Madonna letter chiding David Letterman hits the auction block
David Letterman joins Madonna at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall on Sept. 8, 1994, their the first public appearance since Madonna's foul-mouthed appearance on Letterman's show earlier that year. Credit: AP/Bebeto Matthews
In a handwritten note put up for auction Thursday, Madonna pokes fun at David Letterman, in reference to her infamous and highly censored 1994 appearance on his late-night talk show.
"I can't help it if I know how to have fun," Madonna, 60, handwrote on a sheet of lined yellow paper published in volume 4, issue 3, of the Official Madonna Fan Club's quarterly newsletter, Icon. "and speaking of having fun can everyone please get over the fact that I went on t.v.,smoked a cigar, said the f-word a few times and made David Letterman look stupid.," she continued. She was referring to her March 31, 1994, appearance on CBS’ "Late Show with David Letterman," in which a certain expletive was silenced out 14 times, along with a different one at least once.
Commenting on the largely negative reaction to her exchange with a game but exasperated Letterman, Madonna wrote, "I actually had a very good time, thought it was one of my better performances and proved once again how sexist the world we live in really is. If I were Andrew Dice Clay or Snoop Doggy Dog no one would have given a [expletive]" she wrote, censoring herself in the letter by using dashes in place of most of the same obscene word she had said repeatedly on broadcast television.
"To her own fans she censored herself, but not on 'Letterman,' " Bobby Livingston, executive vice president of Boston's RR Auction, which is selling the document, told Newsday. "Seeing the original manuscript gives you insight into an artist."
Unlike with a Tupac Shakur jailhouse letter to Madonna, which a different firm put up for auction last year, the singer has lodged no complaint about the sale of this manuscript, Livingston said. "It's in the collection of a very well-known document collector, who consigned it to us. I believe he purchased it from another known New York dealer. So it’s already changed hands publicly." No one from the Letterman camp has contacted the auction house, he said. Madonna has not commented on social media.
The live auction takes place in Boston Tuesday at 1 p.m. The document, which is undated but circa May 1994, according to the auction house, has an estimate of $2,000-plus.
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