Late Night Last Century: Elayne Boosler Makes Hilarious Debut on Letterman

Late Night Last Century is a weekly column highlighting some of the funniest and most unforgettable comedy from late night, talk shows, and variety shows of the 20th century that’s currently streaming on YouTube. This week, we look back to Elayne Boosler’s debut performance on Late Night with David Letterman.

Too much kudos is never enough for Elayne Boosler. In her early twenties, in the 1970s, Boosler earned a reputation as not merely a hilarious, cutting edge comic, but a groundbreaking one too. By 1984, the New York Times was writing about the so-called “New Comediennes.” A new generation of women comics was ascendant, working in the wake of giants like Lucille Ball, Joan Rivers, and Totie Fields. “Female comics in the old days didn’t want to be too pretty or too threatening to women,” Barry Sand, then a producer for Letterman, told the Times. The comedy, Sand said, was “Phyllis Diller wearing bizarre outfits and talking about how ugly she was, or about Fang. Self-deprecating humor.” 

Enter: Boosler. As Richard Lewis told the Times: “At that time there was, like an irrational belief among most male comics that it was their ‘turf.’ Elayne really cracked a hole into that consciousness. She was the Jackie Robinson of my generation. She was the strongest female working. She broke the mold for most female comics.” The following year, Booosler would star in Party of One, the first stand-up comedy special hosted by a woman on cable.