It's never a good day when it starts with writing one of these about a good buddy. Rick "Shecky" Scheckman took sick a few days ago and now he's gone. He was a beloved friend among lovers of old movies and TV shows and a helluva nice guy. He was also a longtime friend and employee of David Letterman, starting way back in Dave's early NBC days and continuing to the very end of The Late Show with David Letterman.
He had many duties in that job but the main one was finding and coordinating film clips. If twenty minutes before tape time, the writers suddenly came up with a bit that required film of a monkey washing a cat, Shecky knew where to find it. He was, as a small number of people are in their jobs, utterly irreplaceable.
And as you'll see in the video below that the Letterman crew just posted, he was often pressed into service as an actor in sketches — sometimes dressed as Elvis, sometimes not dressed at all. Dave loved him. And when I visited with him up at Letterman's NBC offices and later at CBS, it was obvious the whole staff did too.
We stayed in touch mostly by e-mail but the last time I was in New York with my friend Amber, we met Shecky for lunch at a Benihana's. Rick and I talked about old movies for two hours while she consumed bowls of Benihaha fried rice. She understood almost none of what we were talking about but after, she said she just adored Shecky anyway — his enthusiasm, his love of film, his whole spirit. Everyone loved the guy for all of that.
Here's the tribute video. Caution: It starts with Shecky naked…one of the few times David Letterman ever seemed actually surprised on his own show…