Letterman’s move to CBS in 1993 precipitated two major changes. The CBS show would be owned by Letterman’s company, Worldwide Pants, which meant the staffers were no longer employees of a network. Dave and his team created a company to handle all of the business operations, including a human resources department. The other major difference was the nature of the venue. At NBC, they taped at a typical television studio, inside 30 Rockefeller Plaza. At CBS, they taped at the legendary Ed Sullivan Theater. These two factors allowed the Late Show to exist in splendid isolation.

Part 1

The Ed Sullivan Theater

When David Letterman left NBC in 1993, Hal Gurnee, the show’s director at that time, led the effort to find a home for the new show on CBS. He had the interesting idea of taping in the Ed Sullivan Theater. CBS purchased and renovated the theater, located on the corner of Broadway and 53rd Street. The theater had been the home of The Ed Sullivan Show (originally titled Toast of the Town), which ran from 1953 through 1971. When CBS purchased the theater in 1993, the building was in complete disarray. Through the years Dave would create a lot of comedy out of the size of the rats that had resided there before he arrived. Once CBS took Dave from a studio to a theater, it allowed Dave and his staff to enrich the history of the place, which had created so many iconic moments in pop culture, including appearances of Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

“I love the Ed Sullivan Theater. We were looking at different facilities around the city. We went in there and it was a minute or two from being condemned in actuality. By God, in a very short period of time they turned it from whatever it had been into just a first-rate television facility. I am from the school that you do TV in a studio, so I was wondering if it could in fact be done from a theater, but the place is fantastic.”

—David Letterman, CNN, May 29, 2012

Jerry Foley: I absolutely was aware of how special and unique that theater was. That included Ed Sullivan’s history with it. It was never lost on me that we were in an iconic spot. 

Jill Goodwin: Being on our own you were kind of isolated and an island away from other shows and productions. You felt like your own thing. You felt proud going to work there every day. The seats were really cool in the old theater in the balcony.

Janice Penino (Human Resources, Worldwide Pants): I have two of the chairs from that era in my basement. When we moved there from NBC, they were throwing away all the chairs. I have a piece of the Ed Sullivan Theater in my basement.

Lee Ellenberg: You do have that sense of history. We would get off the elevator on the seventh floor and there were these very large photos of Jack Paar and Jackie Gleason. It was thrilling. Our show was in a theater. It was like going to see a Broadway show. You came in, the doors closed, you took your seat and watched a show. That really did add a flavor that other shows didn’t have. 

Mike Buczkiewicz: I did it for ten years, and it always took my breath away, to be on that floor. It is almost like a living, breathing organism. It is a wonderful venue. You knew you were part of the history there because of the lore of that building. I have worked at several places before and since; those were TV studios. The Ed Sullivan was a magical theater. 

Barbara Gaines: Being able to walk out and be in the city was fantastic. Being in the legacy of the Ed Sullivan Theater was great. But it had a lot of difficulties.

Bill Scheft: I remember running into Lorne Michaels [executive producer of Saturday Night Live], and he said, “I still never understood why you guys went to the theater. You have total control of the environment in a television studio and you don’t in a theater.” I think that is why when we first came to CBS, we would do these big stunt-driven pieces, because it was this big barn.

Barbara Gaines: I thought it was difficult to work in the theater as opposed to a studio. Over at NBC, I would run right outside the door and there was the control room. I would run through the green room and it was all right there. It was convenient and easy to get to the booth. In the theater, it was harder to light and to get the best sound. It is cool, but broadcast is supposed to be in a studio. Thirty Rock is the dream. There is every restaurant right there. Going from 30 Rock to the Ed Sullivan Theater was hard. 

Jay Johnson: At first, it was very difficult to leave the comforts of 30 Rock and move over to 53rd and Broadway. Thirty Rock is a like a TV-show factory, with all the excitement and energy that one would expect with that. At the Ed Sullivan Theater, we were alone and isolated, and the staff expanded between NBC and CBS to the point where we went from working together on one office floor to being spread over five floors. It changed the dynamic of the workplace. I always missed the intimacy we had at NBC.

Brian Teta: The theater always felt majestic to me. No matter how much was going wrong, or how stressful a week was, when I’d get off the subway and look across the street at that marquee, I felt incredibly lucky that this was where I was going to work. It could also be isolated and insular. Television is a small industry in New York—everybody kind of knows everybody—but the Late Show was different. I remember that before I worked there the show felt like an impenetrable fortress for people trying to break in from the outside. 

Bill Scheft: The one bad thing in coming to CBS was not going to work at 30 Rock, because you really felt like you were in television there. The Ed Sullivan Theater was this great venue, but it wasn’t television. We had to create that. There was standing water, and it had been in disrepair for so long. I think it took a while to get used to it. We revitalized that neighborhood. Businesses boomed, and they moved other businesses out to get bigger rent. The show really had an effect on that neighborhood.

Rupert Jee (Hello Deli Owner): The building was in pretty poor condition. It wasn’t fully occupied, so Dave moving into this area created the renaissance of this neighborhood. It was a double-edged sword because rent prices skyrocketed, but it became a better neighborhood because of that.

Barbara Gaines: That neighborhood was dead and had nothing. It is absolutely true we did influence it.

Jeremy Weiner: The staff worked in the office building next door, but when you got called down to the theater to see a rehearsal, you would go through those doors and feel that rush of cold air from the theater. It was such a special thing. I never took it for granted. 

Eddie Valk: You would walk in and feel cool standing on that set. You always felt like you were a part of something special. It was as if the studio had this magical, special feeling. Some people couldn’t believe this was where Elvis and The Beatles stood.

Jerry Foley: The Beatles probably defined the history of that theater more than any other group or performer. Their personality was in the bones of that stage. That was present in my mind every single day. I can remember repeating to myself, “I am not gonna wait until this thing is over and gone to appreciate this theater.”

Lee Ellenberg: There is something about knowing that The Beatles really performed there, because I am looking at the stage. That is where they stood. They were four guys. They set up their instruments and they played. It exists in our mind as this iconic moment, but when you are there . . . I don’t know. It doesn’t matter what it is, to touch that thing where it happened is something. I felt that way the first time I touched Dave’s desk.

Steve Young: I think the first time it really hit me that this is where it happened was in February 1994. It was the thirtieth anniversary, and that day on the in-house TV system on the monitors they showed the footage from that Ed Sullivan Show. You would see these women screaming, but you would see the same Gothic architectural details of the railings and the walls. You go, “Oh, my God, that really was right there.” 

Jerry Foley: A few years back, we had Paul and Ringo at the theater on the anniversary of their Sullivan appearance. Dave did an interview with them. Imagine the moment of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr standing on that stage chatting. Even before we turned the cameras on, they were just chatting and taking it all in.

Jay Johnson: When Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr came to the Ed Sullivan Theater to tape a Beatles anniversary special with Dave, I was one of the people allowed to photograph the three them together on the stage. That’s something I never would have dreamed of doing growing up as a fan of both Dave and The Beatles. That photo is one of my most cherished possessions.

Lee Ellenberg: I think about when Paul McCartney came on the show, or when the Foo Fighters did their webcast and they made the set look like it did back in 1964. They wore the suits like The Beatles. 

Rick Scheckman outside the building and Paul McCartney on top of the Marquee. Photo courtesy of Rick Scheckman.

Joe Grossman: I was always surprised they let me in the building. Why is there an office with my name on it? Why are they not throwing me out on the sidewalk? Here is this building where all kinds of crazy things happened both with Letterman and Sullivan. I think we are all Beatles fans. It is hard to imagine that the same stage where I stood there and pretended to drink urine is the same stage where they played all those songs. It never seemed real to me. I am told that all that did actually happen.

Jill Goodwin: Your parents who watched Ed Sullivan could look around and see where The Beatles and Elvis performed. It wasn’t that I worked at a TV show; I worked at the Ed Sullivan Theater. It was a big deal.

Lee Ellenberg: It was amazing to walk through the little alleyways that Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason, and The Beatles walked through to escape the hoards of people outside. There were tons of secret passageways. You could walk from backstage through a bunch of twisted paths and come outside of the door right next to the marquee. I had once heard that Jackie Gleason had put that in because after his show he wanted to avoid all the people gathered outside and wanted to go right to the bar next store. Now it’s Angelo’s Pizza, but it used to be a bar, and there is a way to get backstage all the way to a back entrance of that bar. It did feel very old New York. 

Mike Buczkiewicz: Because of the way the theater was constructed, the place behind the curtain was not a very large space. You were six to ten feet from Dave conducting an interview, so you had to be super quiet.

Lee Ellenberg: There was a scene in Taxi Driver that was shot in the theater. I always get a kick out of it when I see it—the scene where Robert De Niro is on the payphone. The camera drifts right and you can see our elevator back there.

Jerry Foley: Many nights right before we would start the show, I would walk through on my way to the control room and have the thought, “This is a really cool place and a unique situation, and it will not be here forever. Enjoy it and absorb it and take it in as much and as often as you can.” 

Part 2

Worldwide Pants

Barbara Gaines: At Late Night we worked for NBC, and all it did was make us closer because we were against the man. We were all together against NBC as the corporate people. At CBS working for Worldwide Pants, we couldn’t complain about the company because the company was us. 

Eddie Valk: There was no corporate feel, because everyone respected everyone’s role. It was a lot of pressure, but always fun.

Jay Johnson: I started with Dave in May 1988. When I was hired on staff, we were all working as “temporary employees” of NBC. As a result, we had no benefits to speak of. Not long after I started, some of the staff passed around a petition asking for health insurance, 401k, etc. To his credit, Dave took action, and soon after we became employees of Worldwide Pants, with full benefits. Dave was a great boss who genuinely cared for the well-being of those who worked for him.

Janice Penino: I knew so many people that worked there. It was like they were my kids. They came in as kids. I hired them. They got promoted. Some of them are married to each other and had kids. Some of them left and did other things.

Jill Goodwin: Everyone who worked there had a really great sense of humor. It attracted people who were fans of Dave and had a quirky sense of humor. Other shows aren’t like that. It was a different brand of workplace.

Janice Penino: I hired all the interns. Our process was very much a group effort. We would select the kids and they would meet with me and the department that they were applying for. Each department would pick the candidate they wanted, and then I would try to match them with what the kids were studying. Once you had been a good intern, you were valuable to us. You understand the language and we all felt you paid your dues. It was a really great way to have people tested out. Not a hundred percent of the staff was hired that way, but a lot of people were.

Jay Johnson: I was an intern straight out of college. On my last day, I got hired on staff. I stayed there till the end. I worked with Barbara Gaines and Barbara Sheehan, who was the production coordinate on the show at the time. We were the production department at the time. Then I moved over to the talent department, where I was a talent researcher. Then I worked my way up to head talent researcher. In 1996, Walter Kim and I formed the digital department for Worldwide Pants.

Jill Goodwin: I started as an intern in the spring of 2001. I interned in the finance department because I was a business major. I still had to go back and finish school. In 2002, I was hired as a receptionist for a year. That is how I got my foot in the door. It was like a family there, so I knew everyone from being an intern. I was able to work on a couple of projects as a production assistant. Then I switched over to the production side when I was hired as Barbara and Jude’s assistant. I did that for three years; then I became the writers’ assistant for three years and then a writer for five years after that. It was an odd way of going about becoming a writer. 

Barbara Gaines: It was a magical place to work. You started as a production assistant or intern and then you got promoted. Then you are working at a place where you grew up at. This was the best show even if it might not be the best-rated show. I am with the guy, Dave, and I am with my friends that I grew up with, and everyone stayed.

Jay Johnson: The culture of the show was to reward and promote people from within. Other shows often box people into specific roles with very limited opportunities to grow beyond strictly defined duties. At Dave’s shows, they wanted the staff to be happy and to grow professionally. It was a very supportive, encouraging atmosphere.

Sheila Rogers: I started with Dave at NBC in 1990-91. I had been there my whole career. I worked in journalism prior to that, but working with Dave was my only television experience. It was a good one. 

Barbara Gaines: Jude and I, as the elders, were the ones that became friends and stayed first. Dave wasn’t going anywhere, because it was his show. If the staff copied anyone they would copy us, but I think it was inert. It just came from a comfortableness of working there even in the uncomfortableness. In television, you go from show to show. That didn’t happen at the Late Show. 

Eddie Valk: My last semester I did a college internship that I got credit for. I began to work there about three months after that. I worked my way up. I grew into television at the Late Show. I started off as an intern and left as a lead stage manager. I was able to grow at a job where people got a position and then stay there for twenty years. To be able to advance at a place like that was really cool. From the minute I was in TV it was at a huge place like that. I met so many great people there. 

Brian Teta: I read the Bill Carter book The Late Shift when I was sixteen years old. I closed the book and said, “This is what I want to do. I want to work in late night for Dave.” I got an internship when I was twenty, graduated, and couldn’t get a job there. I worked in daytime TV. I got an opportunity in 2004 to be the “Stupid Pet Trick” booker. It was a step down in title and salary, and I couldn’t have cared less. “Get me in the door and let me do this.” I was the human-interest booker. I became the sports booker. I booked all the Super Bowl winners and went to the Olympics. I started producing the guests, then I became a segment producer and a producer. At the end of the show, I was producing three or four guests a week.

Rick Scheckman: Dave would not hire an intern if they were still in college. They had to graduate. We hired ninety percent of our intern staff over the years. So many of the executives came from there. Rob Burnett, Maria Pope, Mary Barclay, Kathy Mavrikakis, Jay Johnson, Walter Kim, Nancy Agostini, and Brian Teta all were former interns. They all moved up the organization, and all had a great loyalty to Dave. 

Barbara Gaines: We loved to mentor. My intern Nancy Agostini eventually took over the show. That is a beautiful thing. I couldn’t be more proud. She is my dear friend, and I am so proud of her. Kathy Mavrikakis, who started as our assistant, became the supervising producer and knew everything about the show. You can’t like that more.

Kathy Mavrikakis: At the end of the show, my title was supervising producer. I made sure that we didn’t spend more than we had allotted. I tried to keep us on budget. If CBS wasn’t giving us what we wanted in the offices, I was the voice to the network. I would go between Worldwide Pants and the network. I asked for the things we needed for the daily show to keep our offices the way we wanted them to be.

Janice Penino: Not everyone stayed forever. There were plenty of people who left. The problem in any organization is that at the top there aren’t that many jobs. People would get to a certain place and realize there was nowhere to go. If you look at the credits there are like eight executive producers, because people who were talented and wanted to stay were given bigger and better titles.

Jill Goodwin: Dave’s staff was very loyal, and he was loyal to the staff. Most people had been with him for a couple of decades. If someone was going through a rough time, he would know about it and help people out. He really cared about staffers. If someone lost a family member, he gave you time. He was very generous as a boss. I thought everyone was like that; now I know every place is not like that, as far as taking care of your staff like family. 

Janice Penino: We were all clinging to each other and wanted to see it through to the very end.

Jeremy Weiner: My philosophy was I was such a fan of the show. It was a dream of mine growing up to have been there at the beginning. Well, I couldn’t have been there at the beginning, so I am definitely sticking around till the end. I felt a duty to see it through. 

Barbara Gaines: Jude and I didn’t look for other jobs. I don’t know if the writers looked. Some people thought they would look when it was over. That loyalty must have come from Dave. I don’t know why, because he could be cranky, but we all loved him.

Lee Ellenberg: When I think of the last six weeks, I think of how we related to each other more than I think of the episodes. It wasn’t that the show was ending. It was that this work life was ending.

Joe Grossman: The closer we got to the end, it felt different, and not in a good way. It is tough because it is the end of not just a job, but for many it was the only job they had in their adult lives, like Gaines. She was there thirty-five years. For me, it was eleven years. My entire routine is being upended, my income is going away, I don’t know if I can get another job, and I won’t get to see my friends anymore. It was very stressful and gloomy. It was the end of a big chunk of our lives. 

Rick Scheckman: When the show was going off the air, I told the researchers, who were all young, “You have to look for another job.” They said, “No, we want to stay.” I said, “You can’t afford to do that. I can retire after this, you can’t. The show is going off in May and the shows for September will be filled.” They stayed. They wanted to be there at the end. That is due to Dave. 

Jill Goodwin: Looking back, maybe more of us should have jumped ship, but we didn’t want to miss anything. It meant something to us, so much so that we were willing to forgo other job prospects. We probably all considered it. But it is such a good memory to have been there. No one was mad at the people who did leave. It goes to show the loyalty.

Steve Young: I think a lot of senior people thought if we had been through it this far, we want to be there when we crossed the finish line, that it will be an accomplishment and an experience that we think is gonna be worth it, and I think it was. Everyone came out of it feeling that we were glad that we came into the last station on that train.

Janice Penino: I think everyone who worked there thought it was the best in the business, and “Where else am I gonna go?” It was a family. That group of people—Barbara, Jude, Bill, and Kathy—they had been together for so many years. They built something and worked together. They had this person who became a legend that they worked with, and they also had each other and the work. Where else are you gonna go? 

Eddie Valk: You got to a place where you fit in with the family and you kind of grow. There is no place like it and I will never have another job like it again. I can be at a place that is permanent, yearswise, but every other show I work on I will carry with me that I worked at Late Show With David Letterman.

Jay Johnson: I worked on a reunion party for the Letterman staff at the New York Friars Club. This was the Saturday before the last week of shows. 

Rick Scheckman: Jay Johnson put the Friars Club party together. He came up with that idea. It was one of the greatest nights in our thirty-three years.

Jay Johnson: It was my own fault, because any time we talked about when the show would end, I would say we have to have a huge reunion party and bring everyone who worked on staff back. People would say, “Who would put that together?” When Dave announced his retirement, everyone looked at me and said, “Are you gonna make this happen?”

Barbara Gaines: Jay Johnson decided to take on this idea of doing a reunion of all three shows. He invited everyone. People flew in from California. It was packed. All these people got together to see each other. It was crazy. 

Mike Buczkiewicz: I still don’t understand how Jay did all the planning. I don’t know how many people the Friars Club holds, but the place was packed. I only knew a small fraction of the people that were there. 

Brian Teta: The Friars Club was an amazing night. I had worked at the show for eleven years and I was a fan before that, so I knew everyone’s name and I had heard all of the stories. But being in the room with all of that legendary talent and watching them interact with each other was a real thrill. 

Jay Johnson: The last several months of the show I worked on pulling together contact information from several hundred people. 

Rick Scheckman: The idea was we would all pay a bit to cover the costs like a high school reunion. We didn’t want to ask Dave to pay for it. It was something we wanted to do. When he found out about it, Dave wanted to pay for it.  

Jeremy Weiner: Some old writers came back. Carter Bays and Craig Thomas from How I Met Your Mother came back. They worked at the show when I first started. Tom Ruprecht was at the Friars Club. It was a lot of fun.

Janice Penino: There are many floors at the Friars Club and a stairway to take you from one floor to the next. There were people you didn’t even get to see because you didn’t get to that floor. 

Jay Johnson: When I did have the opportunity to sit down, I parked myself at a table with a group of people who started at the show back in 1982 and who had long since moved on to other things. I had heard their names so many times, but never had the opportunity to hear their stories. They were so excited to be there and to talk about what working on Dave’s show had meant in their lives. The whole party was a love fest. Any burned bridges that existed were repaired that night, and it provided a lovely sense of closure to this incredible shared experience.

Rick Scheckman: Morty [Robert Morton, executive producer 1985-1995] was there. He took me upstairs to this private room and said, “This is where we made the Late Show deal.” Apparently they had discussion for the CBS deal in the Friars Club. There was just so many people there from all three shows.

Jill Goodwin: I don’t think we knew if Dave would show up. It was such a good idea to have everyone who had ever worked on the show come and be in the same place at the same time. Even if someone worked there for a year or two, they flew across the country. It meant a lot to them to have worked on the show and be there. 

Barbara Gaines: The morning-show people, who worked together for eighteen weeks in 1980, almost all showed up. That is how this show affects people. Tom Gammill, Max Pross, George Meyer, Stephen Winer [writers]—all these guys from 1982, everyone came. It was insane.

Mike Buczkiewicz: It was neat to see all the people who passed through the Late Show family, people that were from different eras. You could share war stories and similar experiences. For many of us, it was the first time to put faces with names you only heard about or you saw their name in old segments notes. You were like, “Oh, so you were that guy.” 

Jay Johnson: Dave came and had a great time. We packed the Friars Club. It was like speed dating. You would be talking to one person you hadn’t seen in several years and then you’d turn your head and see someone else you hadn’t seen. You didn’t really have full conversations. You would say hello and move on.

Rick Scheckman: Dave kind of parked himself by the staircase and greeted people.

Barbara Gaines: People loved it. For Jay, it was a lot of pressure to decide to do it and put it on. But it was a great success.

Janice Penino: I had been through a job ending before, and I thought I was completely prepared for this. Then I went to that party and there were hundreds of people there, people I had hired years before who had gone on to do other things. They were coming up to me and saying, “Thank you for giving me my start.” You got to see people you haven’t seen in ten years. 

Mike Buczkiewicz: You left that night being blown away by the tremendous amount of talent that was in that house that night and that you were a part of that show. Of all the things we talk about in the last six weeks of the show, I think that event is in people’s top five. 

Barbara Gaines: It was overwhelming, because it was so many people. I didn’t stay that long. I know people stayed and went to another place after the party. I am not that good in social situations. 

Rick Scheckman: A bunch of people went to P.J. Clarke’s after and they were all there till like six in the morning. It was pouring down rain and so I went home.

Janice Penino: When the party was over, I left with Kathy Mavrikakis and her husband. It was then I realized, “Holy crap, this was a special place to work.” When you are in it every day, you are not thinking about it, but when you saw all those people together it really took your breath away. We were really a part of something. That is when it hit me: this really is over. This family is splitting up and it’s never gonna be the same again. The turning point for me was that party. 

Jill Goodwin: Some people were sad, but there was so much excitement. The whole country was all eyes on Letterman. It was really special to be a part of the end and to be able to share it with hundreds of other people who had experiences like we had. It felt like a big family party. 

Jay Johnson: We thought if we had done it after the end of the series, it might not have been as much fun. There was an anticipation knowing that the final show was coming just around the corner. Everybody was soaking in the final days of the show. It was great fun. It was hard to pull together, but it was one of the most fun things I ever did there.

Barbara Gaines: It was too much for me. I was very singular in my mind of having a show to do. I get nervous and I am worried about the show. I make myself crazy. It doesn’t matter if it is Dave’s final episode or a fifth-grade production. I get very serious because I don’t want to screw up. I would have been much more relaxed if we had done it the Saturday after. I was still in my countdown. I still had three shows to put on.

Dave’s wardrobe room at the Ed Sullivan Theater. Photo courtesy of Jill Goodwin.