The ``Late Show'' tournament came to a screeching halt, before it really ever began.
Place your ``Who Will Replace David Letterman?'' bracket in the shredder, right alongside your ``March Madness’’ bracket, if you thought Ellen DeGeneres, Tina Fey, Conan O'Brien, Craig Ferguson, or Chris Rock would replace the longest-running late-night talk show host in U.S. television history.
Exactly one week after David Letterman's stunning announcement that he was retiring in 2015, CBS announced that Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s ‘The Colbert Report'' had agreed to a five-year deal to succeed the Late Show host sometime next year.
Colbert, 49, will take the baton from the late-night icon, not as the satirical conservative Bill O'Reilly-like parody he perfected over the last decade, but as himself. The former cast member of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, said his caricatured version of a conservative political pundit will retire with the ``Colbert Report'', which leaves plenty of mystery of what to expect from this multi-talented, Emmy-Award winning writer, television host, and actor with his signature improvisational comedy.
So, as we wait for Colbert to enter the battlefield in what is sure to be an epic clash of late-night talk show titans, pitting the new kid on the block against Jimmy Kimmel (ABC) and Jimmy Fallon (NBC), here are some things you might want to know about Mr. Colbert.
Born: Stephen Tyrone Colbert on May 13, 1964, in Washington, D.C., raised in Charleston, S.C
Siblings: Stephen Colbert is the youngest of 11 children.
"The Colbert Report": Debuted on Oct. 17, 2005.
Family Life: Colbert lives in Montclair, N.J., with his wife, actress Evelyn McGee-Colbert. They have three children and a dog.
Top 10 (+) Things to Know About Stephen Colbert
• Early in his life, aspired to be a Marine Biologist.
• Colbert is deaf in the right ear after surgery was performed to repair a perforated ear drum.
• Originally, his name was pronounced ``COL-bert’’, but his dad always wanted to be ``Col-BEAR ‘’
• Colbert's father, James William Colbert, was a prominent doctor and academic who served as the president of Physicians for President Kennedy during the 1960’s. He was additionally the nation's youngest dean of a medical school, heading St. Louis University, a Jesuit institution.
• Colbert told Rolling Stone Magazine that in high school, he led a band called ``Shot in the Dark’’, which belted out a number of Rolling Stones' songs. Colbert said he generally wore a tight jersey, much like Mick Jagger, with a soccer jersey and the number zero on it that read COLBERT across the back.
• Coined the word ``truthiness’’ on the premiere episode of The Colbert Report on October 17, 2005, saying: "Now I'm sure some of the 'word police', the 'wordinistas' over at Webster's are gonna say, 'Hey, that's not a word'. Well, anybody who knows me knows I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn't true. Or what did or didn't happen." ``Truthiness'' is the the quality of seeming to be true according to one's intuition, opinion, or perception without regard to logic or factual evidence.
• "The Report" is considered a parody of Bill O'Reilly's "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News.
• Genesis of his comedy? Colbert once told Morley Safer on 60 Minutes: ``Acceptance or blind acceptance of authority is not easy for me.''
• On September 11, 1974, Colbert’s father, James Colbert, and two of his older brothers, Paul, 18, and Peter, 15, were killed when Eastern Airlines Flight 212 went down in a North Carolina cornfield. ``Nothing made any sense after my father and my brothers died. I kind of just shut off," Colbert once told The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC). His father was on his way to enroll his sons in a private school in New Milford, Connecticut.
• While attending Northwestern University's School of Communication, Colbert met Del Close, considered a premier influence on modern improvisational theater. Other notable students of Close included: Day Aykroyd, Jim Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farely, Tina Fey, Bill Murray, Mike Myers, among others.
• Teaches Sunday school at his New Jersey parish.
• Since falling while running around his "C"-shaped desk and breaking his wrist in June, 2007, he's advocated "wrist awareness" by selling "WristStrong" bracelets (for $1) with all proceeds going to the Yellow Ribbon Fund to assist injured service members and their families.
• While at the Second City comedy troupe, he was chosen to understudy Steve Carell, future star of the NBC sit-com, ``The Office’’ and the motion picture smash hit, ``The 40 Year-Old Virgin.’’
• Tried writing for VH1, MTV, "Saturday Night Live" and "The Dana Carvey Show’’ without much success. Once worked as a correspondent for "Good Morning America.’’
• In 1993, Colbert received his first on-screen role: Chet Davies in the television drama, ``Missing Persons.’’ He wouldn't show up on screen again until 1995, when he co-created the sketch-comedy show Exit 57 with several Second City colleagues on Comedy Central, including Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello, Jodi Lennon, and Mitch Rouse.
-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
April 10, 2014
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