On March 1, 1983, "Dr." Bernard Meltzer appeared as a guest on Late Night. (He insisted on being addressed as "Doctor" while acknowledging that it was from a PhD in Economics.) At the time he was hosting a local evening call-in radio show called "What's Your Problem," offering advice on any and all topics asked by home callers. Dave and Merrill would listen to his show on their way home from a Late Night taping. "It made us laugh how [Meltzer] felt he had useful answers to questions on such a wide variety of topics, everything from home repairs to politics to recipes. He felt he had a good answer for everything."
Also, Meltzer wore a too-obvious hairpiece.
Nine months later, Dave and Merrill came up with a parody to Meltzer's know-it-all advice with a new segment called "Ask Mr. Melman." In its debut, Calvert DeForest's only scripted line was directing audio technician Bob Rooney to hand out two t-shirts to each audience participant Dave had selected to ask questions, another Meltzer lift.
All of Calvert's responses to the questions were ad-libbed on the spot, and it showed. In subsequent segments, the writers prepared answers for him to read. What made them even funnier was that Dave would hear them for the first time when Calvert recited them; he had been kept in the dark what the answers would be, so his reactions to them were genuine.
Meltzer had his own catch phrase when opening his radio program. He would begin each show offering his listeners "a pleasant good evening to my wonderful, wonderful radio family." In the early Ask Mr. Melman segments, Calvert would subtly allude to Meltzer's catchphrase by including the word "wonderful" in a few responses:
December 8, 1983: "Thank you so much for your wonderful question."
January 4, 1984: "What a wonderful question."
Both the parody and the word "wonderful" was not lost on Meltzer. In late April 1984 he wrote to Late Night and threatened the show with legal action should the Ask Mr. Melman segments continue. Dave made note of the threat on April 30 and dismissed it entirely. That's included in this compilation.
It was on the following Late Night, May 1, when the next Ask Mr. Melman segment aired, and Calvert now began wearing different types of ill-fitting hairpieces, further making fun of Meltzer. Soon after, Meltzer's "family" and "wonderful, wonderful" catchphrase would begin to take root:
July 11, 1984: Calvert introduces the segment with "Think of me as family." Then, in response to the first audience question, "Thank you my wonderful friend for your wonderful, wonderful question."
November 5, 1984, response to the third question: "First of all, my wonderful friend…"
It was on March 25, 1985, when Meltzer's radio catchphrase reached full blossom in Ask Mr. Melman's introduction: "A pleasant good evening to all the members of my wonderful, wonderful television family."
By December 19, 1985, it had morphed into "A hearty good evening to my wonderful, wonderful television family," and it was this phrase that was recited in all but one Ask Mr. Melman introductions for the next two years (the exception being the segment for Ask Larry "Bud" Headroom on October 8, 1986, included in Part 2 of this compilation). By the time "The Big Man" arrived (included in Part 3), the phrase was modified to account for Calvert's gigantic size: "Hello to my wonderful but comparatively tiny viewers."
Meltzer's lawsuit never materialized. "Dave must have been advised that you can't copyright 'a pleasant good evening to my wonderful, wonderful radio family,' and that no one knew who the guy even was outside the NYC area. Which would make Dave immune and also increase his enjoyment."
So the segments continued, getting more and more surreal as they progressed, finally ending in July 1992 with a segment called "Ask H. 'Bud' Perot" and featuring Regis Philbin (in Part 3).
The collection ends in Part 3 with a brief profile on Calvert that aired on Entertainment Tonight in early February 1984.
Great thanks to Merrill Markoe, Steve O'Donnell, and Rick Scheckman for sharing their memories of both the Ask Mr. Melman segments and the Meltzer angle.
Note: I included all of Calvert's "Big Man" segments, including one not connected to Ask Mr. Melman because completeness.
The contents to Part 1:
Prologue. March 1, 1983. Bernard Meltzer.
1. December 8, 1983. The debut segment occurs in the show's penultimate act rather than in its soon-established post-station-break Act 4. Calvert wings it with no prepared answers on cue cards.
2. January 4, 1984. From this date on, Calvert is reading his answers from cue cards. Dave is hearing them for the first time.
3. March 19, 1984.
4. April 17, 1984.
4a. April 30, 1984. Dave mentions a lawsuit from an unnamed person but it's in reference to Meltzer.
5, May 1, 1984. Calvert begins wearing a hairpiece.
6. June 13, 1984.
7, July 11, 1984 (taped July 4).
8. August 16, 1984 (taped August 2).
9. September 27, 1984.
10. November 5, 1984.