Well, thank you ladies and gentlemen. Thank you.
I guess like a lot of us, most of us, I've been thinking about Robin Williams, I believe we found out a week ago that he had died. Many things come to mind in a situation like this. And of course, more questions are raised than can possibly be answered, but I started reflecting about it.
I knew Robin Williams for 38 years. 38 years, which in and of itself is crazy. How time...
I met him at The Comedy Store. He and I were kids along... It was myself and Jay Leno and Tom Dreesen and Tim Thomason and Johnny Dark and Elayne Boosler and on and on and Jimmy Walker. We were all out there at The Comedy Store and we wanted to make people laugh. We wanted to get on The Tonight Show. We wanted something because we all felt that we're funny. In those days, we were working for free drinks. Some were working for more free drinks than others, but.
So what you would do is you would go on stage and then you do your little skits and then you would come off stage. If there was a new guy coming on, you'd want to stick around and make fun of the new guy.
Paul: Sure.
David Letterman: Because we were all worried that, "Oh, somebody else is coming in who's really funny." And then we'll have to go back, in my case, to Indiana.
Paul: Yes.
David Letterman: I can remember the night my friend, George Miller and I, who was a very funny comic and was on this show many times, we were at The Comedy Store and they introduce Robin Williams. For some reason in the beginning, he was introduced as being from Scotland. They said he was Scottish.
Paul: I see
.
David Letterman: Now we're stumped. We don't know. There's a Scottish guy, really, coming to the United States? So we were feeling pretty smug about our position right away, because it's going to be haggis and that kind of crap. So we're relaxed. We're ready to go. All of a sudden, he comes up on stage and you know what it is. It's like nothing we had ever seen before. Nothing we had ever imagined before. We go home at night and are writing our little jokes about stuff. And this guy comes in and we're like a morning dew, he comes in like a hurricane.
Now, the longer he's onstage, the worse we feel about ourselves because it's not stopping. And then he finishes and I thought, "Oh, that's it. They're going to have to put an end to show business because what can happen after this?" And then we get to see this night after night after night. We didn't approach him because we were afraid of him. Honest to God. You thought, "Holy crap, there goes my chance at show business because of this guy from Scotland."
And then like a shot out of a cannon, he goes and he's on the Happy Days show. And then from the Happy Days show, he gets to be on Mork & Mindy. Now, there's some structure to his life. He's not at The Comedy Store every night because he's got an actual job. So the rest of us can pretend that it never happened. But yet, then he goes from Mork & Mindy and then he starts to making movie after movie after movie. He's nominated four times for an Academy Award. It wasn't really until Paul and I started the NBC version of this show, which by the way, is still running in Mexico.
Paul: It is.
David Letterman: Very popular. But it wasn't until then that I sort of got to really know Robin Williams, because he would come on to promote movies or concerts or whatever he was talking about. He was always so gracious. We would talk about the old times and never did he act like, "Oh, I knew you guys were scared because I was so good." It was just a pleasure to know the guy. He was a gentleman and delightful. Even in the old days, he was kind enough to ask me to appear on his Mork & Mindy show. Now, this is a double edged sword because he did it only because he was trying to help other fledgling, starting out comics.
Paul: Make sense.
David Letterman: Right. The other side of the sword is I had no business being on that show. I have no business being on this show. But he was nice. He gave me a job. So in those days, jobs were hard to come by. And there I was, and I was on Mork & Mindy. I can remember between the dress rehearsal and the actual taping of the show, the director of the program, Howard, Howard, Howard Shore-
Paul: Howard Storm.
David Letterman: Storm. Howard Storm comes up to me and he says, "Well, you've been trying all week." He says, "This is your last chance."
So even to the detriment of the show, Robin was kind enough to invite me to come on because he thought, "Why can't I spread this around and have some of my friends sharing my success," which is exactly what he did. He then was on our show, the show, in the old show, a total of nearly 50 times.
Paul: Total of 50 times?
David Letterman: 50 times. 50 times. Two things would happen because Robin was on the program. One, I didn't have to do anything. All I had to do was sit here and watch the machine. And two, people would watch. If they knew Robin was on the show, the viewership would go up because they wanted to see Robin. Believe me, that wasn't just true of television. I believe that was true of the kind of guy he was. People were drawn to him because of this electricity. This, whatever it was that he radiated that propelled him and powered him.
And then he came on when I came back after my heart surgery, Robin was nice enough to come on that night. And it was very, very funny and very, very appropriate. Here's a picture that I will now cherish even more than I had previously. There are four people right there. Two of which wildly funny, insanely funny, two are not.
The handsome woman there is Mitzi Shore. She owned The Comedy Store. We all, the three of us, worked there. I think Robin and I, it'd be safe to say, we started there. Richard Pryor was already Richard Pryor, but he would work there. The guy in the middle, I trimmed hedges.
Paul: Yeah. Oh, well.
David Letterman: So we would like to... We put together a segment of Robin Williams appearances. Moreover, more than anything, it will make you laugh. Really, that's what we should take from this is he could make you laugh under any circumstances. Here he is on our show.
[Clips]
God bless you, my friend.
Well, what I will add here is beyond being a very talented man and a good friend and a gentlemen, I'm sorry. Like everybody else, I had no idea that the man was in pain, that the man was suffering. But what a guy. Robin Williams. We'll be right back, ladies and gentlemen.