David Letterman, born in Indianapolis on 12 April 1947, hosted late-night television for 33 years, from 1982 to 2015. His 6,080 episodes of Late Night and Late Show made him the longest-serving late-night host in American television history.
David Michael Letterman was born on 12 April 1947 in Indianapolis, Indiana, and has two sisters. His father, Harry Joseph Letterman, was a florist, and his mother, Dorothy Marie Letterman Mengering, was a church secretary who became an occasional figure on his show, usually at holidays and birthdays. He grew up in the Broad Ripple area on the north side of Indianapolis and enjoyed collecting model cars. He has said he admired his father’s ability to tell jokes and be the life of the party. His father survived a heart attack at 36 and died of a second in 1973, at the age of 57.
He attended Broad Ripple High School and worked as a stock boy at the local Atlas Supermarket. He wanted to attend Indiana University but his grades were not good enough, so he went to Ball State University in Muncie, where he joined Sigma Chi and graduated in 1969 from the Department of Radio and Television. A self-described average student, he later endowed a scholarship for what he called “C students”. He registered for the draft after graduating, but was not called for Vietnam because his lottery number was 346 out of 366.
His broadcasting career began as an announcer and newscaster at the college’s student-run station WBST, from which he was fired for treating classical music irreverently. He then helped found another campus station, WAGO-AM. He credits Paul Dixon, host of a Cincinnati-based talk show he watched while growing up, for inspiring his career choice.
On 1 February 1982 he made his debut with Late Night with David Letterman on NBC, and later moved to CBS for Late Show with David Letterman. He ended the 33-year run on 20 May 2015 with the final broadcast of Late Show with David Letterman, after hosting 6,080 episodes in total, surpassing his friend and mentor Johnny Carson as the longest-serving late-night host in American television history.
He is also a producer. His company, Worldwide Pants, produced his shows as well as The Late Late Show and several primetime comedies, the most successful of which was the CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. Several late-night hosts have cited his influence, including Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, each of whom succeeded him on Late Night, Stephen Colbert, his successor on The Late Show, Jimmy Kimmel and Jon Stewart.
Since 2018 he has hosted the Netflix series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman.
The first concert he attended was by the Beach Boys at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum, when he was 17, and his mother, who died in 2017, was a familiar figure on his show for decades. He has said he admired his friend and mentor Johnny Carson, whose record for the longest tenure he eventually passed.
Image: David Letterman hosting Late Night in 1982 (file photo). Photo: Gotfryd, Bernard, photographer / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
