A Man of Letters
It’s not every day that you get a story about an owner of an Indy Car racing team on these pages, but it’s not every day that you get an Indy Car racing team owner with as impressive of a resume as the subject of this column. There is a man, who was the co-owner of the car that won the 2004 Indy 500, the pinnacle event of the sport of motor car racing, who has lived a life even MORE impressive than being the owner of the car that drove down Victory Lane at the Brickyard known as Indy.
It’s the story of a man who was born and raised in Indiana, and though he may have had Indy 500 fever running through his veins throughout his upbringing, he made most of his fame and fortune in New York City. But the man is being talked about today not because of his racing career, but rather for what he has done outside of the world of sports.
The man we are talking about today is retiring from his job after 33 distinguished years at being really good at what he does. It is not often that someone lives a life where people say THAT person is one of the best people to ever participate in a particular profession, but that is exactly why we are talking about the accomplishments and the impact of the career of that man of letters.
We are talking, of course, about David Letterman on the day of his last show as host of “Late Show With David Letterman.” That is when people start writing about the great ones, you know. After they have racked up the years of distinguished service and after the people can then realize that the person who is now gone was “pretty damned impressive” when they were at their peak.
David Letterman may have been a great talk show host, but he was so much more than that. People talking about him today about his incomparable run as a late night institution are rightly comparing him to the previously acknowledged “best talk show host of all time,” Johnny Carson. As Carson was the man consistently there talking to a nation about all of the things that happened in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, Letterman was the man who took the baton and became America’s guide to the world for at least the couple of generations that watched this intelligent, funny person talk about all of the events of the years from 1982 to 2015.
The late night history of talk show as window to the American soul as seen in “The Tonight Show” has evolved from the witty observational and physically goofy type of sketch comedy of Steve Allen, to the cerebral, sophisticated, interviewing version of Jack Paar, to the mainstream, standup comedian, everyman Johnny Carson. Letterman had a little bit of all of them in his skill set. And even though Jay Leno succeeded them as Tonight Show hosts, it was clearly Letterman who was the next man in line in the evolution of just what a late night talk show host was supposed to be. Intelligent enough to be sophisticated in interviews, and goofy enough to cover himself in a suit of velcro and jump up against a velcro wall and just stick to it.
Carson was THE standard of excellence and ruled the airwaves when David Letterman came to Hollywood as a struggling standup comedian. Carson gave Letterman his first chance as a guest on his “Tonight Show.” Carson liked Letterman and thought he might be the logical successor. Carson was mainstream Top Forty rock. Letterman started out being the Alt Rock new wave innovator, with a skewed, cocksure way of looking at things, and ended up (after Carson retired) being the mainstream successor to his “mentor.”
Letterman was the comedic talk show bridge from the 20th Century to the 21st. He utilized all of the high tech innovations that seemed to pop up during the High Tech Era that was unfolding right before his eyes. When he started, there were no cell phones and computers were just starting to be able to do things. By the time he finished, the world was vastly different. He was consistently funny, always creative and innovative with the talk show art form, and definitely interesting and entertaining for his audience throughout his tenure .
He won his truckload of Emmy Awards for his talk shows, he once hosted the Academy Awards, he was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors, where he was called “one of the most influential personalities in the history of television.” All of the current late night hosts (Conan, Kimmel, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, etc.) say they have been influenced in one way or another by Letterman. He’s the freaking Godfather of talk show hosts.
He was the talk show host (like Carson used to do) that gave a slew of current comedians their big break by being on his prestigious show. He created the Late, Late Show franchises (that succeeded his show), he made the show “Everybody Loves Raymond” happen. He was enough of a prankster to go up to the tops of tall buildings just to film the act of dropping watermelons to the concrete below to see them crash to the ground and splatter into pieces.
He got comedy from kids and from Presidents of the U.S.A. and everywhere in between. The idea about getting good comedic entertainment from stupid pet tricks or stupid human tricks was pretty much YouTube before it ever existed. This man knew what was funny. This man was a wise ass, but was likeable. This man had a tap into what made the American TV viewer tick. All the while, this man never sold out to The Man.
The bottom line about David Letterman is that he in the course of his career turned into a truly defining, influential person of his generation. The same way Johnny Carson was the guy people of an earlier generation turned on to watch on television every night, David Letterman was the guy that the succeeding generations have watched to help learn about how to watch and view the world.
It’s not every day that someone grows into being an American institution. And it is a time to celebrate their careers when they decide to retire from the scene. So we celebrate the career of the man of letters. Good luck, Dave, in whatever you do. Thanks for the memories.
