I'm Mary Connolly I worked at Late Night with David Letterman starting in 1985 and transferred
over to Late Show until 1997. so I was a segment producer on the show which meant that I helped
figure out what the guests would do on the show Sandra Bullock was a book for her film
speed which Dave always referred to as bus because we were this Big Show on Broadway
we kind of got to do whatever we wanted to do and we had the idea that Sandra Bullock
should make her entrance driving a New York City bus down Broadway someone had to rehearse
it and I said I'll rehearse it so I got to drive a New York City bus down Broadway as
a kid from New York City that was insane do me a favor please welcome Sandra Bullock [Applause]
foreign [Applause]
[Applause]
on camera as often as possible and so there was a segment called who asked for it where
staffers were put in the audience they were given a scripted question to ask except that's
not the part of the segment Dave liked he would say hi what's your name then you couldn't
say that you were the staffer you had to make up a story of who you were I would be my friend
Sue Kennedy and my friend Sue Kennedy sold ad space for Smithsonian Magazine and Dave
asked enough questions until he actually asked me how much a half-page ad was in Smithsonian
Magazine I had prepared a lot of answers I hadn't prepared that answer yes ma'am how
are you oh good how are you good what is your name my name's Sue Kennedy oh Sue nice to
see you where are you from Sue I'm from Washington DC oh you know it's the nation's capital yeah
yeah do you work for the government uh no I don't yeah what do you do for a living down
there I work for Smithsonian Magazine oh man that must be fascinating where it is what
department I work in the ad Department oh the ad department so you sell space in the
Smithsonian Magazine I do what does like a square inch go for in that publication oh
well it's uh it's hard to say it's you want the front of the magazine the back of them
I think the back of the magazine and maybe color oh color uh well that could that could
run you into some bucks I see
all right uh what what can I do for you sue uh I was wondering who's on the show tonight
oh the show oh good point let me see uh oh yeah Jeff Altman is here very funny and Jeff
Altman uh Hall and Oates right here in the studio and uh Eleanor guggenheimer is that
it anybody else nope that's it okay thank you sue Kennedy from the Smithsonian Magazine
in Washington DC thank you sir sorry sorry you're not on tonight
thanks for trying sue people always want to know who the best guests were and invariably
the best guests were the amazing storytellers the people who could tell stories that you
just had no idea what was going to happen next and maybe the best at that was Richard
Harris who you may all know as Dumbledore from the Harry Potter movies he and Peter
O'Toole they both had tremendous drinking problems and their stories always involved
acting drinking [Music] and women did you ever work could you work while you were drunk
could you ever perform badly yeah yeah I work with O'Toole and he was the same yeah I work
with a two down in Bristol once and we were doing a play in Bristol and uh and we'd have
15 minutes when we weren't on stage and somebody else was doing the acting on a tool and I
knew a little Pub just stopped to the stage door
where's that valuable drinking cold
and we were throwing back and now we're drinking pints of Guinness that time drinking back
pints of Guinness and suddenly the stage manager came rushing and he says for Jesus sake you're
off you're off right you're off they're waiting for you to come on the silence on stage the
other actress can't improvise so we Dash across the stage and we you know we dice across and
we duck sidestep cars and we Dash up into the stage and I make an entrance per script
about a minute but seconds before O2 so I'm just getting on and I hit the stage and I
tripped over a large wire and I fell on the floor on the stage and I slid right down the
stage and my head hung over the Footlights onto the lap of an old 60 or 70 year old bristolian
woman who looks at me and she said out loud in the Silence of the theater good God Harris
is drunk
and I said Madam if you think I'm drunk with no two makes his entrance
so working with David Letterman on his two shows I learned so much about comedy I learned
so much that I didn't know going in Dave had a way of crystallizing pieces of information
that are lodged in my brain and will never never ever leave my brain so we did a segment
where Dave would decide that the staff was going to go to the dentist and we would all
walk off stage together I was at one end of the stage having to travel to the other end
of the stage I thought I was moving at a pretty good rate Dave shouted out slower doesn't
make it funnier to say that I use that phrase so often in still producing television shows
because it is as true today as it was then one of my favorite things ever [Music] working
for NBC mostly the staff was considered part-time employees NBC didn't need to pay us health
benefits and so Dave wanted to find a way to get the staff health benefits so he would
use the staff on the show so that we would have to join after the local acting Union
we all had enough appearances on the show we would get health insurance and I also think
Dave loved torturing the staff by putting them on the air so he always used to say I
want you to to know what I have to experience we had an executive over our show named [ __ ]
Biggers and [ __ ] Biggers got pregnant and it seemed to all of us like [ __ ] Biggers
was pregnant forever and so Steve O'Donnell our head writer created a character for me
named Connie plesko and I was the perpetually pregnant production assistant Dave would ask
me to do increasingly dangerous tasks as I was visibly like nine months pregnant and
singer Patty Smythe yes with the boys in the band again so that'll be tomorrow and then
on tonight's program you have to come John what happened to the lights exactly how we
have a lighting problem on here can we take care of this have Cheryl or somebody can somebody
get the Jeff can you just get up there and get that for us I can get it Dave what I can
get it what oh look Paul it's our production assistant Connie plesko Connie now wait a
minute Connie Connie be careful when Connie when is the baby due any time
[Music] yeah okay well just for heaven's sakes be very careful thank you very much for volunteering
so are you getting ready for Christmas Connie baking oh that's good cookies and things like
that lasagna lasagna yeah yeah well that's good well listen thank you very much for taking
care of that life well there you go perfect all right listen get down from there and go
home and get yourself some rest for heaven's sakes go to bed early tonight David plus a
lot of us are going out to Nassau Coliseum the Islanders are playing St Louis oh wow
that's good so you really you really must enjoy hockey there
you scream myself for us all right Connie well have a nice night okay yeah thank you
very much oh Connie [Laughter] nice work Connie thank you very much
we also did a show from the Milford Plaza Hotel I believe Dave seeing this hotel room
in the Milford Plaza though may have said if I was going to kill myself this room wouldn't
talk me out of it this is where the guests are going to be for the for the show someone
playing jokes on us oh thank you very much this is where they are 100 times and of course
Carly Simon and Dr Borges you know this this used to be a closet be right with you guys
this is nice for anybody who is running the Helen Hayes Suite by the hour let me show
you the control room hi Tommy how you doing you you stayed up here haven't you in the
Helena space does this ring a bell Tommy vice squad all right this is the control room boy
we've just jam-packed it in here how many violations are we up to in here now okay I
I predict probably at least one accidental death in this room tonight as a segment producer
and I would interview the guests before they came on the show and then I would brief Dave
on the guests that just sort of got monotonous so while we would brief Dave and I started
playing a game where we would throw footballs through his office into the adjoining office
into a garbage can and so Dave then decided he wanted to put it on the air and the first
time I choked in a way that was just as humiliating as humiliating could be maybe more humiliating
than the mullet I had okay she's that's all right relax Mary you're still fine that's
okay
she's she's rattled now this is all for charity by the way
okay there's one all right yes
oh okay all right here we go here we go okay all right Murray let's start another string
here and if you don't then we'll we'll check in with you in a couple of minutes all right
here we go by the way your hair looks lovely from this angle oh thank you very much let
me run up there and call me out do you mind oh no no okay you then like to up the stakes
where we got Phil Sims a very very talented quarterback maybe not as talented at this
particular skill as Dave and I were go right ahead Mary relax okay there's the first one
she's wide to the left now Phil
earlier Phil said he could hit 10 for 10. do you remember when Phil said that okay we're
still at five dollars here right 10. now we go to 15. now you're at 15. I'm sorry okay
[Music] [Applause]
look see Mary has jumped into the lead yes okay now what is America you go back to five
we go to Five okay Mary has fifteen dollars Phil uh Super Bowl quarterback Sim says is
Phil perspiring uh I'm not sure we're relaxed you stay here long enough I'll win all right
Bill fine don't make me come up there all right and now what is it for here Mary I think
it's for 10 now and I I go okay here we go sandbox
no
to 15 right 15 in my shot okay
[Applause] okay so oh look at this Mary's out in front 30 to 10. and Phil okay how much
time do we have here Morty one more minute all right one minute okay fast
um okay okay
give me a good ball and I think that's the problem all along Phil
oh
yeah oh man one of the greatest bookings we had a reunion of sunny and Cher and it was
spectacular and then we thought they should sing I Got You Babe only they don't know the
lyrics [Music]
oh that was my part
[Music]
so from that moment on we had to have cue cards for every lyrics for every song and
when Bruce Springsteen sang Glory Days on the final episode of late night people just
sort of picked things off the set and I took the cue cards for Glory Days [Music]
let's go [Music]
again late at night we might not have a guest and I had Kathy Lee Gifford's home phone number
and she answered the phone out of breath I identified myself and she goes Mary are you
okay I said I am okay and she goes well you just interrupted Frank and I having sex why
would she answer the phone [Music]