A Funny Thing Happened at Harvard

Stephen M. O’Donnell is quite possibly the only member of the Class of 1976 to have nearly died while being lowered into a tub of water wearing a suit made of Alka-Seltzer.

This rather bizarre brush with death occurred when O’Donnell, then a writer for the “Late Show with David Letterman,” was testing out a sketch that would be performed on that evening’s show.

Unfortunately for O’Donnell, the writers of the sketch didn’t know their chemistry. When Alka-Seltzer and water combine, they release carbon dioxide. So, as O’Donnell hung suspended in the tub of water, he was engulfed by the massive amount of carbon dioxide given off by his effervescent suit.

His lungs filled with the carbon dioxide and he passed out. Eventually, someone noticed, pulled him from the tub and slapped him back to his senses.

This would indeed count as an unusual experience—and O’Donnell has led a very unusual life.

As a writer, O’Donnell has worked on such shows as “The Late Show with David Letterman,” “Seinfeld,” “The Simpsons,” “Lateline,” “Space Ghost,” the “Chris Rock Show” and his current project, a Steve Martin-produced comedy show called the “Downer Channel,” which will air on NBC. He has received 19 Emmy awards nominations, four of which have allowed him to bring home the statue.

Just The Twelve of Us

Even as a child, O’Donnell had an appreciation for humor, but he never imagined that he would someday make a career out of it. He says he greatly enjoyed the comedy of Johnny Carson and Jonathan Winters, and that he always remembered the jokes he heard on TV.

O’Donnell attributes much of his sense of humor to the way he was raised—as a member of a “big, boisterous family” in Cleveland, Ohio.

He also believes that his relationship with his twin brother, Mark P. O’Donnell—also a member of the Class of 1976—played a significant role in building his creativity.

Mark O’Donnell says that because they were the youngest children, they had the advantage of being raised by parents who, after raising eight other children, had reached the “exhausted and permissive” stage of parenting.

“My brother Mark and I were the silliest,” O’Donnell says. “We could doodle and dream more than the older ones.”

The two used to play a game where one brother would draw a surreal picture and the other would have to write a poem justifying the picture. He says the process was “somewhere between play and creative writing.”

School Daze

O’Donnell took this creativity with him to Harvard, where he acted in productions both in the Loeb Ex and on the Mainstage. He (and his brother) also wrote for the Harvard Lampoon.

But even after four years of being a member of the semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine, O’Donnell says he did not have a definite feeling that writing was the career for him.

“I think one or two men and women on staff had a notion that they would go into the entertainment arts,” he recalls, “but for everyone else, it didn’t seem like the completely plausible Ivy League choice.”

O’Donnell says he and other Harvard students at that time were still of the mindset that they had to enter “respectable” professions, like medicine and law.

The Comic’s Calling

After commencement, O’Donnell embarked upon a number of short-lived careers, ranging from his position as an assistant teacher in North Carolina to his job as a teamster loading trucks for United Parcel Post. He also served as a tour guide at Paul Revere’s house, worked in the Museum of Broadcasting and wrote greeting cards for American Greetings.

Then, one day in 1982, O’Donnell saw David Letterman’s morning show.

“It was one of those odd and sublime occurrences that according to a guidance counselor should be happening left and right,” O’Donnell says. “When I had seen Letterman do his morning show, I was so enthralled and appreciative that when I heard he had a nighttime version, I felt 100 percent certain that that was what I wanted to do.”

So O’Donnell put together a submission.

“I was dizzy with happiness when I was called in to talk with him and they ascertained that my personal hygiene was acceptable,” he says.

In other words, he got the job. For the next 13 years, he devoted himself to the show.

For nine of those years, as head writer, O’Donnell served as the “brilliant guiding spirits of the show,” as Steve E. Young ’87, a writer who came to “The Late Show,” in 1990 describes him.

Indeed, during his time working for Letterman, O’Donnell was responsible for introducing the idea of the top-ten list and instituting the practice of repeating the same joke over and over again, rephrasing it in as many ways as possible. It was an idea that his brother says he got from a joke book they read as children and one that Letterman still uses today.

The years spent writing for Letterman were by no means easy for O’Donnell.

In fact, his brother likens the job of head writer of the “Late Show” to being an army general during World War II. “Most people last two years,” he says. “He stayed for nine.”

O’Donnell admits that he didn’t sleep much during those years.

“It’s very rushed, very hurried,” he says. “You’re doing one every single night. The disadvantage is that not everything is going to work. But you can try it again and again.”

And it is that freedom to craft his work, night after night, that O’Donnell relished about his time at the “Late Show.”

Have Jokes, Will Travel

O’Donnell currently lives on New York’s Upper West Side, six blocks away from his twin brother. The two are still very close, and have shared in their successes over the years.

Mark O’Donnell, who is a novelist and playwright, says that the life of a writer is like “a gypsy path”—where the wagon keeps rolling from one job to the next.

Indeed, O’Donnell spends a decent amount of time in California, where he has been working for the past six months on “The Downer Channel.”

This nomadic lifestyle has left O’Donnell little time for anything else, including starting a family.

“Everything worth doing seems to involve some sacrifice,” he says. “I myself have not had a family, which I guess is a regret for me. I would love some bawling, sloppy youngsters.”

O’Donnell was once married to a woman he describes as a “smart, funny, musically brilliant Sarah Lawrence grad.” But though he says that she always made him laugh and still does, they were simply “temperamentally and emotionally incompatible.”

There was also a woman that O’Donnell says he should have married but didn’t, a mistake that troubles him to this day.

“The useful message to you all might be to bravely go with your heart always and everywhere,” he writes in his 1976 alumni book submission.

Twenty-five years, four Emmy awards, and one near-death Alka-Seltzer suit experience after graduating from Harvard, O’Donnell seems to be doing just that. He’s found the work he loves, and though there have been plenty of bumps along the way, he’s laughing all the way.

—Staff writer Kate L. Rakoczy can be reached at rakoczy@fas.harvard.edu.