Remembering Johnny Carson - 1925-2005

Remebering Johnny Carson - Johnny Carson, 1925-2005

Johnny Carson: He defined late-night TV and launched careers
By Gary Levin, USA TODAY
"Heeeeere's Johnny!"

That phrase ?- delivered in the booming baritone of Ed McMahon, backed by Paul Anka's theme song ?- is as firmly ingrained as any in the history of television.

Johnny Carson didn't invent late-night TV, but he might as well have. For it was his Tonight Show that perfected the art of wee-hours talk, comedy and music, setting a gold standard punctuated by his genius for effortlessly wringing a laugh out of a well-chosen grimace or tie-straightening gesture.

Carson, 79, died Sunday morning. The cause of death was emphysema, NBC reported.

"He was surrounded by his family, whose loss will be immeasurable. There will be no memorial service," his nephew, Jeff Sotzing, told the Associated Press.

In 4,350 shows over nearly 30 years, Carson's Tonight Show reigned supreme. He made stand-up comics' careers with a mere gesture, a "nice stuff" compliment that spoke volumes or an invitation to come sit and chat. Jerry Seinfeld, Roseanne Barr, David Letterman and Carson's successor, Jay Leno, among many others, vaulted to stardom by warming his couch.

He wrestled with exotic animals brought by the likes of Jim Fowler and Joan Embery. He embodied iconic characters such as the turtlenecked and turbaned soothsayer Carnac the Magnificent, tart-tongued Aunt Blabby, "teatime" movie host Art Fern and hayseed patriot Floyd R. Turbo, who won hoots from the audience each time they appeared.

He provided a huge showcase to plug books, movies and TV shows. And he set a style standard with his own sporty clothing line, which was sold in hundreds of department stores.

Beloved in the biz

"No single individual has had as great an impact on television as Johnny. He was the gold standard."
?- Jay Leno

"All of us who came after are pretenders. A night doesn't go by that I don't ask myself, 'What would Johnny have done?' Thank God for videotapes and DVDs. In this regard, he will always be around."
?- David Letterman

"Anyone who does this for a living is trying in vain to be Johnny Carson. To me, he'll always be the face, the voice and the spirit of late-night television."
?- Conan O'Brien

"He never made you look bad. He wasn't like, 'Can you top this?' He always had fun with you and made you feel like you were the guy he wanted to be a hit."
?- Don Rickles

"He defined the original talk show. His (show) was in our generation what Ed Sullivan's was in that generation. The very first time I got invited to the show, that defined you had now made it."
?- Oprah Winfrey

"He had it all: a little bit of devil, a whole lot of angel, wit, charm, good looks, superb timing and great, great class."
?- Bette Midler

Carson was "like a brother to me. When we ended our run on The Tonight Show and my professional life continued, whenever a big career decision needed to be made, I always got the OK from 'the boss.' "
?- Ed McMahon

"The Carson show changed your life. If Carson liked you, you were set. He got the bright comics. He picked the ones who were different."
?- Joan Rivers

"He was kindness personified."
?- Dr. Joyce Brothers

And aside from cementing his own stature, he made household names out of McMahon and the show's bandleader, Doc Severinsen, who joined the show in 1967.

Through all of his antics, Carson was a comforting presence for millions of insomniacs and hundreds of comics, actors and singers who performed before his curtain. He was a consummate straight man, and his Midwestern reserve, dry wit and easy grin put fans at ease and proved a marked contrast to the edgier, often aggressive late-night humor that would follow.

Even after his retirement in May 1992 ?- when he disappeared from the public eye ?- he couldn't completely let go. Peter Lassally, who worked with Carson for nearly 20 years, told TV writers at a conference last week that Carson missed the monologues most.

"When he reads the paper in the morning, he can think of five jokes right off the bat that he wishes he had an outlet for," Lassally said. "But he does once in a while send the jokes to Letterman, and Letterman has used Johnny's jokes in the monologue, and Johnny gets a big kick out of that."

In a statement, Letterman said: "All of us who came after are pretenders. We will not see the likes of him again. He gave me a shot on his show, and in doing so, he gave me a career. A night doesn't go by that I don't ask myself, 'What would Johnny have done?'

"He was the best," Letterman said. "A star and a gentleman."

President Bush said in a statement: "Johnny Carson was a steady and reassuring presence in homes across America for three decades. His wit and insight made Americans laugh and think and had a profound influence on American life and entertainment. ... (He) always remembered his roots in the heartland."

He started in magic

He was born John William Carson in Corning, Iowa, in 1925. His family moved to Norfolk, Neb., where he began performing at 14 as "The Great Carsoni," a comic magician.

After a Navy stint and four years at the University of Nebraska, he became a local radio announcer and dreamed of emulating his idols Jack Benny or Fred Allen as an audio comic. He moved into the nascent world of television at an Omaha station in 1949.

His first show: The Squirrel's Nest, a daily afternoon show with jokey interviews. A few years later, he moved west to Hollywood. He starred in Carson's Cellar, a low-budget local series that attracted the attention of Groucho Marx, Fred Allen and Red Skelton. He became a writer for Skelton's show and served as a substitute for the host when he was injured.

After breaking into prime time with a short-lived quiz show, Earn Your Vacation, he flamed out in 1955 with CBS' failed The Johnny Carson Show, a comedy-variety show that leaned heavily on Carson, 29, who had yet to develop a TV persona.

His first big break came in 1957 as host of ABC's game show Who Do You Trust?, for which he hired McMahon as his announcer. The exposure led him to substitute for Jack Paar, who endorsed Carson as his permanent replacement.

Forced to ride out his ABC contract, Carson became TheTonight Show's permanent host on Oct. 1, 1962, six months after Paar's retirement.

Under Carson, The Tonight Show moved from black-and-white to color, from New York to NBC's studios in "beautiful downtown Burbank," Calif., in 1972, and in 1980, from 90 minutes to an hour. Two years later, his production company launched Late Night With David Letterman in the time slot that followed. Letterman left NBC when he lost Carson's chair to Leno.

Carson had his battles with the network, and he wrestled with his own demons, mainly alcohol. He had pay squabbles, one leading to a walkout for several weeks in 1967. Tapes of early episodes from New York were recycled and destroyed by NBC in a cost-cutting move that enraged Carson.

When he moved to Los Angeles, he assumed ownership of the show and preserved episodes, which are now sealed in an underground vault in Kansas. They were released on home video just a few years ago by his company, which is run by Sotzing.

Guest hosts welcomed

Unlike Letterman and Leno, Carson was comfortable enough in his role to welcome regular guest hosts: Joey Bishop appeared most often, followed by Joan Rivers, who filled the role in the mid-1980s, Bob Newhart and John Davidson.

Comedian David Brenner, who made 158 appearances on The Tonight Show ?- 75 as guest host ?- recalls that after one night guest-hosting, Brenner's ratings were higher than Carson had received. The next day, producer Fred DeCordova told Brenner that Carson was on the phone.

As Carson lavishly praised the previous night's performance, Brenner kept waiting to be fired. "Then he said, 'I heard your ratings were higher than I've ever had.' I thought, here it comes: the guillotine. He said, 'The reason I called was to thank you for bringing all those new fans to my show.' This guy put his ego in the bottom drawer. Johnny was totally secure."

Carson outshone and outlasted scores of would-be challengers, from Chevy Chase and Jon Stewart to Arsenio Hall and Pat Sajak ?- including Rivers, who had a short-lived show on Fox, and Bishop, who had a late-night talk show on ABC.

There were many signature Tonight Show moments, some of them unplanned. In a 1965 episode, singer Ed Ames, demonstrating how to throw a tomahawk by aiming at a wooden sheriff, struck it squarely in the crotch, prompting Carson to ad-lib: "I didn't even know you were Jewish."

And in his biggest ratings stunt, he presided over the wedding of that era's ukulele-playing curiosity, Tiny Tim, to Miss Vicki in 1969.


AP photo
"When he reads the paper in the morning, he can think of five jokes right off the bat that he wishes he had an outlet for," Carson associate Peter Lassally says of the comedian post-retirement. "But he does once in a while send the jokes to Letterman, and Letterman has used Johnny's jokes in the monologue, and Johnny gets a big kick out of that."


For many viewers, the most memorable Tonight Show episode was his next-to-last broadcast on May 21, 1992. A visibly choked-up Carson was serenaded by Bette Midler, who sat astride his desk, and both fell into a touching duet of Here's That Rainy Day.

That episode left such an indelible mark ?- and many a tear ?- that Carson reportedly wanted to end the show there. But he returned the next night for a finale, telling his audience that "I am taking the applause sign home, putting it in the bedroom."

Then he turned serious, thanking viewers with these words:

"And so it has come to this. I am one of the lucky people in the world. I found something that I always wanted to do and I have enjoyed every single minute of it.

"You people watching, I can only tell you that it's been an honor and a privilege coming into your homes all these years to entertain you. And I hope when I find something I want to do and think you would like, I can come back and (you will be) as gracious in inviting me into your homes as you have been. I bid you a very heartfelt good night."

And that was that.

Seven weeks after he retired, at 66, Carson signed a lucrative deal to develop and star in unspecified new shows for the network. The pact was heralded by then-programming chief Warren Littlefield as "a very, very important announcement for all of NBC."

But it came to naught. Instead, Carson promptly vanished from sight. An intensely private man, he retreated to his Malibu estate, played tennis, traveled, bought himself a yacht and spurned all pitches to resume work.

'I left at the right time'

He accepted a Kennedy Center honor a year later and made occasional cameo appearances, and ?- egged on by pal Steve Martin ?- wrote a handful of short humor pieces for The New Yorker a few years back. But he granted only two major interviews since quitting his show, to The Washington Post in 1993 and Esquire in 2002.

"I think I left at the right time," he told Esquire. "You've got to know when to get off the stage, and the timing was right for me."

"He had the view that once you're off the stage you should stay off," says Robert Wright, chairman and CEO of NBC and a friend of Carson's. "He didn't want to be measured against the best of 30 years every time he made an appearance."

Carson was married four times and divorced three, and he made frequent references to his marital troubles in nightly monologues. (He is survived by his fourth wife, Alexis.)

But he was intensely secretive about other aspects of his life. One of his three sons, Ricky, a nature photographer, was killed in a car accident in 1991 while working.

Carson, a longtime smoker who quit 10 years ago, had health problems ?- a heart attack and bypass surgery in 1999 and emphysema, which was revealed a few years later ?- but he kept the news even from close friends.

He even passed on TheTonight Show's 50th anniversary special, explaining in his stoic, Midwestern way that he such appearances felt needlessly self-congratulatory.

His biggest (perhaps unwarranted) worry, expressed to the Post in 1993, was that his return would bomb in the ratings and sully his legacy. "You say, 'What am I doing this for? For my ego? For the money?' I don't need that anymore. I have an ego like anybody else, but it doesn't need to be stoked by going before the public all the time."