by Lucille Juliano
It’s a simple fact, that throughout show business history, there has never been such a success story. Who in the world has had thirty years in one spot? It never happened before. There’s nothing to compare it to. Sometimes old-timers hang on and they’re not so good, but the audience likes them and forgives. You don’t have to forgive him. He’s as good as the day he started. -Phyllis Diller
I loved being on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Nobody listened as good as Johnny. He’s also a great actor. He laughed at my jokes like he’d never heard them before.
-George Burns
He is, he was, and will always be the best there was. It’s been thirty years of the best television we will ever have. There is not another Johnny Carson . . . unless there’ll be another Charlie Chaplin.
-Jerry Lewis
I have nothing but the greatest admiration for him. I think that when he quits, it’s kind of an end of an era.
-Jack Paar
(taken from the foreword of Here’s Johnny! revised edition by Stephen Cox, 1992, 2002)
Johnny became the host of The Tonight Show about a year or so before I was born. My parents watched him religiously and as soon as we were old enough to stay up late, my sister and I became regulars as well. Apparently, Johnny had become an institution in our lives just as he had for countless Americans around the country. Like clockwork, he returned each night and we as admirers, banked on it. When I think about it, he was always there right after the 11 o’clock news on NBC for more than half my life. My family and I watched him every night Monday through Friday no matter where we were at home, visiting family or friends or on vacation. For three decades, Johnny was seated behind the desk and entertained us in so many ways. He was more than just an anchor to late-night audiences. He was the “King of Late-Night Television”. It has been said that Johnny had some of the greatest comedy writers around. His timing and delivery aged like fine wine and only got better. It could be that we just got so used to him that any errors really didn’t matter. We went easy on him because even his blunders were amusing. During his reign, seven presidents passed through the White House and the country moved through wars, victories, and taxes.
I can still remember watching his last show on May 22, 1992 with guests, Robin Williams and Bette Midler. Robin was his typical crazy self and had Johnny in stitches not knowing what he would do next. Bette was his official last guest. During the show, she sang three times including a duet with Johnny himself. Her rendition “You Made Me Love You” or should I say “You Made Me Watch You” was absolutely hysterical and a real roast of Johnny and his career. During the finale, Bette came out and sang her own rendition of “One More for My Baby (and One More for the Road) which was so touching and sentimental that there was not a dry eye on either side of the camera. You could see that Johnny was holding back tears as she sang and hear it in his voice as he said goodnight to his audience.
So now let me go back in time and see if I can give you enough evidence that would be cause for such admiration and sentiment . . . a real celebration of three decades of excellence in television. So get ready because . . . HERE’S JOHNNY!!!
The very first late-night talk/variety show on NBC was Broadway Open House with hosts Jerry Lester and Morey Amsterdam from 1950 to 1951. The next season The Steve Allen Show took its place. It was eventually renamed Tonight! starring Steve Allen in 1954. In January of 1957, various hosts took over and the show became known as Tonight! America after Dark. From July of 1957 to March of 1962, Jack Paar was the host and the show was officially titled The Tonight Show (starring Jack Paar). Following his stead, there were various hosts until September 28, 1962. On October 1, 1962, the show became The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for the next thirty years!
Every show began the same way. You would see a montage of pictures and hear the announcer, Ed McMahon’s booming voice welcome viewers, reveal the night’s guests and dramatically declare the arrival of Johnny. Then all eyes would be intently watching the middle of that stripped colored curtain, anxiously waiting to see Johnny’s hand draw back the curtain and enter the studio. Johnny always stepped out with a warm smile on his face and that spark in his eyes. It invariably meant that he was as excited to greet his audience as they were to see him.
Johnny had a number of signature traits that most fans will easily remember. Straightening his tie, tapping his pencil on the cigarette box or the rim of his coffee mug, flipping a pencil in the air and attempting to catch it (sometimes successfully), keeping his hands in his pockets or behind his back during the monologue, scratching the back of his ear, licking his thumb to turn pages while at his desk, twitching one eye when he was annoyed, winking as if to say “I’m just teasing”, “You’re doing fine”, or “Terrific” and swinging an imaginary golf club to mark the end of the monologue.
Johnny’s sense of judgement on the public’s point of view and state of mind was extremely perceptive. He was always sure to be well versed in what was going on in the news and beyond. The contents of his monologue were partially his and partially the imaginative humor of his crew of writers who would give him pages of material hours before air time. Johnny then put together the material with a dash of himself into a seven-minute speech that casually kept America in the loop with current affairs. His delivery was his own, but he was genuinely influenced by Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Don Adams, Jackie Gleason, Tom Poston, Will Rogers, and a few others. Yet, 50 percent of it was pure Johnny Carson. He admitted in interview that his editing and timing came from listening to Jack Benny on the radio over and over again. Fred de Cordova, the show’s producer, put it this way in 1988: “He has the innate ability to see humor, sarcastic sometimes, just plain funny other times, of what the foibles of the world are. He can mold that into an observation that later becomes of serious importance.”
Johnny never wanted to make his show a platform for his own motives, political or otherwise. He was, in public at least, apolitical because he threw darts at all parties. He made jokes about presidents…Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter all the way through. No one could tell what political side he was on.
Johnny had an inherent wit and often showed how quickly he could save a joke while at the desk or when something went wrong during one of his monologues. That was his gift: digging himself out of a hole in the most humorous way and getting to safe ground absolutely unblemished. Sometimes he would rescue himself with a mere expression on his face. Most of these expressions were absolutely priceless.
After the monologue, there would be comedy sketches, visits from comical characters played by Johnny or some sort of audience participation activity. At Christmas time, there would be a segment on unusual gifts for the season. There was the soap opera parody, “Edge of Wetness” where the camera scanned the studio audience and zoomed in on different people as Johnny read really insulting and embarrassing narratives about the fictitious townspeople of “Sludge Falls”. You often wondered whether the audience dreaded this or actually hoped to get picked. “Stump the Band” and questions from the audience happened on occasion. El Moldo, a half-witted psychic, a character played by Johnny, wearing a black wig and cap. El Moldo would sit center stage. Ed would then choose members of the audience and El Moldo tried to guess what was on their, object that they had hidden, or some kind of personal detail about them. From time to time Johnny would do a routine that involved his rapid-fire delivery of tongue twisters. The most legendary was his parody of Dragnet with guest Jack Webb. It was called the Copper Clapper Caper. The more difficult the tongue twister exchange became the more hilarious it was. Then of course there were the Mighty Carson Art Players and “Tea-time Movies” with host Art Fern (Johnny).
I could go on and on, but I would say that my ultimate favorite was Carnac the Magnificent. Johnny would come out in, costume wearing a huge turban and cape. Ed would say, “Oh Great Sage… I hold in my hand an envelope; a child of four can plainly see these envelopes are hermetically sealed. They’ve been kept since noon today in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnall’s porch. No one—but no one!—knows the contents. In his mystical, magical, and borderline divine way, Carnac will now ascertain the answers, having never heard the questions.” Carnac would then hold the envelope to his forehead and provide the answer. He then carefully tore open the end of the envelope, blew the envelope open, pulled out the card and read the question. If the audience booed him, Carnac would say something like, “May a love-starved fruit fly molest your sister’s nectarines!”
Here are a few examples of answers and questions: > I give a damn. . .What did it say in the beaver’s will? >A pair of Jordache jeans and a bread box. . .Name two place where you stuff your buns. >The zip code. . .What do CIA agents have to remember to go to the bathroom? Before the last question Ed would say, “I hold in my hand. . .the last envelope.” If the audience cheered, Carnac would say something like, “May a kangaroo punch on your erogenous zone!”
Johnny had many wonderful guests over the years including stars from sports, music, movies and television. There were too many stars to mention them all, but I will note a few that were on numerous times: Don Rickles, Jimmy Stewart, and Buddy Hackett. He also had “civilians” with special abilities or achievements, like a 105 year old woman or a 4-year- old spelling champion. I personally liked the guests that brought animals on the show. I guess my favorite was Joan Embery from the San Diego Zoo. She would bring out animals and encourage Johnny to interact with them which always lead to great comedy as sometimes Johnny would get into some kind of predicament with them. A classic was when the tiny monkey climbed onto his head and then proceeded to either pee or poo. The reaction on Johnny’s face was so comical.
As you can see, Johnny Carson was an entertainer that will never be forgotten by me as well as many others I am sure. For me it was not The Tonight Show, I was watching “Johnny Carson”.
