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    How the O.J. Simpson Trial Changed What Comics Could Roast

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    Norm Macdonald and Jay Leno made the double homicides such a constant topic that refraining from jokes the way David Letterman did was noticeable.The weekend after a jury found O.J. Simpson not guilty of murder, the comedian Norm Macdonald opened Weekend Update on “Saturday Night Live” at his desk next to a photo of the defendant. “Well, it is finally official,” he said. “Murder is legal in the state of California.”The 1995 trial of Simpson, who died Wednesday at 76, didn’t just dominate and revolutionize the media. It also became an unlikely staple of comedy. The details of the killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman were daily fodder for punchlines on talk shows, sitcoms and stand-up stages. And Macdonald cemented his status as one of the finest comedians of his generation thanks to a fixation on what turned into one of the largest comedy genres of the 1990s: the O.J. joke.In his 1996 breakthrough special, “Bring the Pain,” Chris Rock’s button-pushing analysis of the dynamics of the O.J. Simpson case helped change the course of his career. He argued that fame is what saved Simpson. “If O.J. drove a bus, he wouldn’t even be O.J.,” he said. “He’d be Orenthal, the bus-driving murderer.”The O.J. joke was so pervasive in the 1990s that not telling one could make you stand out. In the week after Simpson’s arrest, Howard Stern went on “Late Show With David Letterman” during the most heated era of the late-night wars and asked the host why he was avoiding the subject. “I’ll tell you my problem with the situation,” Letterman responded. “Double homicides don’t crack me up the way they used to.”Letterman eventually did tell some jokes about the trial, including a Top 10 list of things that will get you kicked off the jury (No. 1: “Keep frisking yourself.”). But his caution was in sharp contrast to Jay Leno, who went all in on O.J. jokes on the “Tonight Show.” A study that tracked his monologues revealed that Leno told more punchlines about Simpson than about any other celebrity, edging out Michael Jackson and Martha Stewart. In one running bit, he imagined the trial judge, Lance Ito, and the lead prosecutor, Marcia Clark, as members of a Broadway chorus line. In an even more perversely glib parody, Leno recast the murder trial as a sitcom using the theme song from “Gilligan’s Island” and portraying Simpson as the lovable title character. Was this sketch turning real-life tragedy into diverting entertainment or parodying it? Watching it now makes the difference seem pointless.Moments like Simpson trying on the gloves at trial became fodder for Jay Leno, Macdonald and other comics. Vince Bucci/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Alan Kalter, Longtime Voice of Letterman’s ‘Late Show,’ Dies at 78

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      Far more than just an announcer, he contributed all sorts of outlandish, incongruous comic bits to “Late Show With David Letterman.”Alan Kalter, the announcer for the “Late Show With David Letterman” for some 20 years and a participant in a ridiculous array of comic bits during that run, died on Monday at a hospital in Stamford, Conn., where he lived. He was 78.The death was announced by Rabbi Joshua Hammerman of Temple Beth El in Stamford, the synagogue Mr. Kalter attended. No cause was given.Mr. Kalter would welcome viewers with an opening quip (“From New York, home of mad cab disease … ”) and a recitation of the guest list. He would introduce the nonsensical “secret word” of the day and tell Mr. Letterman what was to be put to the “Will It Float?” test, a recurring comic bit. He would work himself into a lather over this or that and run off down the street shirtless.But, just as incongruously, he once sang a heartfelt version of “Send In the Clowns” for no particular reason, bolting offstage afterward overcome with emotion as the audience stood and applauded. Another time, he turned what at first seemed like some fatherly advice about attending the prom into a painful confessional about going to the prom with his own mother, “her middle-age body squeezed like a sausage into a sequined gown, her makeup and perfume a cruel mockery of the womanhood your hormones crave.”His transformation from announcer to all-purpose comic started early. On his first day, he said, Mr. Letterman, who had an Olympic diver as a guest, had Mr. Kalter jump into a pool while wearing his best suit.“I’m floating on my back, looking up at the cameraman, going, ‘This is what it’s like to announce on Letterman,’” he recalled in an interview on CBS New York in 2015, when Mr. Letterman ended the show.“If you’re going to have a talk show,” Mr. Letterman said on Tuesday in a telephone interview, “you’ve got to have a strong announcer, and he filled that way beyond what is required.”Mr. Kalter replaced Bill Wendell in September 1995, after Mr. Wendell retired. Mr. Letterman said that Mr. Kalter’s audition tape had left no doubt when he and his producer at the time, Robert Morton, heard it.“It was like, ‘Oh, my God, here we go,’” Mr. Letterman said.Mr. Kalter’s voice was already familiar to television viewers by then; he had announced on game shows like “To Tell the Truth” and “The $25,000 Pyramid” and provided voice-overs for numerous commercials. Mr. Letterman’s “Late Show,” though, brought him an entirely different kind of fame. His red hair and rumpled good looks made him instantly recognizable, and Mr. Letterman gave him ample opportunities to display his aptitude for both deadpan and over-the-top comedy.Mr. Kalter in 2015. “I don’t recall the guy ever saying no to anything,” David Letterman said in an interview.John Palmer/MediaPunch /IPX via Associated PressBarbara Gaines, the longtime “Late Show” producer, said Mr. Kalter had fit right into the show’s zaniness.“Alan would good-naturedly do almost anything we asked of him,” she said by email, “which is how we like our people.”Mr. Kalter said that he had always been given the option of declining to do a particularly nutty stunt or asking that it be modified, but Mr. Letterman remembered him as being perpetually game.“I don’t recall the guy ever saying no to anything,” he said, “and I guess that tells us something about his judgment.”And, he added, “it wasn’t begrudgingly — it was, ‘I’m all in.’”But Mr. Letterman also noted that, for him, Mr. Kalter and his music director, Paul Shaffer, were steadying influences.“He and Paul, to me, they were fixtures every night,” he said. “You’d look over and see Alan and see Paul and know that it’s going to be OK just like last night.”Guests, too, found Mr. Kalter to be a calming force.“Appearing with Dave triggered its own unique set of nerves,” Brian Williams, a frequent “Late Show” guest, said on Monday night on his MSNBC news program. “But seeing the smiling face of a nice man like Alan Kalter backstage was always the tonic needed in that moment.”The show may have made Mr. Kalter a celebrity, but he kept a low profile when off the set and at home in Stamford, where he had lived since the 1970s.“I played cards in a poker group for a year and a half,” he told The Stamford Advocate in 2003, “before somebody said, ‘Somebody told me you were in broadcasting.’”As for his “Letterman” job, Mr. Kalter was grateful for the opportunity and the long run.“I loved what they let me be,” he told The Pulteney Street Survey, the magazine of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where he was once a student, “a 10-year-old, paid for doing stuff my mom would never have let me get away with.”Alan Robert Kalter was born on March 21, 1943, in Brooklyn. He started announcing on WGVA radio in Geneva, N.Y., while at Hobart. The radio job had a fringe benefit.“In my off hours,” he said, “I would create the music tapes for all our fraternity parties from the 45’s that came in to the radio station.”After graduating in 1964 he studied law at New York University, then taught high school English for three years, at the same time recording educational tapes and working weekends in radio in the New York suburbs. The pull of radio eventually proved irresistible.“I left teaching for an afternoon radio show at WTFM,” he told the college magazine, “and was hired to be a newsman at WHN Radio in New York, which quickly became a four-year gig interviewing celebs who came into town for movie and Broadway openings, as well as covering nightclub openings three or four nights a week.”When WHN went to a country format in 1973, he turned to making commercials, and then got into game shows.He is survived by his wife, Peggy; a brother, Gary; two daughters, Lauren Hass and Diana Binger; and five grandchildren.Mr. Kalter’s do-almost-anything commitment to “Late Show,” Mr. Letterman said, was a nice counterpoint to Mr. Letterman’s more laid-back style.“I never liked to put on funny hats,” he said. “Alan would dress like a Martian and make it work.”“He filled in so many blanks on that show,” Mr. Letterman added, joking, “he probably deserved more money.” More

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      Tony Mendez, David Letterman’s Oddball ‘Cue Card Boy,’ Dies at 76

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      For more than 20 years, he wrote and flipped cards for Mr. Letterman’s “Late Show.” He was also a member of the show’s troupe of quirky onscreen characters.Tony Mendez, who was in charge of cue cards for “Late Show With David Letterman,” as well as one of the show’s breakout oddball characters, until an altercation (over cue cards) with one of the writers got him fired in 2014, died on July 29 at his home in Miami Beach. He was 76.Andrew Corbin, his former companion, confirmed the death but said he did not know the cause.Mr. Mendez’s on-camera exchanges with Mr. Letterman made him a key member of the show’s troupe of non-stars, among them the comedian’s mother, Dorothy Mengering; the stage manager Biff Henderson; and Mujibur and Sirajul, salesmen at a souvenir shop near the Ed Sullivan Theater, where the show was taped.Mr. Mendez started to print (in big black letters) and flip cue cards for Mr. Letterman periodically on his NBC show “Late Night With David Letterman” in 1990. He took over full time when Mr. Letterman moved to CBS in 1993. Nicknamed “Cue Card Boy” by Mr. Letterman, Mr. Mendez went on to turn the oversized cards for the comedian’s monologue and other scripted bits for another 21 years.“The flipping of the cards is very important,” Mr. Mendez told The New Yorker in 2001. “If you flip too fast, they can’t see the last line. If you’re too slow, you slow them down.”Mr. Mendez was also was the star of a series of bizarre online videos, “The Tony Mendez Show,” posted on the show’s website for several years. In 2007, a billboard promoting the Mendez show was unveiled near the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway, where Mr. Letterman taped his program. But Mr. Mendez’s time at “Late Show” ended in October 2014, when he assaulted one of the writers, Bill Scheft. The backstage incident made the front page of The New York Post with the headline “HATE SHOW: Backstage Battle Erupts at Letterman.”The two men had argued before the taping of the Oct. 8 show over changes to the cue cards. “He tells me what to do and I have to say, ‘I know what I’m doing,’” Mr. Mendez told The Post.The next day, The Post reported, Mr. Mendez was still angry. He grabbed Mr. Scheft’s shirt and shook him, leading to his firing (six months after Mr. Letterman announced that he would be retiring from the show in 2015).“It was an unfortunate way to end his time at the show, and a sad way to end a 22-year friendship,” Mr. Scheft said in an email.Antonio Emilio Mendez Jr. was born in Havana on March 27, 1945, and left Cuba by airplane in 1961 with his father, who worked in the law department of the University of Havana, and his mother, Josefina..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1gp0zvr{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:25px;}No immediate family members survive.In Los Angeles, where Mr. Mendez lived with his family, his mother, who taught Spanish at U.C.L.A., met someone who knew Barney McNulty, who is credited with being the first person in television to use cue cards. Mr. McNulty hired Mr. Mendez to turn cards for soap operas, sitcoms like “The Lucy Show” and the variety show “The Hollywood Palace.”In his early 20s, he detoured into dancing. His sister, Josefina, was a prima ballerina with the Cuban National Ballet, and he grew up appreciating her art. He studied with the Houston Ballet, was an apprentice with the Harkness Ballet and received a scholarship from American Ballet Theater.“And in those days, if you could point your toes, they would give you a scholarship,” he said in an interview with Time Out New York magazine in 2008.He danced on Broadway in the 1970s and ’80s, in “Pippin,” “Irene,” “Dancin’” and “King of Hearts.” He also danced in tours of “Applause” and “Evita.”In 1984, nearing 40, he returned to flipping cards, this time for “Saturday Night Live,” where he stayed for nine years.“It was the most stressful job I ever had,” he told The New Yorker. “The hosts were totally freaked out. They would all try to memorize, and I would tell them that the script was going to be changing until the last minute, so they had to follow me.” Then, in 1993, Mr. Mendez succeeded his companion, Marty Zone, who had been diagnosed with H.I.V. five years earlier, as Mr. Letterman’s cue card man.Mr. Mendez’s relationship with Mr. Letterman was, he once recalled, unusually strong — until he was fired.“Nobody talks to him the way I do and he welcomes it because everybody is so afraid of him,” Mr. Mendez told Time Out. “And he knows he’ll get the truth from me.” More