One trademark of Larry “Bud” Melman: show up badly impersonating a celebrity after David Letterman announced that the celebrity was coming:
(One great cameo of the real celebrity on the clip)
RIP Bud
Wow Larry “Bud” Melman has passed on.
He goes way back to the early days of the David Letterman Show (1982). I believe he was the first person to even appear on that show. He spoke an introduction similar to the one in “Frankenstein” and then concluded … “well we warned you”.
Hard to believe that was 25 years ago.
RIP Larry (aka Calvert)
Damn, I was just thinking about looking up his Wikipedia entry to see how old he was.
He was in so many great bits. The best being ones that would have been forgettable if he hadn’t flubbed his lines!
[ul]
[li]The Melman Bus Lines[/li][li]Larry ‘Bud’ Headroom[/li][li]His ‘Goodwill Tour’ to Tierra del Fuego[/li][li]His 'Come on ‘n Defect!’ booth outside the Soviet Embassy (mid-80s)[/li][li]When dressed up like Roy Orbison they way he could have been his twin![/li][li]Re-enacting the death of Pres. Zachary Taylor, “These funny, cherries, taste funny”, slumps down on desk[/li][li]Coming out to re-enact The Beatles and screeching, “I can’t, I can’t see the cards!” (i.e. the cue cards)[/li][/ul]
I saw him when he toured the college circuit in a stage act, still reading off cue cards all the way through.
IIRC, he was just an “average joe” who got lucky that the audience liked him and was able to have a second career on Letterman. The last I’d heard about him was when he’d challenged the head of NBC to a boxing match for the rights to the name of “The World’s Most Dangerous Band” when Letterman jumped ship for CBS. Dave put Calvert through a lot of “crap” over the years, I hope he enjoyed doing it as much as we enjoyed laughing about it.
RIP Calvert.
An average Joe - I dunno, maybe a little below average - with a blocky head, a blobby body and a high-pitched querulous New York voice. I’m frankly surprised he was only 85. He seemed ancient twenty years ago.
Favorite Melman Moment: Helicopter shot of Larry standing atop some tall building holding a giant sign reading BITE ME.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this:
– it’s been nearly as long since I cried from laughing so hard.
Boy, that takes me back; watching Letterman turn and crack up as Larry (1) moves the microphone to the interviewee in mid-sentence, (2) uses the same hand to hold the microphone and tong up the towels (what is his other hand doing? what’s the shoulder-strap for?), and (3) delivers each laugh lines in his below-average way.
I can’t say he was the most gifted comic actor, but he somehow made that cluelessness work; hewill be missed…
He always seemed to be too bright to really be so dim, if you know what I mean. He probably knew he was doing it all wrong, but got the laughs and said, “fuck it” and kept doing what he was doing. More power to him. I just wish there was more of him on Youtube.
My favorite moment was during viewer mail, on an episode when Michael Keaton was one of the guests, when the question for Dave, was something like “what do you keep in the drawers of your desk?”. Dave pulled out the drawer, and lying in the drawer was Larry “Bud” Melman, and he said “I must speak to Batman. Will someone tell me when Batman gets here? I must speak to Batman.”, and then Dave closes the drawer again.
And of course from the “Top 10 things overheard during our first show” list, “I can’t believe Lord Melman would stoop to doing American Television.”
Delightfully clueless and goofy. Rest in peace, Lord Larry.
Another great moment:
On a Christmas show, Larry Bud sat in a chair reading “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, but the book didn’t have the poem written in it. Nobody wrote the words on cue cards either.
So he just keeps repeating “Twas the Night Before Christmas and All Through The House!”.
Prompted to keep going, he then ad libbed, “Then Santa came down the chimney with presents for all the children, and everybody was happy. The end.”
I remember that!
“I must speak to Batman” would make a great catchphrase if anybody remembered the reference.
On the IMDB news thread on his death, they put Letterman’s picture but not his. 
Here’s a different viewer mail segment.
RIP.
Writer/photographer Ken Cancelosi has written an encomium of Larry Bud Melman/Calvin DeForest which IMHO hits exactly on what made this great amateur performer so memorable. Well worth your time.
Too bad he never said it aloud on the air. I’d’ve busted my pants laughing.
Thanks for the link!
That headline/title calls him “The Last Amateur,” but in a way he was the first: I see him as the first of many non-pros that Dave had fun putting in front of the camera, letting their very nonprofessionalism and earnestness and willingness to play along be part of the joke, from staffers like Biff Henderson to neighborhood guys like Mujibur and Sirajul.
One of my stock phone openings with my oldest and best friend is (and has been for over twenty years,) “It is I, Dave - the King.”
Funny, funny man.