. Va-va-voom.
“Is there an absurdity to doing the show in Vegas? Yeah, I think so, Letterman says from Late Night headquarters at Bally’s Hotel, where Dean Martin and the Golddiggers are the headline act. “I think there’s an absurdity to the town being her at all. It’s a sociological phenomenon. It’s fascinating. You may love it or you may hate it, but you’re going to be intrigued by it.
“Nothing’s really changed. The fact that the Golddiggers are still in business and they’re still appearing with Dean Martin -- certainly the sensibility of the place hasn’t changed. It was never our intention to make fun of it, but for 60 minutes a night you sort of give a feel of it.”
Letterman and Vegas tend to mix like showgirls and Fred Rogers. He has packed no polyester for this visit to Wayne Newton’s kinda town. For an interview he wears a gray George Washington University T-shirt, red shorts and a Los Angeles Dodgers cap. Later he can be seen bouncing a baseball through the hotel casino.
“One night, in a matter of minutes, I lost 21 bucks playing blackjack,” he says. “And I just thought, ‘Boy, even if I’d won, it wasn’t fun.’ I mean, I could go into a casino and say, ‘Here’s 21 bucks, talk to me for half an hour.’ And it would have been about the same feeling.”
Until last week’s four shows, taped in the Ziegfeld showroom at Bally’s, Letterman had never performed in Vegas, nor visited it for recreational purposes. There was Lake Tahoe, though, a Nevada death trap for him when he opened for Falana at the Sahara in the late 1970s.
“I did my standup every night to absolute dead silence,” he recalls. “You could hear people with dull knives cutting through prime rib. From the time I appeared out of the wings until the time I got to the microphone -- maybe 30 feet -- the applause would die about 10 feet into that walk. So I got to walk the last 20 feet in complete silence. And the ignominy would build from there. If I had to come here and do my standup act in front of these people, they’d eat me alive.”
The Late Night tapings in Vegas have a life insurance policy. Tickets for the shows were handled through NBC’s New York offices, ensuring that Letterman’s audience would be predominantly young and suitably crazed.
“They’re here for us. They weren’t on the way to the Liberace museum,” says Barry Sand, executive producer of Late Night.
Some 15,000 requests were received but only about 4,000 lucky winners can be squeezed into the gaudy Ziegfeld showroom for the four mid-afternoon tapings of Late Night. Lines wind through the mammoth Ballys casino, past the slots, roulette wheels and gaming tables. Even Vegas is impressed.
“This is perceived as an extremely big deal,” says an entertainment writer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which is giving front page coverage to Late Night’s visit. Radio DJs are sponsoring “Dave Watches,” with prizes awarded to listeners who spot Letterman and identify his whereabouts. Try the Hoover Dam, which he toured before turning it into a miniature chowder crock during Monday’s segment on “New Gift Items” from Vegas.
“Have you ever been to this thing?” he asks. “It’s unbelievable. No society builds things like that anymore. It was a real statement of our position in the world. I mean, it’s quite an edifice. You walk around, and your jaw just drops. And then you’re 30 minutes in a car and you come back and it’s Dean Martin and the Golddiggers. So it’s just, you know, it’s great.”
***
The roads to Ballys are lined with Vegas goop.
“Bob Stupak for Mayor? You Bet!” reads a placard promoting his candidacy. It’s a campaign peculiar to this town. Stupak owns the gargantuan Vegas World hotel and casino. And his placards are affixed to newspaper racks advertising hotel room service by “The Sexiest and Most Beautiful Triple X-rated Bodies in Las Vegas.”
Outside the main entrance to Ballys is a fountain featuring a humongous nude Greek god circled by four maidens whose bared, hand-cupped breasts spurt streams of water.
Another entrance leads to a mall area where one can gaze upon a life-size plaster statue of Wayne Newton. A commemorative plaque reads in part: “Although his talents have brought joy to many, he has endeared himself even more through his generosity in giving of himself for the benefit of others less fortunate. For this reason, Wayne is considered by many to personify the word ‘outstanding.’ “
Newton, who recently won a $19 million libel judgment against NBC, was willing to do Late Night had he not been otherwise engaged in Atlantic City.
“Oh yeah, he had no problem with that,” Sand says. “Once the 15 rounds are up, you usually shake hands and go to dinner.”
Sand also wanted Bobby Berosini and his orangutans, but “I guess that somehow they thought we were going to make fun of the orangutans. And the orangutan community would have been very upset.”
Hans Pantar, the crossbow expert, provided a chilling moment on Monday’s show when he blindfolded himself, turned his back on his wife and then shot an arrow through the target she held over her head. The seemingly gruff Hans had no time for Letterman’s small talk.
“We were his first television exposure,” Sand says. “He had maybe 10 minutes of rehearsal. You know, a millimeter off and she’s a dead person. And I’m saying, ‘Could you move it along, please?’ So this guy had a lot of pressure on him. He’s trying to think about how not to murder his wife, and we’re trying to kid around with him. Plus, he’s a pretty intense guy. It’s an intense profession, crossbow work.”
Vegas has a high-mockability quotient, especially from Late Night’s perspective. But Sand is an admirer of the city’s grind-away glitz.
“It’s show business,” he says. “It’s like being close to the reactor. It’s very hard to say it, but this is getting down in to the bowels to find out where the heating system is. We’re just getting sort of whiffs of show business in television. But the real core of it is Las Vegas. Just go to any of these casinos, and you’ll know what show business is. It is an am-a-a-azing place. I’m going to have a bellyful of show business when I go back to New York.”
***
It seems an impossibility, but David Letterman turned 40 on April 12th.
“For me, it came and went with little impact,” he says. “There was no celebration to speak of. The folks at the office gave me little token mementos, and that was about it. No trauma. I’ve never been a real good celebrator of anything, and 40 was no exception. It has had, at this point, no major impact on my emotional stability.”
Letterman continues his longtime relationship with Merrill Markoe, a Late Night writer and producer of the remote segments that in Vegas took him to Hoover Dam, through wedding chapels and on a tour of the city with Elvis impersonator Tony Roy and a 57-year-old drifter who ended up signing autographs for tourists.
The Letterman/Markoe partnership has endured through the brief run of his daytime show on NBC and through five years and three months of Late Night.
“I really would love to have kids,” he says. “I’m tired of spending all my waking energy worrying about the show, and I wish I had a more normal anchoring system, like everybody else in America. I wish I had a reasonable home life and stuff, but you work so hard and so long to get something that you want that you’re hesitant to relax -- at least I am -- because you’re afraid it might go away.
“I’m not lying to you. I do feel that way. And I know other people feel that way, because I had the same talk with Jane Pauley years and years ago, and she feels the same way, about it all slipping away. I don’t know why I just can’t sort of relax and be a little easier-going about it, but I can’t seem to do it.”
Told that Burt Reynolds seems to be doing an “I want to be a father” interview every other month, Letterman laughs and rejoins, “See, nobody should be in show business, because if you’re not an asshole, it’ll turn you into one. There should be no show business. It shouldn’t be allowed. You don’t need to be entertained, for God’s sakes.”
***
Late Night bandleader Paul Shaffer is still knocked out by the experience of doing an arrangement for Sammy Davis Jr., who sang “For Once In My Life” on Tuesday’s show.
“I love Sammy Davis,” he says in a voice that seldom rises above a golf announcer’s whisper. “People don’t understand. Or maybe I’m different than other people. A lot of people kid him, but I think that he’s just an incredible talent. Yeah, I got off on the experience of working with him. When Sammy sings, you gotta respect that.”
Bruised by negative reviews of his current cable special, Viva Shaf Vegas, Shaffer is wondering why nearly everyone nailed “what I thought was a pretty far-out show.”
“People didn’t get it. Nobody got it,” he says. “People don’t understand that I love these performers. I think I’m more of a celebrity here than anywhere else because people understand my ‘take’ on Vegas here. They don’t think that I’m putting them down. They have a sense of humor about themselves, and when I do my Vegas shtick,I think they appreciate that. I came to do my show here because I love the town. I don’t know -- Letterman -- why he came here. I think we’re all a little unclear as to what our attitude’s supposed to be.”
Although he has a reputation as a Vegas hound, Shaffer’s last visit, until this year, was as a 13-year-old boy whose lawyer father took him to all the top shows.
“Now that I think back on it, that’s what started me on this fascination,” he says. “My dad came to see good shows. We saw Nat King Cole, Juliet Prowse, Sarah Vaughan in a lounge. He refused to take me to the schlocky things. Ben Casey -- (actor) Vince Edwards -- was playing in a show. ‘Can’t we go see him?’ He refused. ‘No, that’s not any fun.’ And I sure never forgot it.”
Shaffer speaks glowingly of Wayne Newton “giving me a huge show business introduction!” upon spotting him in the audience. It’s a shame, he says, that Vegas has been cheapened by the likes of Larry Linville of M*A*S*H, advertised in Army fatigues as the star of Never Too Late at the Union Plaza showroom.
“I hate to say it, but that’s what Vegas is becoming now, a place where old TV stars can play and still live off their reputations.”
***
We pause now for a few riffs from Dave the Vegas tourist.
“I want to see the Brazilian show down the street. Fabulous Brazilian babes. It’s Oba, Oba, or Uba, Uba. Something like that.”
“And I did see Legends with Tony Roy. It’s an odd show. It’s all people impersonating dead folks. And I was thinking, if I die suddenly, I’d like to be part of the show. I went backstage and had my picture taken with ‘Marilyn Monroe’ and ‘Louis Armstrong.’ It was just kind of an odd reach to the other side, almost an another-world experience. The kind of thing you read about in The Enquirer.”
***
He’s the son of Bob Elliott, of television’s storied Bob and Ray comedy team. His birth amounted to a commercial break.
“It was, ‘Dad, I gotta do homework.’ He’d say, ‘Well, let’s watch some TV first, young man.’ The TV was always on, from the early evening news to The Tonight Show, when I fell asleep.”
Whether he’s Conspiracy Guy, Fugitive Guy, Regulator Guy or the host of “Nightlife,” Chris Elliott’s contributions to Late Night are shot from a cathode-ray gun. On Monday’s show from Vegas, he played Skylark, a fictional Chris Elliott impersonator appearing in Kenny Kerr’s “Boy-lesque” revue at the Silver Slipper.
“Bad TV, that’s where I find most of my stuff, yeah,” he says. “The Mannixes and the Cannons and the Medical Centers are sort of gold mines for me. My goal is to have my own cop drama one of these years. I’d definitely like to have my own kind of Mannix show.”
***
“It’s only TV” is a trademark Letterman kiss-off. But he doesn’t really feel that way.
“I’m not that cavalier about it. I wish I was,” he says. “I wish I could say it’s vapor, it goes out into the universe and you never see it again. But I can’t be that relaxed about it. I know that on any given night we can do a pretty bad show ourselves. So I don’t want to sound effete and aloof and condescending, because I know we have cluttered up the airwaves with our share of crap.
“I do know, though, that I’d rather have something on television that would cause people to wince or look cockeyed, than to talk to somebody about Knots Landing. You know, ‘Tell me how your character has grown, tell me about that cliffhanger.’ We do so much of that on our show that I feel kind of oily sometimes. We’re as guilty as anybody else.”
For Letterman, the kick is to walk a tightrope between put-on and put-out. Was actor Charles Grodin really peeved at his host when he aggressively defended Ishtar against a dig Letterman took before introducing him?
“I think it was a put-on,” Letterman says. “But it’s fun to sit at home and wonder, ’Is the guy really ticked off or not?’ You hardly ever see anything on TV that you can’t figure out. I was watching Ted Koppel interview Ferdinand Marcos one night. And during a commercial break I turned over to watch Grodin and (Johnny) Carson. And I never went back to Ferdinand Marcos because it was one of those deals where Grodin was just working him and working him.
“He’d say, ‘Well, Johnny, what makes you tick? What makes you laugh? We don’t know anything about you. Who are you?’ It was relentless, but it was fascinating. I think Grodin’s absolutely great. He comes on with that snitty, little wimpy kind of weaselly attitude, and it’s quite amusing.”
Letterman remains acutely aware that a number of critics and entertainers consider him to be a jerk of an interviewer. Cher used stronger words a year ago when Letterman asked her why she finally had agreed to do the show.
“Because you thought I . . .” he began. She finished his sentence with an expletive.
“The trouble with me and our show is I still get people feeling that I’m nasty and that I’m hurting people’s feelings,” he says. “In the beginning it really bothered me that people had that perception. So I would work on trying to hold back and assess the situation a little bit better before I went in there. But I still get criticized. So for all my vigilance, it hasn’t paid off.”
NBC is paying Letterman multi-millions of dollars under the terms of a new three-year contract that will take Late Night into the 1990s.
“I’m just sure I’ve been screwed, but it’s nice to know you have a job,” he jokes. “It’s my constant fear that sooner or later the show will just start to erode and defuse and it just won’t be as good. Then again, I don’t know how good it ever was.
“I hesitate to say this, but I’ve always felt that maybe the show could never really live up to the impression many people have of it. I think that some people who don’t watch the show think it’s a much bigger, much more important show than it actually is.
“Then they turn it on and say, ‘This -- this is what they’re all talking about?’ “
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