this is a guy who hates humiliation. the cbs producer pled guilty to attempted grand larceny and spent four months in jail. a week after the scandal, dave apologized to his wife on air. my wife regina has been horribly hurt by my behavior. and when something happens like that, if you hurt a person and it s yurs your responsibility, you try to fix it. so let me tell you, folks, i got my work cut out for me. dave called this the lowest point in his life. the couple did reconcile and they are still together. talk about electric television. it s just television like nothing else you ve ever seen. his ratings went up. his ratings went up after that. but you know his ratings have never recovered much from the early days because he s always been playing from behind. and at some point i think he stopped feeling like he could win. coming up, dave.
other guy from oklahoma. turned out to be a mass murderer but a very prolific mass murderer. and they went with the other guy, and i was crushed. i had a dizzy dozen years, craziest job i ever had. steve o donnell, though not a mass murderer, got one of those coveted writing gigs. there s the exhilaration of being like a cult college dorm type show, but it wasn t necessarily clear that it would go on for a long long time. go ahead. o donnell and the team came up with most of dave s crazy getups. we have 3400 alka-seltzer tablets on this fine piece of clothing. we did a bunch of stunt-like suits partly inspired by steve alley. i got the suit of chips on here. when i come out, i ll pass among you folks. just snack your brains out. and crafted dave s classic top ten list. and the first one top ten
every single night, he just killed it, killed it, killed it. what is wrong with you? ladies and gentlemen, that is not a promo. this is the actual show. dave amped up his monologue and added more a-list guests. would you like me to do a dance for you? such as drew barrymore who gave dave an unforgettable birthday present. oh, my gosh. oh, geez. we had madonna on. one of my favorite reaction shots. and madonna for some reason thought it would be funny to use the f word over and over and over again and it got tiresome. i brought something to make a point. you are always [ bleep ] with me on the show. in the middle of this, there was an elderly woman and her husband sitting in the audience,
bit. it was 1966 and steve o donnell was a writer for dave s show. if we would get a letter that seemed provocative enough, we would seek them out. i think this is the house. just one scexample of how da changed the game. let s see if colleen is home. let me just ring the bell here. doesn t appear that anyone s home. four years into its run on nbc, late night was both clever and unconventional. can you show us around the place and maybe show us some of your sister s stuff. in the closet? yeah. the brother showed up, and he showed us the girl s room. let s take a look at her footwear. a lot of high-heeled shoes. then took us to where she worked at the mall. are you colleen boyle? oh, my god. and that was a kind of model for spontaneous kind of guerilla tv making. at the time, that was electric. conan o brien could barely believe it. it just wasn t something you ever saw, the idea of johnny
think. it became an increasingly difficult struggle to counter all of that momentum at nbc. if you want to influence a congressman, you have to send him a full beer can. jay leno went on to win the ratings war for 15 years. gradual gradually, dave made peace with it. he is more comfortable as the hipper, slightly skewed show with a slightly skewed attitude and being at number one. it doesn t matter what the ratings are. it really doesn t matter. the fact of the matter is dave is the best there ever was. dave started something. dave dave dave dave dave dave dave! in 2000, dave showed a much softer side after emergency heart bypass surgery and five weeks of ott off the air, giving a touching tribute to the hospital staff that helped him. these men and women right here saved my life. and when dave shows his human side, it s a real treat. you re like, oh, what is going on here, who is this person we