‘Big Red’ was always game for anything
If I had a Top 10 list of favorite assignments, my first meeting with Alan Kalter would be pretty high in the count.
Back in 2003, I called to talk to him about announcing the Stamford Parade Spectacular for the first time. I asked if I could come to his Stamford home. He had a better idea.
So we met at the Ed Sullivan Theater stage, where Kalter, who died Tuesday at age 78, was already eight years into his gig as announcer for “The Late Show with David Letterman.”
“Big Red” made me earn my ticket. Though I’d always watched Letterman, the one-time English teacher threw pop quizzes to make sure I was familiar with the latest running gags (in this case, “Is it potatoes, or Gavin MacLeod?”). His tests were a lot tougher than the one I got when I mailed in for tickets (“What’s the color of announcer Alan Kalter’s hair?”).
I was also fluent enough in “Late Show” antics to know few performers in the history of the medium were as game for anything as Alan Kalter. The writers made him call his boss things such as “Suck Knob.” They dressed him as Michael Jackson and made him moonwalk. The undressed him as the “Red Hulk.” They had him threaten to beat up Hollywood heavyweights such as Harrison Ford and Will Smith. “You should see the stuff we don’t do,” he said. He didn’t blink at anything I asked him to do that day either. He introduced me to the cameraman who once chased a shirtless Alan out of the theater and down 53rd Street. I brought him down the same block to Hello Deli, where I held my own pop quiz by asking Alan and proprietor Rupert Jee to list the ingredients in the Alan Kalter Sandwich.
Rupert stumbled over his own recipe and turned to Alan for help.
“Smoked turkey, avocado, sweet peppers, romaine and pesto on a baguette,” Alan purred in a tone more fitting for his “For the Ladies” bits.
It took me a moment to realize the menu was in his line of vision, serving as cue cards.
A councilwomen from Ohio was so flirtatious with him I started looking around for hidden cameras.
“The councilwoman’s got the hots for Big Red,” he said as we fled.
I dragged him to the front of the theater. Big Red had even more admirers among the waiting ticketholders.
“Oh my God. You’re so handsome, you’re so handsome!” one woman yelled. I wanted to tell her to get in line behind the councilwoman.
Before the article even ran, he left a gracious message on my voicemail: “Boy, that was different than most interviews. That was a lot of fun.”
There were several more interviews over the years. He could pivot to his deadpan Letterman “character” at any time.
At the end of a 2013 chat, he threatened to punch me.
“Make sure this article is a positive one John, or you know what’s going to happen to you.”
I counter-punched by dissing his jab: “I’ve seen you take swings at Regis on the show. You rely too much on the right hook and need work on the left jab.”
“When they write a jab into the script, it will get better,” he replied.
He was a fan of the show before working there,
even mailing in for tickets so he could sit in the Ed Sullivan Theater, where he worked for years announcing for game shows such as “The $10,000 Pyramid” (and which Letterman appeared on in 1978 when it got a price increase).
I applied for tickets to catch one more “Late Show” in November of 2014, a few months before it left the air. I wound up being seated in front of Kalter’s catbird perch in the corner of the stage. After the taping, we started chatting and he immediately started fretting about the weather for the parade 40 miles and 10 days away in Stamford.
“I've been checking the early forecast; I don’t like it,” he said. “Sounds like it's going to be cold. It’s not good for the kids when it’s cold.”
That was Alan’s true character — to worry about other people, particularly those from the city he called home since 1976. He made countless cameos on behalf of area nonprofits or for Temple Beth-El, where he once served as president.
I would walk the sidelines at many parades, noticing announcers at other stops along the route reliably stuck to the script. Alan just couldn’t walk that straight line. He ad-libbed everything except the names of sponsors.
So it caught my attention when he prepared for our last interview by writing his own script. On the occasion of former Stamford Downtown Special Services District President Sandy Goldstein’s last spin helming the parade in 2019, I called him for a quote.
He checked his notes to ensure he paid proper tribute not only to Goldstein (they’ve been friends for decades), but to Stamford’s police, firefighters, EMS crews and Mayor David Martin.
“There are two Stamfordites who are extraordinary because they support everything that is meaningful in this city,” he said. “One is Mayor David Martin, and the other seems to be Sandy Goldstein ... they are always there.”
He not only stressed the contributions of Sandy’s husband, Bob, but added, “It’s important for me to mention the mayor’s late wife, Judy, and what she did for this town.”
His words were earnest, touching, and far more than I could possibly use. He got a second chance to pay tribute to Sandy, this time from the stage of the Palace Theatre when he emceed an event in her honor. He presented a top-10 list and roasted her throughout a surreal version of her biography (“her wrestling coach wrote, ‘Pound for pound, you were the best’ ”).
He got in one more jab that retirement for Goldstein meant, “no more worries about the parade or how much she pays me.”
He did his parade work for free (“at the end of the year I get a picture on a calendar as a memory”).
Which gives Sandy Goldstein and David Letterman something in common. Letterman told the New York Times this week that given Alan’s anything-fora-laugh commitment to the show, “he probably deserved more money.”
Perhaps, but No. 1 on Alan Kalter’s Top 10 list was to always pay it forward.