CALVERT DEFOREST, 85

Smitty gets the point for Larry Bud Melman, who died Monday in Long Island. Damn. TV Week reports:

"It was the greatest thing that had happened in my life," he said of the character. But because the Melman moniker was considered NBC's intellectual property, Mr. DeForest appeared under his own name on "Late Show With David Letterman" after it debuted on CBS in 1993.

His last appearance on "The Late Show" was in 2002, to celebrate his 81st birthday.

Letterman issued a statement that said, in part: "Everyone always wondered if Calvert was an actor playing a character, but in reality he was just himself -- a genuine, modest and nice man."