After 33 years and 6,028 broadcasts of his late-night show, David Letterman has signed off. The transplanted Hoosier, who made Top 10 lists and ironic humor staples of television comedy and influenced a generation of performers, hosted his final episode Wednesday of CBS’ Late Show. Photographers clustered outside a side entrance to the New York City theater shot a steady stream of celebrities arriving for the last taping, including Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Tina Fey, Jim Carrey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Steve Martin, Barbara Walters, Peyton Manning and Alec Baldwin. Letterman announced his retirement last year and comedian Stephen Colbert will replace him in September. Letterman’s last few weeks have been warmly nostalgic, with Letterman entertaining old friends like Bill Murray, Tom Hanks, George Clooney and Julia Roberts. Anticipating the end, viewers sent Letterman to the top of the late-night ratings the week before last for the first time since Jimmy Fallon took over at NBC’s Tonight show and they competed with original telecasts. Letterman started on NBC’s Late Night in February 1982. He shifted to CBS in 1993 when NBC gave the Tonight show to Jay Leno instead of Letterman. As retirement neared, Letterman joked about second thoughts. “Next week I’ll be Googling foods that improve prostate health,” the 68-year-old host said Tuesday.
The body of blues legend B.B. King will return next week to the Mississippi Delta where his life and career began. His body will be flown next Wednesday to Memphis, the place where a young King was nicknamed the Beale Street Blues Boy. His body will be driven in a procession to Handy Park on Beale Street, where a tribute will be held that day. After that, King’s body will be driven to Indianola, Miss., which King considered his hometown. A public viewing is set for May 29 at the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola, and the funeral will be May 30 at nearby Bell Grove Missionary Baptist Church, the museum announced Wednesday. The 15-time Grammy winner will be buried later that day in a private ceremony at the museum, which King helped develop. King died May 14 at age 89 in Las Vegas, where there will be a public viewing Friday at Palm Mortuary West. He was born Riley B. King on Sept. 16, 1925, to sharecropper parents in Berclair, Miss., near the tiny town of Itta Bena. In the statement announcing King’s funeral plans, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant called the bluesman “one of our state’s most beloved native sons.”