Name: Staff Favorite Moments: Merrill Markoe On "The David Letterman Show" | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-02-22T12:31:48.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Merrill Markoe On "The David Letterman Show" | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Staff Favorite Moments: Merrill Markoe On "The David Letterman Show" | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-22. Transcript available.

Hello, I'm Meryl Marko, and I was the original head writer of Late Night with
David Letterman,
which was the NBC version of the show, and I was also the head writer of the
show that preceded it,
which was the David Letterman show, which was what we referred to as the
morning show.
For me, you can't get to Late Night without stumbling through what the morning
show was.
I say this over and over again, it was really a bath of fire for me.
I'd never been on a talk show before. In its initial stages, the producer that
we had hired,
who was a game show guy, quit right before we hit the air, and so the show hit
the air without a producer,
with me acting as a producer, never having been on a talk show before. That was
fun.
Good morning. I'm William Qualls, security officer at NBC for five years.
I'm supposed to welcome the David Letterman show to NBC,
and to remind you all to carry your NBC identification with you at all times.
I don't know who David Letterman is. I don't care who David Letterman is.
If he doesn't have his ID card, I'm going to have to shoot him.
Okay, so when Mr. Letterman got the morning show, nobody thought it was an
appropriate time slot.
Everybody said, really? Live at 9 o'clock in the morning?
But he just wanted to be on the air, and nobody, he didn't care what time it
was going to be.
He wanted a show.
So we just thought, well, we're going to do the show we want to do, and it
doesn't matter what time of day it's on.
I remember sitting around in a room full of executives, and I was telling him
some of the things we were going to do,
and he was going, you know, it's mostly a female audience, and I don't think
any of the women are going to go for this.
And I remember saying to them, I'm the only woman sitting in this room.
How can you tell me what women want to see?
And, of course, I'm completely nuts, so I was absolutely wrong.
I'm happy to say I just had weird, eccentric ideas for what the show would be,
as did Mr. Letterman.
The premise of the show that they gave us, there was, the head of NBC was a guy
named Fred Silverman,
and he wanted Dave to do a show that would be like a show that was called
Arthur Godfrey and Friends.
We'd never seen Arthur Godfrey, and I'm guessing nobody who's listening to this
has ever seen Arthur Godfrey.
He was a really beloved talk show host from the 1950s, and he had a show where
he had a family of friends that came on every day.
It was the mandate that we had to hire a family.
So we hired friends of ours who moved to New York for this, and I thought I'd
honor them since they died in battle for the show with some clips of what they
were doing.
First of all, Edie McClurg, who played a character called Mrs. Marv Mendenhall.
Edie was a stand-up who was a groundling from Los Angeles, and her character,
Mrs. Marv Mendenhall, was distinct in that you never found out her first name
because she always called herself Mrs. Marv.
And then also she lived just outside of every major city in the United States.
Now, I thought I'd share with some of our viewers tips on how the Mendenhall
clan takes this day in hand, you know?
Now, first of all, we just have so much fun when we all sign the Declaration of
Independence.
You see, here we have a Xerox of the original.
Cheap photocopy of the original, yeah.
Yes. This is the one we used last year.
Now, you see here, Marv Jr. has signed right alongside of John Hancock.
Yeah. And right over here is Hugo Pruitt. He's our neighbor. He's just a lovely
man. He has to live with the curse of a 400-pound son-in-law.
Yeah.
This next one is my friend Valerie Bromfield, who is one of the funniest people
I've ever met.
She did a character called Mrs. Bjorkman, who was just sort of generally an
Eastern European immigrant who came on and harangued Dave.
And we were told afterwards that Fred Silverman found the character terrifying.
Hello?
What a handsome woman you are, Mrs. Bjorkman.
It must be very nice to be here. I've never seen you before.
It must be very nice. You know, well, congratulations on, on, uh,
congratulations on the, uh, would you like a lady schick? Would that, uh, uh...
You know we don't have heat in our house.
No heat?
You have all of this heat blowing at your face. No, we don't have that.
We go out, we eat very bad food, and then we get sick and very hot, and we come
home, and we keep the heat in our house while we are sick.
Yes.
So, your homes are heated, actually, by fevers.
Yes, fever heat.
Fever heat.
I got...
Fever heat, I got...
Another one of our regulars was a cartoonist named Ed Subitsky, who we just
liked for his sort of general, humble demeanor.
And we did a running gag with him, where he came on the show repeatedly as a
variety of unexpected celebrities, who were just dropping by at the last minute.
He came in without makeup, without hair, just looking like Ed Subitsky, and the
way the bit ran, uh, Dave would just accept that Suzanne Somers was here to see
him, and just be, uh, happy to see her until Ed Subitsky would reveal the truth.
Here, let me, before we begin, you smell incredible.
Mr. Letterman, Mr. Letterman.
And I have to say that you are more provocative in person than an attractive
female.
Mr. Letterman, Mr. Letterman, I lied to you. I'm not really Suzanne Somers. I
just wanted to be on television. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. Please, please
don't put me in jail. I'm sorry.
I'll never do it again. I promise. I'm sorry. Really, I'm very sorry. I'm sorry.
Not less than an hour ago, the man told me he was Suzanne Somers.
And then writer Rich Hall used to do, uh, a group of segments that were
supposed to be, uh, dramatic recreations of actual events.
You know, disco may have a stronghold in some parts of this country, but in Pitkinville,
Montana, there's a new dance sensation, and it won't be long before it begins
to sweep the nation.
The new dance is called The Bounce, but around about 9:30 at night, well, the
lights go down and a few couples head over to the dance pit there, and everyone
else gathers around to watch, and just kind of wait for that music to course
right through you.
There you go. Then you throw yourself down on your back, wiggle a little, squirm
a little, and you're ready to bounce.
We debuted a lot of stuff that went on to be regular features on the subsequent
shows.
We started Stupid Pet Tricks, which didn't work out as planned right away, but
quickly became a thing that you could refill endlessly.
I used to think that it was my job as a head writer to play a certain amount of
tricks on Dave, which quickly became old for Dave.
In this particular instance, I snuck Dave's dog Bob onto the Stupid Pet Tricks
roster because I wanted to see whether, when Dave was all pumped up in doing
the show, he would recognize his own dog standing in front of him.
Oh, wait a minute. Ladies and gentlemen, we're surprised, Dave, this morning.
At great expense, this is Dave's dog, Bob, ladies and gentlemen.
Yes, it's Bob. Hello, Bob. Now, where is it? How is it that you've kidnapped my
dog, Bob?
Well, David, I keep him in the daytime, and I call him Chico, and I've got him
doing all kinds of tricks.
My dog is leading a double life like it's a gentleman I've seen.
Another thing that started during the morning show was Viewer Mail, which was
originally based on the fact that 60 Minutes, which was the most popular show
in the United States at the time,
regularly showed letters from their viewers, all of which were extremely
important, some comment about nuclear technology.
I started reading the mail that came into our show, and I quickly realized that
it was coming from either rehabilitation facilities or prisons.
This one comes to us from Mark Banner, Janesville, Wisconsin.
The words about, in, out, inside, outside, beside, next to, up, down, across,
over, under, on, off, via, by, from, with, within, without, along, alongside,
amid, back, of, behind, am, is, are, was, were, be, been, bar, and away are
prepositions.
I appreciate that information, Mark, but for the record, am, is, are, was, here,
be, and been are verbs.
Away is an adverb, and bar is a verb, a noun, and a place I'm sure you know
quite well.
Today is our last show on the air Monday, Las Vegas.
We were one of the only shows that got to do a very last show, because we were
canceled while we were on the air live.
So we got to say goodbye, and in the very last show, we had the pictures and
resumes up of all of the staff members who were on the show,
because now we would all be looking for work.
And then all the staff members dressed up as playing cards, because we were
told that the show that was replacing us was called Card Shark.
With cash and fabulous prizes, on NBC.
That's The Morning Show, a four-month pilot for Late Night with David Letterman.
Right from the beginning, it was my contention.
I read the NBC research, and if we would have had more sex, more violence on
the show, I think we would have done better right from the start.
Sex and violence?
Sex and violence.
And so I would like to share a little sex and violence.
See, it's still early.
We still have 25 minutes.
25 minutes.
Maybe the show will be on after all.
Turn it right around.
Turn it right around.
Okay.
Ladies and gentlemen, February.
And for the gals.
January.
Whoa!
Maybe you've got something there.
And for everyone else.
A little violence now?
Something for the entire family.
Some violence, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
That's our first and only installment of Stupid Writer Tricks.
We'll be right back with our final behind-the-scenes story.