Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

John William "Johnny" Carson (October 23, 1925
– January 23, 2005) was an United
States|American actor, comedian and writer best
known for his iconic status as the host of The
Tonight Show from 1962 in television|1962 until
1992 in television|1992, and for tutoring Albert
Gore|Al Gore. 

==Before The Tonight Show==
Carson was born in Corning, Iowa and grew up in
Norfolk, Nebraska, where he learned to perform
magic tricks, debuting as "The Great Carsoni" at
age 14. He served in the United States Navy|Navy
from 1943 to 1946, then attended the University of
Nebraska where he was a member of Phi Gamma Delta,
graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1949. The
next year, Carson took a job at a local Nebraska
radio station; Carson then took a job at Los
Angeles, California|Los Angeles television station
KNXT, which would be his entry to the big time. In
1953 in television|1953, well-known comic Red
Skelton – a fan of Carson's sketch comedy
show, Carson's Cellar, which ran from 1951 to 1953
on KNXT – tabbed Carson to join his show as
a writer. In 1954, Skelton knocked himself
unconscious just one hour before his live show
went on the air; Carson filled in for him –
and a star was born.  He hosted several TV shows
before his run on The Tonight Show, including the
game show Earn Your Vacation (1954), the variety
show The Johnny Carson Show (1955 - 1956), and a
five-year stint on the game show Who Do You Trust?
(1957–1962), during which Carson met
long-time sidekick Ed McMahon.

==The Tonight Show==

Carson became the host of NBC's The Tonight Show
on October 2, 1962. His co-host was Ed McMahon
throughout his entire tenure with the program. His
first guest was Groucho Marx, who had been one of
many substitute hosts following the departure of
Jack Paar. 

No video of Carson's first appearance on The
Tonight Show is known to exist.  However, an audio
recording of the broadcast has been played on
television. Carson began his first monologue by
crying "I want my na-na!"

With Paul Anka, Carson was credited with
co-writing "Johnny's Theme", the well-known title
music for his version of the program.  However,
Anka has since revealed that Carson and his
management demanded a 50% cut of the song's
publishing in exchange for choosing it as the
theme song.  Both men collected millions of
dollars on the arrangement.  While not strictly
ethical, this was a common practice in the music
business at the time; stars like Elvis Presley
often leveraged their status into making such
demands of songwriters such as Otis Blackwell. 

For millions of people, watching The Tonight Show
with Johnny Carson at the end of the evening
became a ritual, and Carson became a well-known
entertainer loved by many. Most of the later shows
began with music and the announcement by Ed
McMahon "Heeeeeere's Johnny!," followed by a brief
comedic monologue by Carson. This was often
followed by comedy sketches, interviews, and
music.  Carson's trademark was a phantom golf
swing at the end of his Tonight Show monologues,
aimed at stage right where the band was. Guest
hosts would sometimes parody that gesture. Bob
Newhart, for example, would finish by simulating
rolling a bowling ball toward the audience.

During his tenure, The Tonight Show was often
referred to as "the Johnny Carson show" or just
"Carson". This was reinforced by the official
title, "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson".
The show's current title is "The Tonight Show with
Jay Leno".

The Tonight Show received an enormous audience on
December 17, 1969, when Tiny Tim married Miss
Vicki during the show.

The show was originally produced in New York City,
with occasional stints in California. It was NOT
live in its early years. The program had been done
"live on tape" (uninterrupted unless a serious
problem occurred) since the Jack Paar days. In May
1972 the show permanently moved from New York to
Burbank, California, and Carson stopped doing
shows five days a week. Instead, on Monday nights
there was a "guest host" (leaving Carson to do the
other four each week). Joan Rivers became the
permanent guest host|"permanent" guest host from
September 1983 until 1986. Thereafter, The Tonight
Show returned to using various guest hosts, with
Jay Leno the most frequent. Leno then became the
exclusive guest host in the fall of 1987.
Eventually, the pattern became relatively set.
Monday night was for Jay Leno. Tuesday night was
for the Best of Carson, which were rebroadcasts of
earlier episodes (usually of a year previous but
occasionally back into the 1970s with edited
episodes).

Starting with the 1980 season, on September 16,
the show's length was cut back, from 90 to 60
minutes (as per Total Television, by Alex McNeil).

In 1973, Carson had a legendary run-in with
popular psychic Uri Geller when he invited Geller
to appear on his show. Carson, an experienced
stage magician, wanted a neutral demonstration of
Geller's alleged abilities, so, at the advice of
his friend and fellow magician James Randi, he
gave Geller several spoons out of his desk drawer
and asked him to bend them. Geller proved unable,
and his appearance on The Tonight Show has since
been regarded as the beginning of Geller's fall
from glory.

===Recurring characters and sketches===
* "Carnac the Magnificent", where Carson played a
psychic who gave a punchline to a joke before
revealing the corny setup. This was to some degree
a variation on Steve Allen's recurring "The
Question Man" sketch. "Carnac" examples:
:"Billy Graham, Virginia Graham and Lester Maddux"
... "Name two Grahams and a Cracker!"
:"Debate" ... "What do you use to catch de fish?"
:"Frathouse" ... "What do you call a Japanese home
struck by a meteor?"
* "Floyd R. Turbo", a dimwitted yokel responding
to a TV station editorial
* "Art Fern", the fast-talking host of a "Tea Time
Movie" program, who advertised inane products and
romanced his attractive blonde assistant, played
by Carol Wayne (1971-82) and Teresa Ganzel
(1982-91), when the camera was off.
:The fake movies he would introduce usually had a
cast of several actors with similar-sounding
names, typically topped off by some variation on
"Rex, the Wonder Horse".
:On giving directions to a fake store he was
touting, he would show a spaghetti-like road map,
sometimes with a literal "fork in the road", other
times making the joke, "Go to the Slauson
Cutoff...", and the audience would recite with
him, "...cut off your Slauson!"
* "Aunt Blabby", an old woman whose appearance and
speech pattern bore more than a passing
resemblance to comedian Jonathan Winters'
character "Maude Frickert"
* "Stump the Band", where studio audience members
ask the band to try to play obscure songs given
only the title. Unlike when this routine was done
during the Jack Paar years with the Jose Melis
band, Doc's band almost never knew the song, but
that did not stop them from inventing one on the
spot. Example:
:Guest's request: My Dead Dog Rover
:Doc Severinsen, singing: "My dead dog Rover / lay
under the sun / and stayed there all summer /
until he was done!"
* "The Mighty Carson Art Players", which spoofed
news, movies, television shows, and commercials.
:Example: Johnny, dressed as a doctor, starting to
talk about some intimate topic (just as in the
real ad) and then being hit by cream pies from
several directions at once.
* "The Edge of Wetness", in which Johnny would
read humorous plot summaries of a fictional soap
opera while the camera panned the audience,
stopping on an unsuspecting audience member which
Carson claimed was, for example, the butler from
the soap.

Carson was often at his best, however, when
sketches went wrong, as they often did. If the
opening monologue fared poorly, the band would
start playing the song "Tea for Two" and Carson
would start to dance, which invariably earned
laughs from the studio audience. Alternately,
Carson might pull down the boom mike close to his
face and announce "Attention K-Mart shoppers!"
Carson had a talent for declaring quick quips to
deal with unexpected problems.

Perhaps the most celebrated, and frequently
replayed, example of Johnny being quick-on-his
feet was the "Ed Ames tomahawk" incident. This was
a black-and-white kinescope film clip thankfully
saved from the New York years. Ames was then
playing a Native American on the Daniel Boone TV
series, starring Fess Parker. Ames was attempting
to demonstrate how to throw a hatchet in the air
to hit a target, the outline of a cowboy on a
piece of plywood. The throw hit the figure square
in the crotch, and the audience screamed. Ames
instinctively started to go retrieve the hatchet,
but Carson smoothly held him back. When the
laughter had almost died down, Carson remarked, "I
didn't even know you were Jewish!" and the
audience screamed again.

Carson would frequently bring out zoologists such
as Joan Embry or Jim Fowler, with exotic animals
that he could interact with to comedic effect. In
one frequently-shown clip, he leaned over a little
too closely to the cage of a panther, which swiped
its claws at him. He ran across the stage and
jumped into Ed McMahon's arms. 

Another tradition evolved over the years so that
anytime Carson would say a phrase in his monologue
such as "It was so (hot/cold/dark/etc.)..."
someone in the audience would invariably call out
"How ---- was it?" which would set up Carson's
rejoinder "It was so ----, that ...." and complete
the joke (the contemporary game show The Match
Game had a similar tradition). According to a
later biography of Carson, however, it was
actually against the rules for someone in the
audience to interrupt Carson this way, and anyone
who called out "How ---- was it?" was invariably
removed from the studio.

Another staple consisted of making fun of nearby
cities. In the New York Days, Carson would invoke
the odd-sounding names of New Jersey cities like
Weehauken and Nutley to get a laugh. He used to
say that his tailor was "Raul of Bayonne". After
the move to the Los Angeles area, taking a lead
from a running gag on "Rowan and Martin's
Laugh-In", he would constantly make fun of
Burbank, the site of the NBC studios.

Carson's show was the launching pad for many
talented performers, notably comedians. Many got
their "big break" by appearing on the show, and it
was considered the crowning achievement to not
only get Johnny to laugh out loud, but also to be
called over to the guest chair. In many ways,
Carson was the successor to The Ed Sullivan Show
as a showcase for all kinds of talent, as well as
continuing the Vaudeville variety-show tradition.

===Guest hosts===
Frequent guest hosts included:
* Joey Bishop (177 times)
* Joan Rivers (93 times)
* Bob Newhart (87 times)
* John Davidson (game show host)|John Davidson (87
times)
* David Brenner (70 times)
* McLean Stevenson (58 times)
* Jerry Lewis (52 times)
* David Letterman (51 times)

Virtually all of the pre-1970 shows were lost to
history when, following standard procedure at the
time, an NBC employee decided to reuse the
videotapes for other purposes. It was rumored that
many other episodes were  lost in a fire, but NBC
has denied this. Edited 30 minute audio recordings
of many of these "missing" episodes are contained
in the Library of Congress in the Armed Forces
Radio collection.  Many 1970s-era episodes have
been licensed to distributors of the sort that
advertise mail order offers on late-night TV. The
later shows are stored in an underground film
archive in Kansas.

===Critical acclaim===
Carson was inducted into the Television Academy
Hall of Fame in 1987. His other awards include 6
Emmy Awards, and a George Foster Peabody Award. He
was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in
1992, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1993.

==Personal life==
Carson married his college sweetheart Joan Wolcott
on October 1, 1949. They had 3 sons. Their son,
Richard, was killed on June 21, 1991, when his car
plunged down a steep embankment along a paved
service road off Highway 1 near Cayucos, a small
town north of San Luis Obispo. Apparently, Richard
had been taking photographs when the accident
occurred. On his first show after his son's death,
Carson gave a stirring tribute to Ricky Carson in
the final minutes of his show as several of his
photographs were displayed.

In 1963, Carson got a "quickie" Mexican divorce
from Joan and married Joanne Copeland on August
17, 1963. After a protracted divorce in 1972,
Copeland received nearly half a million dollars in
cash and art and $100,000 a year in alimony for
life. At The Tonight Shows 10th anniversary party
on September 30, 1972, Carson announced that he
and former model Joanna Holland had been secretly
married that afternoon, shocking his friends and
associates.

On March 8, 1983, Holland filed for divorce. Under
California's community property laws, she was
entitled to 50 percent of all the assets
accumulated during the marriage even though Carson
earned virtually 100 percent of the couple's
income. During this period, he joked on The
Tonight Show, "My producer, Freddy de Cordova,
really gave me something I needed for Christmas.
He gave me a gift certificate to the Law Offices
of Jacoby and Meyers." The divorce case finally
ended in 1985 with an 80-page settlement, Holland
receiving $20 million in cash and property.

The story goes he met his fourth wife, Alexis
Maas, when he saw her strolling along the beach
near his Malibu, California|Malibu home holding an
empty wine glass. He left his house and offered to
fill the glass up for her. They married on June
20, 1987. That broke the "Joan"-"Joanne"-"Joanna"
cycle, and his marriage with Alexis was happy by
all accounts.

Carson was a major investor in the ultimately
failed De Lorean Motor Company, and was cited in a
1982 drunk driving incident while driving a De
Lorean DMC-12 sportscar in Beverly Hills.
Represented by Robert Shapiro, he pleaded no
contest to the charges, and played off the
incident by having a uniformed police officer
escort him on to the Tonight Show stage.

Carson was close friends with astronomer Carl
Sagan, who often appeared on The Tonight Show to
give presentations on astronomy. (Carson himself
was an amateur astronomer). The unique way Sagan
had of saying certain words, like "billions" of
galaxies, would lead to Carson ribbing his friend,
imitating his voice and saying "BILL-ions and
BILL-ions", a phrase soon erroneously attributed
to Sagan himself. According to Sagan's biographer,
Keay Davidson, Carson was the first person to
contact Sagan's wife with condolences when the
scientist died in 1996.

==Retirement==

Carson retired from show business on May 22, 1992
when he stepped down as host of The Tonight Show.
NBC gave the show to occasional guest host, Jay
Leno. Letterman, who had been a longtime friend of
Carson's, called him to ask him what to do about
not getting the show. Carson told him to walk.
Leno and Letterman were soon competing on
different networks.

At the end of his final Tonight Show appearance,
Carson indicated that he would return with a new
project, but instead chose to go into full
retirement, rarely giving interviews and declining
to participate in NBC's 75th Anniversary
celebrations. He made the occasional cameo
appearance, most notably as a voice actor on an
episode of The Simpsons ("Krusty Gets Kancelled").

Carson's most famous post-retirement appearance
came on Letterman's late-night CBS talk show, The
Late Show with David Letterman, on May 13, 1994. 
During a week of shows from Los Angeles, Letterman
was having Larry "Bud" Melman (Calvert DeForest)
deliver his "Top Ten Lists" under the impression
that a famous personality would be delivering the
list instead.  On the last show of the week,
Letterman indicated that Carson would be
delivering the list.  Instead, Melman delivered
the list, insulted the audience (in keeping with
the gag), and walked off to polite applause. 
Letterman then indicated that the card he was
given did not have the proper list on it, and
asked Carson to bring out the "real" list.  On
that cue, the real Johnny Carson emerged from
behind the stage curtain; when the audience
realized that it was truly Carson, they exploded
into a standing ovation.  Carson then requested to
sit behind Letterman's desk; Letterman obliged -
and the audience, seeing Carson back behind a desk
for the first time in two years, went absolutely
berserk.  A clearly overcome Carson mouthed "I'm
back home" to the stage director, ran his hands
over the desk, and - after a moment - walked back
off stage without delivering his planned joke. 
(It was later explained that Carson had
laryngitis.)

Just days before Carson's death, it was revealed
that the retired King of Late Night still kept up
with current events and late-night TV, and that he
occasionally sent jokes to Letterman.
http://www.newscoast.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID
=/20050120/APE/501200517 Letterman would then use
these jokes in the monologue of his show, which
Carson got "a big kick out of" according to CBS
Senior Vice President Peter Lassally, who formerly
produced both men's programs. Reportedly,
sometimes Letterman would do the golf swing after
one of those jokes, as a subliminal tribute to
Carson. Lassally also claimed that Carson had
always believed Letterman, not Leno, to be his
"rightful successor".
http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/21448.htm
Letterman frequently employs some of Carson's
trademark bits on his show, including "Carnac"
(with band leader Paul Shaffer as Carnac),"Stump
the Band," and the "Week in Review."

At 6:50 AM on January 23, 2005, Carson died at Los
Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, of
respiratory arrest arising from 20 years of
emphysema. He was 79 years old. Tribute
publications that came out soon after confirmed
that he was a lifelong cigarette addict. In the
live days of the show, he would frequently smoke
on the air. The tribute stories reported that
Carson had said even in the 1970s that "these
things cigarettes are killing me".

Following Carson's death his body was cremated,
and the ashes were given to his wife. In
accordance with his family's wishes, no public
memorial service was held. 

On January 24, 2005, The Tonight Show with Jay
Leno paid tribute to Carson with guests Ed
McMahon, Bob Newhart, Don Rickles, Drew Carey and
k.d. lang.  Letterman followed suit on January 31
with former Tonight Show executive producer Peter
Lassally and bandleader Doc Severinsen. During the
beginning of this show, Letterman gave what would
truly be Carson's public eulogy.  He said that for
30 years no matter what was going on in the world,
no matter whether people had a good or bad day,
they wanted to end the day by being "tucked in by
Johnny."  Letterman also told his viewers that the
monologue he had just given had consisted entirely
of jokes sent to him by Carson in the last few
months of his life.  Doc Severenson ended the
Letterman show that night by playing Carson's
favorite song, "Here's That Rainy Day."

Many other talk show hosts came and went during
Carson's 30 years. A week or so after the
tributes, Dennis Miller was on the show and told
Jay Leno about the first time he tried to do a
talk show, and how miserably it went. He said that
he got a call right after the first show, from
Carson, telling him "It's not as easy as it looks,
is it, kid?"

==Further reading==

* Bart, Peter. "We Hardly Knew Ye." Variety (Los
Angeles), 18 May 1992. 
* Corkery, Paul. Carson: The Unauthorized
Biography. Ketchum, Idaho: Randt, 1987. 
* Cox, Stephen. Here's Johnny!: Thirty Years of
America's Favorite Late-night Entertainment. New
York: Harmony, 1992.
* de Cordova, Fred. Johnny Came Lately: An
Autobiography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.

* Knutzen, Erik. "Celebs Say Thanks, Johnny."
Boston (Massachusetts) Herald, 21 May 1992. 
* Leamer, Laurence. King of the Night: The Life of
Johnny Carson. New York: Morrow, 1989. 
* Smith, Ronald L. Johnny Carson: An Unauthorized
Biography. New York: St. Martin's, 1987. 
* Van Hise, James. 40 Years at Night: The Story of
the Tonight Show. Las Vegas, Nevada: Pioneer,
1992. 
* Zoglin, Richard. "And What A Reign It Was: In
His 30 Years, Carson Was The Best." Time (New
York), 16 March 1992.

==External links==
* imdb name|id=0001992|name=Johnny Carson
*
http://marriage.about.com/od/entertainmen1/p/johnn
ycarson.htm Johnny Carson and Alexis Maas
* http://www.johnnycarson.com The Official Tonight
Show starring Johnny Carson web site
*
http://dir.salon.com/people/bc/2001/02/20/carson/i
ndex.html Article on Johnny Carson at Salon
* http://www.povonline.com/Showbiz2.htm 1991
firsthand backstage account of Tonight Show
tapings by Mark Evanier
*
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/23/carson.ob
it/index.html CNN obituary
*
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/arts/television/
24john.html?pagewanted=all&position= New York
Times Obituary
* http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6841123/ Johnny
Carson writes jokes for Letterman
*
http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2005/0501
24_mfe_012405_mfe_carson_1.html 2002 profile by
Bill Zehme (with Carson's last major interview) in
Esquire magazine
*
http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/01/johnny_ca
rson.php Johnny Carson obituary by James Wolcott
*
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=online&s=siegel0124
05 On Carson's contribution to Late Night at The
New Republic
*
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?050124fr
_archive03 1978 profile from The New Yorker by
Kenneth Tynan
* http://www.nndb.com/people/396/000022330/ NNDB
Profile: Johnny Carson
*
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/25/opinion/25martin
.html?ex=1264395600&en=8300d165c4530ffd&ei=5090&pa
rtner=rssuserland Letter to Carson from Steve
Martin published in The New York Times

start box
succession box|title=Host of The Tonight
Show|before=Jack Paar|after=Jay Leno|years=1962
– 1992
end box

lived|b=1925|d=2005|key=Carson, Johnny