David Letterman

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  David Michael Letterman was born on the 12th of April 1947, in Indianapolis, Indiana, and over the next six decades he would reshape what American late-night television could be. He hosted 6,080 episodes across two shows, surpassing his friend and mentor Johnny Carson as the longest-serving late-night talk show host in the country's television history. But the raw numbers only hint at the stranger, more personal story underneath. How did a self-described average student from a north-side Indianapolis neighborhood become the defining voice of a genre? What drove a man who admits he was "drunk 80% of the time" in 1981 to build a television empire that lasted until 2015? And what does it mean that nearly every major late-night host of the past three decades traces a direct line back to him? This documentary follows Letterman from the Atlas Supermarket where he worked as a stock boy, through emergency quintuple bypass surgery, through extortion attempts and personal scandals, to a courthouse wedding in Montana and a seat across from a wartime president in Kyiv.

• 2. Indianapolis Roots

  ›

  Broad Ripple High School sits about 12 miles from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and Letterman grew up collecting model cars in the neighborhood around it. His father, Harry Joseph Letterman, was a florist who survived a heart attack at 36, and the fear of losing him stayed with Letterman through his entire childhood. In 2000, he told an Esquire interviewer that what he admired most about his father was the ability to tell jokes and be the life of the party. Harry Joseph Letterman died of a second heart attack in 1973 at 57, a loss that would echo through Letterman's comedy for decades.

  Letterman originally wanted to attend Indiana University, but his grades weren't good enough. He enrolled instead at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where he became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity and graduated in 1969 from the Department of Radio and Television. He later described himself as a "C student" and eventually endowed a scholarship at Ball State specifically for C students. At WBST, Ball State's 10-watt campus radio station, he began his broadcasting career, then promptly got fired for treating classical music with irreverence. That firing became its own kind of credential.

  Through most of his college years, Letterman had no clear sense of direction. The turning point came from watching Paul Dixon, the host of a Cincinnati-based talk show that also aired in Indianapolis. In Letterman's own words: "I was just out of college, and I really didn't know what I wanted to do. And then all of a sudden I saw him doing it on TV. And I thought: That's really what I want to do." He registered for the Vietnam draft after graduation, passed his physical, and drew a lottery number of 346 out of 366. That number kept him out of the war and pointed him toward a career in broadcasting.

• 3. The Weatherman Years

  ›

  Soon after graduating in 1969, Letterman became a radio talk show host at WNTS and then an anchor and weatherman at Indianapolis television station WLWI. The weather segments became a laboratory for the comic instincts that would eventually define his career. He congratulated tropical storms for being upgraded to hurricanes. He predicted hailstones "the size of canned hams." He reported temperatures for fictitious cities, including "eight inches of snow in Bingree and surrounding areas."

  One particular moment stands out. A satellite map accidentally omitted the state border between Indiana and Ohio, and Letterman riffed: "The higher-ups have removed the border between Indiana and Ohio, making it one giant state. Personally, I'm against it. I don't know what to do about it." That willingness to treat the on-air moment as a site for absurdist improvisation was already fully formed.

  In 1971, Letterman appeared as a pit road reporter for ABC Sports' tape-delayed coverage of the Indianapolis 500, his first nationally telecast appearance. He was initially introduced as Chris Economaki before the error was corrected on-air. Letterman interviewed Mario Andretti, who had just crashed out of the race. Beyond the weather desk, he starred in a local children's show, hosted a late-night program called Freeze-Dried Movies in which he once acted out a scene from the 1954 film Godzilla using plastic dinosaurs, and hosted a Saturday morning show called Clover Power, where he interviewed 4-H members about their projects.

• 4. Los Angeles and the Carson Pipeline

  ›

  In 1975, encouraged by his then-wife Michelle and several fraternity brothers, Letterman packed their belongings into his pickup truck and drove to Los Angeles to become a comedy writer. He began performing at The Comedy Store, where Jimmie Walker saw him and, with an endorsement from George Miller, hired him to write jokes for Walker's stand-up act. The writing room at various times included Jay Leno, Paul Mooney, Robert Schimmel, Richard Jeni, Louie Anderson, Elayne Boosler, Byron Allen, Jack Handey, and Steve Oedekerk.

  By the summer of 1977 he was a writer and regular on The Starland Vocal Band Show, a six-week summer series on CBS. He co-starred in a Barry Levinson-produced comedy special called Peeping Times. He made appearances on game shows including The $20,000 Pyramid and Hollywood Squares, and was screen-tested for the lead role in the 1980 film Airplane!, a part that went to Robert Hays.

  The critical connection came through The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Letterman's dry, sarcastic humor caught the attention of the show's scouts, and he became a regular guest. By 1980-1981 he was a regular guest host. Carson became the single biggest influence on Letterman's career, and in early 2005 it was revealed that Carson had been quietly sending Letterman jokes to use in his monologue, with CBS senior vice president Peter Lassally noting that Carson "got a big kick out of it." On the 23rd of June 1980, NBC gave Letterman his own morning show, The David Letterman Show. It was a critical success, winning two Emmy Awards, but a ratings disappointment. It was canceled, with the last episode airing on the 24th of October 1980. NBC kept him on payroll and moved him to a different time slot.

• 5. Late Night and the NBC Years

  ›

  Late Night with David Letterman debuted on the 1st of February 1982, with Bill Murray as its first guest. The show ran Monday through Thursday at 12:30 a.m. Eastern Time, directly following The Tonight Show. A Friday night broadcast was added in June 1987. The show developed a cult following, particularly among college students, and was known for being edgy and unpredictable. Letterman's reputation as an acerbic interviewer was established in verbal sparring matches with Cher, who called him an "asshole" on-air, as well as with Shirley MacLaine, Charles Grodin, and Madonna.

  The show's regular features were genre-mocking exercises in controlled absurdity: Stupid Pet Tricks, Stupid Human Tricks, dropping objects off a five-story building, suits made of Alka-Seltzer and Velcro and suet, the recurring Top 10 list, the Monkey-Cam, and Small Town News. On the 19th of August 1985, Letterman used a bullhorn to interrupt a live interview on The Today Show, announcing he was NBC News president Lawrence K. Grossman and that he was not wearing any pants. He staged elevator races with commentary by NBC Sports' Bob Costas. In 1982, Andy Kaufman appeared on the show wearing a neck brace, and professional wrestler Jerry Lawler slapped him to the ground; Lawler and Kaufman's friend Bob Zmuda later revealed the incident was staged.

  In 1992, Carson retired, and both Carson and many fans believed Letterman was the natural successor to The Tonight Show. When NBC gave the job to Jay Leno instead, Letterman departed for CBS, taking the entire Late Night creative apparatus with him. Three years after that move, HBO produced The Late Shift, a television film based on a New York Times reporter's book about the battle between Letterman and Leno for the Tonight Show hosting spot. Lassally later stated plainly that Carson had always believed Letterman, not Leno, was his "rightful successor."

• 6. CBS, Ratings Wars, and the Oscars

  ›

  The Late Show with David Letterman debuted on the 30th of August 1993, taped at the historic Ed Sullivan Theater, where Ed Sullivan had broadcast his variety series from 1948 to 1971. CBS spent $8 million renovating the theater for Letterman's arrival and signed him to a three-year, $14 million-per-year contract, doubling his Late Night salary. In 1993 and 1994, the Late Show consistently beat The Tonight Show in ratings. Then in 1995, after Hugh Grant appeared on Leno's show following his arrest for soliciting a prostitute, Leno's ratings climbed and he held the lead for years.

  The Late Show drew 7.1 million viewers nightly in its 1993-94 season. By the time Leno departed in 2009, that number had fallen to about 3.8 million. In the final months of Leno's first stint, he beat Letterman by a 1.3-million-viewer margin. Over his career, Letterman's shows received 67 Emmy Award nominations and won 12 times in his first 20 years in late night. From 1993 to 2009, Letterman ranked higher than Leno in the annual Harris Poll of Nation's Favorite TV Personality 12 times. In 2003 and 2004, he ranked second in that poll, behind only Oprah Winfrey.

  On the 27th of March 1995, Letterman hosted the 67th Academy Awards ceremony. He opened by introducing Uma Thurman to Oprah Winfrey, then introducing both to Keanu Reeves: "Oprah...Uma. Uma...Oprah. Have you kids met Keanu?" The joke, inspired by a comic essay in The New Yorker titled "Yma Dream" by Thomas Meehan, fell flat along with most of his other material that night. Critics called it a poor performance, saying his irreverent style undercut the glamor of the event. Letterman attracted the highest Oscars ratings since 1983 but turned the apparent disaster into a running gag, joking on his first show afterward: "Looking back, I had no idea that thing was being televised." He also noted that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences continued to hold him in high regard and had invited him to host again.

• 7. Heart Surgery and Personal Life

  ›

  On the 14th of January 2000, a routine checkup revealed a severely obstructed artery. Letterman was rushed to New York Presbyterian Hospital for emergency quintuple bypass surgery. During his recovery, reruns were introduced by friends including Bill Murray, Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Hillary Clinton, Julia Roberts, and Bruce Willis. Letterman returned to the show on the 21st of February 2000, bringing almost all the doctors and nurses who had treated him onto the stage, singling out in particular a nurse who had given him bed baths. He introduced Drs. O. Wayne Isom and Louis Aronne, who would go on to appear on the show regularly.

  Letterman turned the surgery into comedy material, including a running campaign to have Indiana rename the freeway circling Indianapolis, I-465, "The David Letterman Bypass." He also invited Foo Fighters to play "Everlong" on that comeback episode, introducing them as "my favorite band, playing my favorite song." The band had been in the middle of a South American tour that they canceled to play his return. The relationship deepened over the years, and by October 2014 the band played a week-long stint on the Late Show.

  Letterman's personal life had followed a complicated path. He married his college sweetheart Michelle Cook on the 2nd of July 1968, in Muncie, Indiana; they divorced in 1977. From 1978 to 1988 he had a long-term relationship with Merrill Markoe, the former head writer and producer on Late Night, who Time magazine wrote had the defining relationship of his career. Markoe created Stupid Pet and Human Tricks and, as his biographer Jason Zinoman put it, "put the surrealism in Letterman's comedy." Letterman began dating Regina Lasko in February 1986 while still with Markoe. Lasko gave birth to their son Harry Joseph Letterman on the 3rd of November 2003, named after Letterman's father. Letterman and Lasko married on the 19th of March 2009, in a courthouse civil ceremony in Choteau, Montana, near a ranch he had purchased in 1999. He announced the marriage during the show taping of March 23, telling the audience he had nearly missed the ceremony because his truck got stuck in mud two miles from the house.

  For most of his adult life Letterman dealt with severe anxiety and alcoholism, saying he had begun drinking around age 11 or 13 and continued until 1981, when he was 34. He described 1981 as a year when he was "drunk 80% of the time." He achieved stability through a combination of Transcendental Meditation and low doses of medication. In 2009, he announced on-air that he had been the victim of an extortion attempt: a package left in his car threatened to expose his sexual relationships with female employees unless he paid $2 million. Letterman contacted the Manhattan District Attorney and participated in a sting operation. Joe Halderman, a producer for the CBS news magazine 48 Hours, was arrested that day after trying to deposit a fake check. Halderman pleaded guilty in March 2010 and was sentenced to six months in prison followed by probation and community service.

• 8. The Final Show and After

  ›

  On the 3rd of April 2014, during a show taping, Letterman informed CBS president Les Moonves he would retire by the 20th of May 2015. His final episode aired that date and opened with a presidential sendoff featuring four of the five living American presidents, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, each mimicking Gerald Ford's statement "Our long national nightmare is over." A Top Ten List of "things I wish I could have said to David Letterman" was performed by Alec Baldwin, Barbara Walters, Steve Martin, Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Carrey, Chris Rock, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Peyton Manning, Tina Fey, and Bill Murray. The closing was a montage set to a live performance of "Everlong" by Foo Fighters. Bill Murray, who had been the first guest on Late Night in 1982, was the final guest on Late Show.

  The finale drew 13.76 million viewers in the United States with an audience share of 9.3/24, earning the show its highest ratings since following the 1994 Winter Olympics on the 25th of February 1994. It was also the highest-rated program on network television that night, beating all prime-time shows. The Late Show's final demo numbers, 4.1 in adults 25-54 and 3.1 in adults 18-49, were the highest since Oprah Winfrey's first Late Show appearance on the 1st of December 2005.

  In retirement, Letterman made a surprise appearance at Steve Martin and Martin Short's A Very Stupid Conversation show in San Antonio, Texas, where he delivered a Top Ten List roasting Donald Trump's presidential campaign. In 2018, he began hosting My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman on Netflix, a six-episode monthly series of long-form interviews that premiered the 12th of January 2018, with Barack Obama as the first guest. In October 2022, Letterman traveled to Kyiv, Ukraine, to film a standalone episode interviewing Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Season 6 of the series premiered on the 16th of December 2025, and a standalone episode with Adam Sandler followed on the 1st of December 2025. Worldwide Pants, the production company Letterman founded in 1991, had by then also co-owned Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, an IndyCar team that won the Indianapolis 500 in 2004 with driver Buddy Rice and again in 2020 with Takuma Sato, bringing Letterman's story full circle to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway 12 miles from where he grew up.