…Larry “Bud” Melman? More precisely, what did he do before he achieved fame and fortune through Letterman? I’ve heard he was a writer for SNL, but no trace of that name shows up anywhere at imdb.com.
And another question–does NBC have the rights to the name? Since Melman’s started showing up on Letterman again, the name’s never been mentioned. What’s the deal?
Larry “Bud” Melman was a character played by Calvert deForest on the Dave Letterman show at NBC. The name “Larry Melman” was held to be the ‘intellectual property’ of NBC, who would not let Dave take the name when he took the show to CBS. The book *The Late Shift * is full of details of this.
And Calvert has a website at http://www.calvertdeforest.com which seems to be mostly fluff!
As I recall, when the Larry “Bud” Melman character first appeared on Letterman, they were doing some on-the-street interviewing of random people, and Larry “Bud” was working in a pharmacy. The audience really liked him, and they started bringing him on for regular bits.
Disclaimers:
a) My memory may be wrong
b) Even if that was the story projected, I’m not certain it was real. He may have been some actor doing the part. He sure comes across as less than professional though.
I’m pretty sure that Calvert was actually working in a post office. I remember reading a short article in Rolling Stone about it. IIRC, he was working at the post office for some time after he got the part on Late Night. His supervisor found out and persuaded Calvert to quit his day job to make way for someone who more badly needed the salary. So he quit.