Peter Lassally, the late-night whisperer who produced The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Show with David Letterman, died July 19. He was 93.
Lassally was a pivotal figure in the entertainment business, particularly in late-night, where he also produced The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, retiring when he was 82 and the Scottish comedian was passing the baton to James Corden.
The producer, whom former CBS Entertainment boss Nina Tassler called the “strong, silent type,” also had a remarkable early life. Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1932 to a Jewish family after the rise of the Nazis in Germany, his family fled to the Netherlands, where his sister went to school with Anne Frank. During World War II, Lassally, his mother and his sister were imprisoned in the Westerbork transit camp and later in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. After surviving the Holocaust, the family immigrated to New York in 1947.
He got his start as an NBC page and an usher at Radio City Music Hall, alongside his friend Regis Philbin. He then worked in radio before working for hugely popular entertainer Arthur Godfrey.
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Lassally joined The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1972 and rose to become executive producer. When Carson retired in 1992, he went to work for David Letterman, initially on NBC’s Late Night with David Letterman.
“When Johnny Carson and David Letterman needed counsel and an honest opinion, they immediately went to Peter Lassally, the professor of late night,” NBC said in a statement. “His relationship to each of these giants was immeasurable and both of them would undoubtedly say his contribution to their success was so impactful that it would be difficult to put in words. A quiet man whose influence and stature spoke volumes, Peter’s brilliance was in shaping what we watch, how we watch and why late night was, and remains, vitally significant.”
Lassally is considered to have played a key role in Letterman moving to CBS with Late Show and also championed Ferguson to become the host of The Late Late Show.
He was a confidant for many comics including Garry Shandling and Jon Stewart, who had a holding deal with Letterman’s company. Lassally wanted him to replace Tom Synder after Letterman, but the job went to Craig Kilborn and Stewart took over Kilborn’s spot on The Daily Show.
“One of Peter’s real strengths is getting the host to understand how to listen, how to ask the questions that an audience might want to hear, and to listen to the answer and to not be thinking ahead with the joke,” Shandling told NPR in 2012.
“One of the qualities that I have that get me through showbusiness is I respect talent, I’m in awe of talent,” Lassally told the Television Academy in a 2014 interview. “If you are really talented, I will put up with your craziness, because if you’re that talented you’re not a normal person, there’s something wacky about you. It helped me through at least 50 years of showbusiness in that I was willing to put up with craziness if I respected you, and I’ve worked for some great broadcasters starting with Godfrey and then Johnny Carson and David Letterman and Tom Synder.”
Lassally was nominated for 13 Emmys across his career and won two, in 1992 for The Tonight Show and 1994 for Late Show.
He is survived by children from his marriage to Alice Lassally including his daughter Andrea Gibbin and son Tom Lassally, who works at 3 Arts, and his grandchildren Walker Gibbin, Eloise Gibbin, Annabel Lassally and Owen Lassally.
The family said in a statement:
“For Peter, family represented something profoundly meaningful. Having survived the Holocaust and rebuilt his life in America, he never took for granted the opportunity to create the kind of loving, secure family that war had threatened to destroy,” the family said in a statement. “Watching his children build lives of their own and seeing his grandchildren grow into adulthood brought him immense joy. He delighted in family gatherings, thoughtful conversations, and the simple pleasure of being together. Those closest to him knew that no professional accomplishment ever meant more to him than the people around his own table.
“Peter built a life defined not by the horrors he endured as a child, but by resilience, generosity, curiosity, and optimism. Friends often remarked on his wit, humility, and remarkable ability to make others feel at ease. His life stood as a testament to both survival and reinvention—an immigrant who escaped unimaginable persecution and went on to influence one of America’s most beloved cultural institutions.”
Watch Lassally talk about meeting Carson for the first time here:
