From The Letterman Stage, To The Set Of Saturday Night Live!

Yesterday was so incredible, I can hardly believe it myself! This is a picture of me kissing the stage floor at The Ed Sullivan Theater (we’ll come back to this). Ten minutes later, my phone rings and I got invited to NBC Studio 8H to sit in on rehearsal for ‘Saturday Night Live’! It doesn’t get any better than this! Or does it?

It might…I’ve got floor seats for tonight’s SNL Dress Rehearsal and will be right in the middle of all the magic!

When I got off the elevator on the 8th floor, I was listening for the voice of St. Peter, because I was definitely in Pearly Gate territory. Instead, it was the voice of St. John…Pinto! I got there at 3 and sat in the center of the studio while all this incredible magic unfolded around me. At 4:30, there was a meal break and John and I went to a lunch served up with a big side order of great stories.

We got back around 5:30 and rehearsal with this week’s guest host Andrew Garfield, the star of “Spiderman”, picked up with a new sketch. By the way, Cold Play is this weeks musical guest and they’ve brought in a giant video display screen as a backdrop.

I sat in awe till 7:30 when ‘Tonight’ cameraman Kurt Decker came up and got me and away we went for dinner and drinks at Hurley’s! How’s that for nostalgia? For those that don’t know, the original Hurley’s was right there at NBC, on the corner of 6th Ave and 49th Street. It was the network’s official watering hole and was lovingly referred to a Studio 1H…with it’s own NBC extension phone.

I’ll go into more detail later on what I saw in 8H, but I want to go back to before the phone call. Thanks to the incredible generosity of our friends at ‘The Late Show With David Letterman’, I was able to go into the theater on a quiet day and really see it.

The first stop…the secret door. In the basement, there is a door that opens into a small stairway and it was Jackie Gleason’s favorite door. The stairs lead up into what is now a Steak and Shake, but from the late 40s till the early 70s, it was a bar. You probably had already guessed that hadn’t you? This little gem was not lost on guests in the Sullivan years as many took advantage of it.

There is just too much to tell about all of this, and it will be best told with pictures, so I’ll again beg your forgiveness for not getting them up now, but next week…look out, because you’ll get both barrels at once!

Today, I’m going to The Paley Center For Media, which was formerly known as The Museum of Television And Radio, and The Museum of Broadcasting. This is the ultimate video archive!

Around 6:30, I’m going to SNL’s Dress Rehearsal, so you won’t see me on television. This is the performance I wanted to see because first, it’s longer and second, I can get back to the hotel in time to see the live show. In Dress Rehearsal, which actually starts taping at 8, several extra sketches are included and are evaluated as the show runs and some will make final air, while others get rewrites and pop up later. Taping could run till 10:30. By the way, counting tonight, there are only three new shows left in this season. The new season starts in September.

Tomorrow, I’m back at NBC for the full studio tour. I’ve been very fortunate in having the ability to spend time on the 6th and 8th floors in 6B, 8G and 8H, but there is a lot yet to be seen. I can’t wait to stand in the space where NBC’s first television studio, 3H was located.

I go home Tuesday afternoon, but there is still a lot left to do. On Monday, I have a meeting at NBC and final quick stop in 8G. Around noon, I’ll be with Rick Scheckman at Letterman and look forward to meeting him and Late Show director Jerry Foley. I didn’t get to meet them yesterday as their Friday meeting were canceled.

I go from Studio 50 to Studio 54, home of ‘The Colbert Report’ for a tour and then on to ‘The Daily Show’ taping a few blocks away. I’ve invited New York Times writer James Barron to come with me to the Stewart show. We became acquainted back in February when the 50th Anniversary of The Beatles on Ed Sullivan was going on.

I’m hoping for one final meeting Tuesday morning and then, off to Atlanta. I hope you have a great weekend! I know I’m going to and I’ll share it with you! More Tomorrow! Bobby Ellerbee

P.S. I just read my posts from yesterday and the day before. It’s like I wrote then a month ago…so much is going on I can hardly keep track of it, much less find the time to write about it. I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself but when you are drinking water from a firehose, it’s hard to focus on anything but the massive stream coming your way. I thank God for this incredible good fortune, and thank all the great people here in New York at NBC, CBS and ABC for turning the hydrant wide open!

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