Dave Vs. Dave

The firing came after several weeks of discussions between the suits; Morton's manager-lawyer team and Letterman's reps had been trying to hammer out Morton's new arrangement. It was clear that the best Letterman could offer him was co-executive-producer status with Rob Burnett, a former head writer and ascendant Letterman confidant. That was a take-it-or-leave-it offer Morton was almost sure to refuse.

"It was tough," says Letterman. "I knew for about three weeks I had to do it, and I would wake up every morning thinking, 'I can't do this, I can't do this, it's just horrible.' But then I just recognized that as an adult, there are responsibilities greater than individual feelings in life sometimes. And so I did it."

Years before, trying to retool his old NBC morning show, Letterman and his then manager, Jack Rollins, had to fire their producer and a handful of staffers. "I'd never done anything like this before," says Letterman. "My previous regular job had been, you know, running a cash register in a supermarket. Jack and I fired these people one at a time. And because we'd never done it before, we took our time, and we ended up counseling these people, and it went on and on. And at the end of the day — literally it took from 2 in the afternoon to 8 at night ? we were just limp, we were exhausted, it was a horrifying situation. So I have since refined that process: When you have to do this, let them sit down, tell them what exactly is transpiring, and then get up and extend your hand and thank them. And then if you want, you can talk about it later. But a swift, clean cut is the best way for everyone."

Letterman insists that the faintly bizarre sketch Morty took part in some 25 hours before his firing was sheer coincidence. As Morton stood beside an old lady whom — the sketch would have it — he was promoting as a human-interest story, Dave pointed out she was clutching not a swaddled baby but a salami. Then, as the boss taunted him, Morton exploded in fake ire, barking, "Climb off my ass, freako!" It was to be his on-air swan song.

Those close to Morton say that on the fateful Friday evening, he figured he was being summoned to Letterman's office on ordinary business. The two men met alone for 15 minutes, and apparently, though Morton chose not to shake Letterman's hand, there was neither an angry outburst nor a warm farewell — just a rather numbed and unceremonious leave-taking.

Letterman and Morton had apparently agreed to keep the controversy out of the papers as much as possible, but sources say that tack was doomed when Morton was handed a planned press release announcing that Rob Burnett would take over and Morton was to be kicked upstairs. Morton asked for a day to revise it and, in the hours he had before flying off to Italy, worked the phone with his host of contacts in the media. At first, he even made nice: "I don't think anybody's acting malicious here," Morton was quoted as saying in a wire report. "I'm personally very pleased with this shift." Even as he sat on the JFK runway before his flight to Italy (alongside current steady Jamie McDermott, herself a TV executive mulling over a move from NBC to ABC), Morton was on the phone with a Los Angeles TV reporter, praising Letterman as "the most talented man in television." The New York Times' Bill Carter reported on the following Wednesday that one staffer called the dispute "a him-or-me thing" and that "Mr. Morton had resisted sharing his duties with a man whom he had once hired as an intern." Newsday's Verne Gay wrote of the "cold, cold" world of late-night TV: "One day you're the toast of Broadway and the Hamptons . . . the next day, you're just toast." Although Morton knew how to handle "the world's most talented and miserable late-night host," Gay added, the two had grown apart: "To put it bluntly, Morty had gone Hollywood. Letterman, who despises what he sees as that town's frivolity and shallowness, had enough."

According to one insider, the firing is bound to affect viewers' feelings toward the show: "In their minds, there was always that family that was out there, whether you saw Morty or not. To remove a producer in that manner, that's one thing. But you don't remove a cast member, you don't take away somebody from an on-air job that way. They could have very easily said, 'Our friend Morty is leaving,' and showed a little videotape and shaken hands on the air. I'm sure Morty, with a financial interest in the program and having taken a hand in creating it, would have stepped back very graciously."

Letterman, usually the king of autocriticism, doesn't see it that way. "I don't want this to appear that 'that goddamn Morty, he had it coming.' It was circumstantial, and it was not punitive and it was not vindictive. It just needed to be done. The only regret I have of this is I fear that Morty now will, you know, be an enemy of mine for the rest of my life."

Nonetheless, Letterman says, "I kind of resented the notion that 'oh, Rob Burnett pushed his way in, stabbed Morty in the back.' It just didn't happen that way. Morty pretty much by his own hand designed this. It was no chicanery, it was no skulduggery, it was no clandestine, scheming plot. It was just — we had a little infection, and the limb had to come off."

The "Late Show" field hospital has been open for business since about halfway through the March 1995 Academy Awards telecast, when Letterman's kingly stature began to suffer some wounds. He'd turned down the host job once before, but the challenge of it all, the allure of trying on shoes that had been worn by his idol Johnny Carson (who'd hosted five times) and the sheer exposure the gig would bring overcame any second thoughts. In what now looks like a mistake, he and his staff tried to take the Late Show's rude, chaotic energy and set off a bottle rocket from inside the static vessel of the Oscars.

In fact, Dave spat out quite a few sparks, zinging both action figures (Eat Drink Man Woman was "How Arnold Schwarzenegger asked Maria Shriver out on their first date") and the politically correct Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon ("Pay attention: I'm sure they're pissed off about something"). But the show, which has been called "entertainment-proof," was clearly Dave-proof as well. By the time he and his entourage had flown home, they had the morning papers' pans to read. The New York Times' headline two days later was typical enough: The winner isn't David Letterman. The bit that bore a disproportionate share of blame came early, when Dave said, "I've been dying to do something all day.... Oprah, Uma. Uma, Oprah."