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Wikipedia

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

January 07, 2023

For the entire Tonight Show franchise, see The Tonight Show. For the 1955–1956 CBS variety show hosted by Carson, see The Johnny Carson Show.

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is an American late-night talk show hosted by Johnny Carson on NBC, the third iteration of the Tonight Show franchise. The show debuted on October 1, 1962, and aired its final episode on May 22, 1992.[1] Ed McMahon served as Carson's sidekick and the show's announcer.

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
Also known as
GenreLate-night talk/Variety
Created by
Written by
Presented byJohnny Carson
Narrated byEd McMahon
Theme music composerPaul Anka
Opening theme"Johnny's Theme"
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons29
No. of episodes6,714 (list of episodes)
Production
Producers
Production locations
Camera setupMulti-camera
Running time47–105 minutes
DistributorCarson Entertainment Group
Release
Original networkNBC
Picture formatColor
Original releaseOctober 1, 1962 (1962-10-01) –
May 22, 1992 (1992-05-22)
Chronology
Preceded byTonight Starring Jack Paar
Followed byThe Tonight Show with Jay Leno
RelatedCarson's Comedy Classics

For its first decade, Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show was based at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City, with some episodes recorded at NBC Studios in Burbank, California; on May 1, 1972, the show moved to Burbank as its main venue and remained there exclusively after May 1973 until Carson's retirement.[2] The show's house band, the NBC Orchestra, was led by Skitch Henderson, until 1966 when Milton Delugg took over, who was succeeded by Doc Severinsen less than a year later.

The series has been ranked as one of the greatest TV shows of all time in polls from both 2002 and 2013.[3][4]

Format

Johnny Carson's Tonight Show established the modern format of the late-night talk show:[5] a monologue sprinkled with a rapid-fire series of 16 to 22 one-liners (Carson had a rule of no more than three on the same subject) was followed by sketch comedy, then moving on to guest interviews and performances by musicians and stand-up comedians. Occasionally, Carson interviewed prominent politicians such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Robert F. Kennedy, and Hubert Humphrey, however Carson refused to discuss his personal political views on the show out of concern it might alienate his audience.[6] Other regulars were selected for their entertainment or information value, in contrast to those who offered more cerebral conversation;[7]

His preference for access to Hollywood stars caused the show's move to the West Coast on May 1, 1972; The Tonight Show would not return to New York until 2014 when Jimmy Fallon took the hosting reins.[8] When asked about intellectual conversation on The Tonight Show, Carson and his staff invariably cited "Carl Sagan, Paul Ehrlich, Margaret Mead, Gore Vidal, Shana Alexander, Madalyn Murray O'Hair" as guests;[7] one television critic stated, however, "he always presented them as if they were spinach for your diet when he did [feature such names]."[9] Family therapist Carlfred Broderick appeared on the show ten times,[10] and psychologist Joyce Brothers was one of Carson's most frequent guests. Carson, in general, did not feature prop comedy acts (Carson was not averse to using prop comedy himself); such acts, with Gallagher being a prominent example, more commonly appeared when guest hosts helmed the program.[11]

Carson almost never socialized with guests before or after the show; frequent interviewee Orson Welles recalled that Tonight Show employees were astonished when Carson visited Welles's dressing room to say hello before a show. Unlike his avuncular counterparts Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas, and Dick Cavett, Carson was a comparatively "cool" host who only laughed when genuinely amused and abruptly cut short monotonous or embarrassingly inept interviewees. Mort Sahl recalled, "The producer crouches just off camera and holds up a card that says, 'Go to commercial.' So Carson goes to a commercial and the whole team rushes up to his desk to discuss what had gone wrong, like a pit stop at Le Mans." Actor Robert Blake once compared being interviewed by Carson to "facing the death squad" or "Broadway on opening night." The publicity value of appearing on The Tonight Show was so great, however, that most guests were willing to subject themselves to the risk.[7]

Show regulars

Ed McMahon

The series' announcer and Carson's sidekick was Ed McMahon, who from the first show would introduce Carson with a drawn-out "Here's Johnny!" (something McMahon was inspired to do by the overemphasized way he had introduced reporter Robert Pierpoint on the NBC Radio Network program Monitor). The catchphrase was heard nightly for 30 years, and ranked top of the TV Land poll of U.S. TV catchphrases and quotes in 2006;[12] it has been referenced in all media going from The Shining to Johnny Bravo to a "Weird Al" Yankovic album cut; it was even used for the character Johnny Cage in the video game series Mortal Kombat.

McMahon, who held the same role in Carson's ABC game show Who Do You Trust? for five years previously, would remain standing to the side as Carson did his monologue, laughing (sometimes obsequiously) at his jokes, then join him at the guest chair when Carson moved to his desk. The two would usually interact in a comic spot for a short while before the first guest was introduced.

McMahon stated in a 1978 profile of Carson in The New Yorker that "the 'Tonight Show' is my staple diet, my meat and potatoes—I'm realistic enough to know that everything else stems from that." After a 1965 incident in which he ruined Carson's joke on the air McMahon was careful to, as he said, "never to go where [Carson]'s going."[7] He wrote in his 1998 autobiography:

My role on the show never was strictly defined. I did what had to be done when it had to be done. I was there when he needed me, and when he didn't I moved down the couch and kept quiet. ... I did the audience warm-up, I did commercials, for a brief period I co-hosted the first fifteen minutes of the show..., and I performed in many sketches. On our thirteenth-anniversary show Johnny and I were talking at his desk and he said, "Thirteen years is a long time." He paused long enough for me to recognize my cue, so I asked, "How long is it?" "That's why you're here," he said, probably summing up my primary role on the show perfectly... I had to support him, I had to help him get to the punch line, but while doing it I had to make it look as if I wasn't doing anything at all. The better I did it, the less it appeared as if I was doing it....If I was going to play second fiddle, I wanted to be the Heifetz of second fiddlers....The most difficult thing for me to learn how to do was just sit there with my mouth closed. Many nights I'd be listening to Johnny and in my mind I'd reach the same ad lib just as he said it. I'd have to bite my tongue not to say it out loud. I had to make sure I wasn't too funny—although critics who saw some of my other performances will claim I needn't have worried. If I got too many laughs, I wasn't doing my job; my job was to be part of a team that generated the laughs.[13]

Bandleaders and others

 
Doc Severinsen led the NBC Orchestra beginning in 1967; he held the role until the show's finale

The Tonight Show had a live big band for nearly all of its existence. The NBC Orchestra during Carson's reign was originally led by Skitch Henderson (who had previously led the band during Tonight Starring Steve Allen), followed briefly by Milton DeLugg. Starting in 1967 and continuing until Jay Leno took over, the band was led by Doc Severinsen, with Tommy Newsom filling in for him when he was absent or filling in for McMahon as the announcer (this usually happened when a guest host substituted for Carson, which generally gave McMahon the night off as well).[14] The series' instrumental theme music, "Johnny's Theme," was a re-arrangement of the Paul Anka composition "Toot Sweet," which Anka and Annette Funicello had separately recorded, with lyrics, as "It's Really Love."[15] During shows when Newsom filled in for Severinsen, the band played a slightly truncated version of the theme that transitioned from the bridge to the closing phrase without reprising the first few notes of the main melody. The NBC Orchestra was the last in-house studio orchestra to perform on American television.

Behind the scenes, motion picture director/producer Fred de Cordova joined The Tonight Show in 1970 as producer, graduating to executive producer in 1984. Unlike many people of his position, de Cordova often appeared on the show, bantering with Carson from his chair off-camera (though occasionally a camera would be pointed in his direction).

Recurring segments and skits

Characters

 
Carson as Carnac the Magnificent, a reoccurring comedic role he introduced in 1964.

If the laughter fell short when a line bombed (as it often did), "Carnac" would face the audience with mock seriousness and bestow a comic curse: "May a diseased yak befriend your sister!" or "May a rabid holy man bless your nether regions with a power tool!"

  • "Floyd R. Turbo," a dimwitted yokel responding to a TV station editorial. Floyd always spoke haltingly, as though reading from cue cards, and railed against some newsworthy topic, like Secretaries' Day: "This raises the question: Kiss my Dictaphone!"
  • "Art Fern," the fast-talking host of a "Tea Time Movie" program, who advertised inane products, assisted by the attractive Matinee Lady, played by Paula Prentiss (late 1960s), Carol Wayne (the most familiar Matinee Lady, 1971–81, 1984), Danuta Wesley (1982), and Teresa Ganzel (1984–92). He imitated the vocal stylings of Jackie Gleason’s character “Reginald Van Gleason”. The fake movies Art would introduce usually had eclectic casts ("Ben Blue, Red Buttons, Jesse White, and Karen Black") and nonsensical titles ("Rin-Tin-Tin Gets Fixed Fixed Fixed"). This would be followed by a four-second stock film clip before coming back for another commercial, usually catching Art and the Matinee Lady in a very compromising position. On giving directions to a fake store he was touting, Fern 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!" The character was previously named "Honest Bernie Schlock" and then "Ralph Willie" when the Tea Time sketches first aired in the mid-to-late 1960s. At least one surviving pre-1972 Art Fern sketch that originated from New York had its movie show title as "The Big Flick," an amalgam of two movie show titles in use at the time by New York station WOR-TV, The Big Preview and The Flick. On that sketch Lee Meredith was the Matinee Lady. Carson's Comedy Classics features an episode where Juliet Prowse is in the role of Matinee Lady, from 20 August 1971.
  • "Aunt Blabby," an old woman whose appearance and speech pattern bore more than a passing resemblance to comedian Jonathan Winters' character "Maude Frickert." A frequent theme would be McMahon happening to mention a word or phrase that could suggest death, as in "What tourist attractions did you check out?," to which Aunt Blabby would respond, "Never say check out to an old person!"
  • "El Mouldo," mysterious mentalist. He would announce some mind-over-matter feat and always fail, although triumphantly shouting "El Mouldo has done it again!" Ed McMahon would take exception, noting El Mouldo's failure. "Did I fail before?" asked El Mouldo. "Yes!," replied McMahon, to which El Mouldo said, "Well, I've done it again!" El Mouldo was in large part a continuation of Carson's mentalist character Dillinger, which he had performed on The Johnny Carson Show in 1955 on CBS-TV; Dillinger was an obvious spoof of Dunninger, leading to complaints and threats of lawsuits against Carson and CBS.
  • "David Howitzer, Consumer Supporter," a thinly veiled satire of consumer reporter David Horowitz. Howitzer's segments (in a rare example of prop comedy for the show) usually featured purported counterfeit consumer goods (usually gag props) that unscrupulous mail-order companies had sent his unsuspecting viewers (for example, a woman who spent thousands of dollars on an oriental rug instead received a cheap toupee made in Taiwan).
  • "Ronald Reagan." During President Reagan's term in office, Carson developed an impersonation of the president that was featured regularly in a Mighty Carson Art Players segment.[17] Carson also did a less memorable impersonation of Jimmy Carter during his term as President.

Bits

  • "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, Severinsen'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!"
David Letterman revived this bit later, along with the CBS Orchestra on his Late Show.
  • "The Mighty Carson Art Players,"[17] (depending on one's point of view, the name was an obvious tribute to or ripoff of radio legend Fred Allen's Mighty Allen Art Players). While Carson's show was primarily a talk show, with performances by guests, periodically Carson and a group of stock performers would perform skits that spoofed news, movies, television shows, commercials, and past events. A Mighty Carson Art Players appearance would usually be announced along with that night's guests during McMahon's introduction.
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 (such as The Edge of Night) while the camera randomly chose an unsuspecting audience member whom Carson claimed was, for example, the butler from the soap.
  • "Headlines," developed by Jay Leno, and seen only during nights when he guest-hosted beginning in 1986, featured humorous stories and typos from newspaper clippings. This carried over when Leno became permanent host in 1992.
  • "How ___ was it?" a recurring call-and-response during Carson's monologues. Carson would set up the joke with a passing comment about, for instance, the weather with the phrase "It was so hot..." prompting the audience to respond "HOW HOT WAS IT?" Carson would then follow with several punch lines (e.g. "I heard Burger King singing, 'If you want it made your way, cook it yourself!'"). Carson would occasionally throw the audience off with an anti-joke (such as "it was worth the trip in, wasn't it?").

Programming history

 
Carson's first Tonight Show on New Year's Eve, 1962; shown with Skitch Henderson and Ed McMahon

Jack Paar's last appearance was on March 29, 1962, and due to Carson's commitment to the ABC game show Who Do You Trust?, he could not take over until October 1 (the day his ABC contract expired). His first guests were Rudy Vallée, Tony Bennett, Mel Brooks, and Joan Crawford.[18] Carson inherited from Paar a show that was 1 3/4 hours (105 minutes) long.[7] The show broadcast two openings, one starting at 11:15 p.m. and including the monologue, the other that listed the guests and re-announced the host, starting at 11:30 p.m. The two openings gave affiliates the option of screening either a fifteen-minute or thirty-minute local newscast preceding Carson. Since 1959, the show had been videotaped earlier the same broadcast day.

As more affiliates introduced thirty minutes of local news, Carson's monologue was being seen by fewer people. To rectify this situation, Ed McMahon and Skitch Henderson co-hosted the first fifteen minutes of the show between February 1965 and December 1966 without Carson, who then took over at 11:30. Finally, because he wanted the show to start when he came on, at the beginning of January 1967 Carson insisted the 11:15 segment be eliminated (which, he claimed in a monologue at the time, "no one actually watched except the Armed Forces and four Navajos in Gallup, New Mexico").[19]

  • January 1965 – September 1966: Saturday or Sunday 11:15 p.m.–1:00 a.m. (reruns, initially billed as The Saturday Tonight Show)
  • September 1966 – September 1975: Saturday or Sunday 11:30 p.m.–1:00 a.m. (reruns, now identified as The Saturday/Sunday Tonight Show; The Weekend Tonight Show by 1973)
  • January 2, 1967 – September 12, 1980: Monday–Friday 11:30 p.m.–1:00 a.m.

By the mid-1970s Tonight was the most profitable show on television, making NBC $50 to $60 million ($210 to $250 million in 2021) each year.[7] Carson influenced the scheduling of reruns (which typically aired under the title The Best of Carson) in the mid-1970s and, in 1980, the length of each evening's broadcast, by threatening NBC with, in the first case, moving to another network, and in the latter, retiring altogether.

In order to work fewer days each week, Carson began to petition network executives in 1974 that reruns on the weekends be discontinued, in favor of showing them on one or more nights during the week.[20] In response to his demands, NBC created a new comedy/variety series to feed to affiliates on Saturday nights that debuted in October 1975, Saturday Night Live.

In 1980, Carson renewed his contract with the stipulation that the show lose its last half-hour. On the last 90-minute show (September 12, 1980), Carson explained that by going to an hour, the show would feel more fast-paced, and have a greater selection of guests.

For a year, Tom Snyder's existing talk show, Tomorrow, was expanded to 90 minutes and forced to change its format, adding gossip reporter Rona Barrett as a co-host and taking on the name Tomorrow Coast to Coast. This was short-lived as a year and a half later, Snyder had quit and Tomorrow Coast to Coast had been canceled. Carson was given authority to fill the vacant time slot and used it to create Late Night with David Letterman (1982–1993). Today, The Tonight Show remains one hour in length and is still followed by Late Night, currently under the title Late Night with Seth Meyers (2014–).

  • September 15, 1980 – August 30, 1991: Monday–Friday 11:30 p.m.–12:30 a.m.
  • September 2, 1991 – May 22, 1992: Monday–Friday 11:35 p.m.–12:35 a.m.[21]

In May 1991, following positive viewer reception during tests in St. Louis (KSDK) and Dallas–Fort Worth (KXAS), NBC reached an agreement with Carson Productions to delay the show's start time by five minutes beginning September 2, allowing its stations to include more commercials during their local newscasts. (The timeshift would also affect Late Night, Later with Bob Costas, and station-programmed overnight syndicated shows.) NBC executives had been proposing the five-minute delay idea to Carson since 1988, only to be repeatedly rebuffed, amid concerns that some of its affiliates—particularly those that had unsuccessfully sought permission to delay the Tonight Show by a half-hour—would begin preempting the program entirely and replace it with syndicated reruns to generate extra revenue from local advertising.[21]

In an onscreen eulogy to Carson in 2005, David Letterman said that every talk show host owes his livelihood to Johnny Carson during his Tonight Show run.[22]

1979–1980 contract battle

In 1979, when Fred Silverman was the head of NBC, Carson took the network to court, claiming that he had been a free agent since April of that year because his most recent contract had been signed in 1972. Carson cited a California law barring certain contracts from lasting more than seven years. NBC claimed that it had signed three agreements since then and Carson was bound to the network until April 1981.[23] While the case was settled out of court,[24] the friction between Carson and the network remained and Carson was actively courted by rival network ABC, which was willing to double Carson's salary and offer him a lighter work schedule and ownership of the show. NBC, in turn, was ready to offer The Tonight Show to Carson's most frequent guest host at the time, Richard Dawson.[25]

Eventually, Carson reached an agreement that paid $25 million a year while reducing his workload from 90 to 60 minutes, with new shows airing only three nights a week 37 weeks a year (a guest host would appear Monday nights and for most of Carson's 15 weeks of vacation and "Best of Carson" reruns would air Tuesdays) and also give him ownership of the show, as well as its back catalog, and of the time slot following the Tonight Show which became Late Night with David Letterman produced by Carson Productions.[26][27] In September 1980, Carson's eponymous production company gained ownership of the show[28][29] after owning it from 1969 to the early 1970s.[7]

Archives

 
Some memorable moments. Top left: Carson's first show with Groucho, 1962. Top right: Carson practices pitching at Yankee Stadium, 1962. Bottom left: Tiny Tim's wedding, 1969. Bottom right: Carson does a skydiving demonstration, 1968.

Only 33 complete episodes of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show that had originally aired prior to May 1, 1972 are known to exist.[30] All other shows during this period, including Carson's debut as host, are now considered lost. Carson's shows were preserved by NBC into the early 1970s, but then thrown out to free storage space after the show moved to Burbank, California. When Carson later learned of their destruction, he was furious.[31]

Other surviving material from the era has been found on kinescopes held in the archives of the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, or in the personal collections of guests of the program, while a few moments such as Tiny Tim's wedding, were preserved. New York meteorologist Dr. Frank Field, an occasional guest during the years he was weather forecaster for WNBC-TV, showed several clips of his appearances with Carson in a 2002 career retrospective on WWOR-TV; Field had maintained the clips in his own personal archives.[citation needed] There are also two appearances by Judy Garland in 1968 that still survive. John Lennon and Paul McCartney's joint appearance on the May 14, 1968 episode guest-hosted by Joe Garagiola, with a guest appearance by Tallulah Bankhead (one of her last), was preserved on poor-quality home kinescope and audiotape in separate recordings by Beatles fans.[32][33] Similarly, the Supremes' May 22, 1967 appearance survives on poor-quality kinescope and an audio recording of their April 5, 1968 appearance honoring the recently slain Martin Luther King Jr. was preserved.

The program archive is virtually complete from 1973 to 1992.[34] Carson Productions has also made clips available on YouTube and Antenna TV.[35]

Although no footage is known to remain of Carson's first broadcast as host of The Tonight Show on October 1, 1962, photographs taken that night survive, including Carson being introduced by Groucho Marx, as does an audio recording of Marx's introduction and Carson's first monologue[citation needed]. One of his first jokes upon starting the show (after receiving a few words of encouragement from Marx, one of which was, "Don't go to Hollywood!") was to pretend to panic and say, "I want my nana!" (This recording was played at the start of Carson's final broadcast on May 22, 1992.)[citation needed] The oldest surviving video recording of the show is dated November 1962, while the oldest surviving color recording is from April 1964, when Carson interviewed Jake Ehrlich Sr. as his guest.[36]

The 30-minute audio recordings of many of the "missing" episodes are contained in the Library of Congress in the Armed Forces Radio collection. Many 1970s-era episodes have been licensed to distributors that advertise mail-order offers on late-night TV.[citation needed] The later shows that exist in full were stored by Carson in a bomb-proof underground salt mine outside Hutchinson, Kansas.[37]

The non-tape archives pertaining to Carson's show are held by the Elkhorn Valley Museum in Carson's hometown of Norfolk, Nebraska. Beginning in 2020, the museum began working with the National Comedy Center to preserve the archive.[38]

Rebroadcasts and streaming availability

A large amount of material from Carson's first two decades of The Tonight Show (1962–1982), much of it not seen since it had first aired, appeared in a half hour "clip/compilation" syndicated program known as Carson's Comedy Classics that aired in 1983. Audio clips from the show were featured nightly on WHO-AM in Des Moines, Iowa in the mid-2000s. In 2014, Turner Classic Movies would begin rerunning select interviews from the program for a new series called "Carson on TCM" presented by Conan O'Brien, who himself hosted The Tonight Show briefly.[39]

The digital multicast network Antenna TV acquired rerun rights to whole episodes of the series in August 2015. Unlike the previous clip shows, Antenna TV's airings feature full broadcasts as they were originally seen, with the only edits being removal of The Tonight Show name, with the show being renamed simply as Johnny Carson (as of January 2018, the broadcasts air opposite the current edition of The Tonight Show in much of the United States, and NBC still owns the trademark on that name), and with bumpers, walk-on music and the closing theme being replaced by generic music cues from the Warner/Chappell Production Music library. Most musical guest segments are also removed. Antenna TV began airing the show seven days a week beginning January 1, 2016. Currently, sixty-minute episodes (from September 1980-May 1992) air Monday through Friday nights, and ninety-minute episodes (from 1972-September 12, 1980) Saturday and Sunday nights.[40]

Selected episodes of Carson's show are available on NBC's Peacock streaming service. Shout! Factory launched a 24/7 streaming channel devoted to the series in August 2020, which is distributed through free over-the-top platforms including Stirr, Xumo and Pluto TV. Recently, The Roku Channel began streaming JohnnyCarsonTV on its multi-channel platform LiveTV.

Guest hosts

Jack Paar had often asked Carson to guest-host Tonight in its earliest years and repeatedly claimed he had been responsible for NBC's selection of Carson in 1962 as his replacement. Steve Allen also utilized guest hosts, including Carson and Ernie Kovacs, particularly after he began hosting The Steve Allen Show in prime time in 1956 and needed to reduce his workload on Tonight.[citation needed]

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson had guest hosts for entire weeks during Carson's vacations and other nights he had off. Many guest hosts were already large names in their own right, among them Frank Sinatra, Burt Reynolds and Don Rickles. Comedian Woody Allen guest hosted three times between 1966 and 1971. The following is a list of those who guest-hosted at least fifty times during the first 21 years of the show's run:

Sammy Davis Jr. guest hosted in April 1965, becoming the first African-American to host a talk show.[43] Harry Belafonte guest hosted for a week in February 1968, and among Belafonte's guests were Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., just months before both men were assassinated (King in April, Kennedy in June).[44] On April 2, 1979, Kermit the Frog was guest host.[45] In addition, many other Muppets appeared for skits and regular segments: Frank Oz voiced Fozzie Bear and Animal, while Jerry Nelson performed Uncle Deadly, a Vincent Price-inspired Muppet during a segment with the real Price. Richard Dawson guest hosted 14 times during 1979 and 1980, and was being considered as a full-time replacement should Carson have retired during his 1980 contract dispute with NBC.[25]

Carson's contract, that took effect in 1981, reduced his work schedule to three nights a week, 37 weeks a year. "Best of Carson" reruns aired on Tuesdays in the weeks that Carson was hosting new shows. Monday night shows and shows for most of the 15 weeks that Carson had off were hosted by guest hosts. Due to the frequent need for substitutes, starting in 1983 permanent guest hosts were hired in order to give the program more stability. The permanent guest hosts were Joan Rivers (1983–1986),[41] then, after about a year where a wide range of guest hosts were used, Garry Shandling alternating with Jay Leno (1987–1988) and finally Leno alone (1988–1992) after Shandling left to focus on his Showtime series It's Garry Shandling's Show.[41] Leno, who first guest hosted in 1986, would do so 333 times before becoming the next Tonight Show host in 1992. Though the concept of using "permanent" guest hosts was fairly strictly adhered to, occasionally illness or some other situation necessitated a substitute guest host, as when David Brenner filled in for Joan Rivers on October 31 and November 1, 1985, when Rivers's husband was briefly hospitalized.

During the show's run, its cast and crew collaborated with a number of NBC sitcoms to produce spoof episodes of the Tonight Show. These spoofs typically ran in the sitcom's usual spot on the broadcast schedule and featured one of the sitcom's main characters as the guest host.

Joan Rivers

Main article: The Late Show (1986 talk show)

In September 1983, Joan Rivers was designated Carson's permanent guest host, a role she had been essentially filling for the previous year. In 1986, after years as a guest and 190 total appearances as guest host, she left the program for her own show on the then-new Fox Network. According to Carson, Rivers never personally informed him of the existence of her show. Rivers, on the other hand, disagreed.[46] Nevertheless, Rivers' new show was quickly canceled, and she never again appeared on The Tonight Show with Carson. Nor did she appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, a ban maintained by Leno out of respect for Carson.[47] She also never appeared during Conan O'Brien's seven-month run. After Carson's death in 2005, Rivers told CNN that Carson never forgave her for leaving, and never spoke to her again, even after she wrote him a note following the accidental death of Carson's son Ricky in June 1991.[42] On February 17, 2014, Rivers returned to the Tonight Show as part of a skit in which numerous celebrities paid new host, Jimmy Fallon, after having lost the bet that he would never become the host of the program. Rivers appeared for a full-length interview segment on March 27, 2014.[48]

The program of July 26, 1984, with guest host Joan Rivers, was the first MTS stereo broadcast in U.S. television history,[49] though not the first television broadcast with stereophonic sound. Only NBC's flagship local station in New York City, WNBC, had stereo broadcast capability at that time.[50] NBC transmitted The Tonight Show in stereo sporadically through 1984 and on a regular basis beginning in 1985.[citation needed]

Consequential appearances

According to Skepticism activist James Randi, Carson invited Uri Geller, who claimed paranormal powers, onto the Tonight Show specifically to disprove the Israeli performer's claims. Randi later wrote, "that Johnny had been a magician himself", so prior to the date of taping, Randi was asked "to help prevent any trickery." Per Randi's advice, the show prepared their own props without informing Geller, and did not let Geller or his staff "anywhere near them." When Geller joined Carson on stage, he appeared surprised that he was not going to be interviewed, but instead was expected to display his abilities using the provided articles. Geller said "This scares me." and "I'm surprised because before this program your producer came and he read me at least 40 questions you were going to ask me." Geller was unable to display any paranormal abilities, saying "I don't feel strong" and he expressed his displeasure at feeling like he was being "pressed" to perform by Carson.[51][52]: 8:10  According to Adam Higginbotham's Nov. 7, 2014 article in the New York Times:

The result was a legendary immolation, in which Geller offered up flustered excuses to his host as his abilities failed him again and again. "I sat there for 22 minutes, humiliated," Geller told me, when I spoke to him in September. "I went back to my hotel, devastated. I was about to pack up the next day and go back to Tel Aviv. I thought, That's it — I'm destroyed."[53]

However, this appearance on The Tonight Show, which Carson and Randi had orchestrated to debunk Geller's claimed abilities, backfired. According to Higginbotham,

To Geller's astonishment, he was immediately booked on The Merv Griffin Show. He was on his way to becoming a paranormal superstar. "That Johnny Carson show made Uri Geller," Geller said. To an enthusiastically trusting public, his failure only made his gifts seem more real: If he were performing magic tricks, they would surely work every time.[53]

Carson's last shows

As his retirement approached, Carson tried to avoid sentimentality but would periodically show clips of some of his favorite moments and again invited some of his favorite guests. He told his crew, "Everything comes to an end; nothing lasts forever. Thirty years is enough. It's time to get out while you're still working on top of your game, while you're still working well."[54]

Carson hosted his penultimate show, featuring guests Robin Williams and Bette Midler, on May 21, 1992.[55] The last of Carson's monologues was delivered on this episode and was written by Jim Mulholland, Steven Kunes and Rift Fournier. Once underway, the atmosphere was electric and Carson was greeted with a sustained, two-minute intense standing ovation.[56] Williams was especially uninhibited with his trademark manic energy and stream-of-consciousness lunacy.[54][57] Midler was more emotional.[57] When the conversation turned to Johnny's favorite songs, "I'll Be Seeing You" and "Here's That Rainy Day," Midler mentioned that she knew a chorus of the latter. She began singing the song, and after the first line, Carson joined in and turned it into an impromptu duet. Midler finished her appearance from center stage, where she slowly sang the pop standard "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)." Carson became unexpectedly tearful, and a shot of the two of them was captured by a camera angle from across the set that had never before been used on the show.[58] The audience became tearful as well and called the three performers out for a second bow after the taping was completed.[56] This show was immediately recognized as a television classic that Midler considered one of the most emotional moments of her life and eventually won an Emmy for her role in it.[57][58][59]

Carson had no guests on his final episode of The Tonight Show on May 22, 1992, which was instead a retrospective show taped before an invitation-only studio audience of family, friends, and crew.[54][55] More than fifty million people tuned in for this finale, which ended with Carson sitting on a stool alone at center stage, similar to Jack Paar's last show. He said these final words in conclusion:

And so it has come to this: I, uh... am one of the lucky people in the world; I found something I always wanted to do and I have enjoyed every single minute of it. I want to thank the gentlemen who've shared this stage with me for thirty years. Mr. Ed McMahon, Mr. Doc Severinsen, and you people watching. I can only tell you that it has been an honor and a privilege to come into your homes all these years and entertain you. And I hope when I find something that I want to do and I think you would like and come back, that you'll be as gracious in inviting me into your home as you have been. I bid you a very heartfelt good night.

A few weeks after the final show aired, it was announced that NBC and Carson had struck a deal to develop a new series. Ultimately, however, Carson chose not to return to television. He gave only two major interviews after his retirement: one to The Washington Post in 1993, and the other to Esquire magazine in 2002. Carson hinted in his 1993 interview that he did not think he could top what he had already accomplished. He rarely appeared elsewhere after retiring, providing only a guest voice on an episode of The Simpsons, which included him performing feats of strength and featured Bette Midler as well. Carson's final television appearance was cameo on the May 13, 1994, Late Show with David Letterman where he handed over a copy of a Top 10 List and sat in Dave's chair for a minute. He was prepared to say a few words, but the crowd's cheering was so loud and so sustained, that he humorously decided to leave without saying anything -- although as he exited, he could be heard saying "Thank you, good night!"

In 2005, after Carson's death, it was revealed that he had made a habit of sending jokes to Dave Letterman via fax machine which Letterman would then sometimes incorporate into his monologues. The January 31, 2005, episode of the Late Show with David Letterman, which featured a tribute to Carson, began with a monologue by Letterman composed entirely of jokes written by Carson himself after his retirement.[60][61]

In 2011, the last Carson Tonight show was ranked No. 10 on the TV Guide Network special, TV's Most Unforgettable Finales.[62]

See also

References

  1. ^ Bill Zehme (June 2002). "The Man Who Retired". Esquire. Retrieved 2010-06-09.
  2. ^ Carson brought the show back to Manhattan in November 1972 and again in May 1973.
  3. ^ "TV Guide Names Top 50 Shows". Cbsnews.com. Retrieved 2011-10-26.
  4. ^ "TV Guide Magazine's 60 Best Series of All Time". 23 December 2013.
  5. ^ Drury, Jack (February 16, 2008). Fort Lauderdale: Playground of the Stars. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9780738553511 – via Google Books.
  6. ^ "American National Biography Online".
  7. ^ a b c d e f g Tynan, Kenneth (February 20, 1978). "Fifteen Years of the Salto Mortale". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2011-03-16.
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  9. ^ Simon, Jeff (2013-07-08). . The Buffalo News. Archived from the original on 2013-09-27.
  10. ^ "Carlfred B. Broderick, Noted Sociologist, Dies at 67", USC News, September 6, 1999. Retrieved April 30, 2017.
  11. ^ Episode 145 – Gallagher, WTF with Marc Maron, wtfpod.com
  12. ^ "'Here's Johnny' is top TV quote". December 7, 2006 – via news.bbc.co.uk.
  13. ^ McMahon, Ed (1998). For Laughing Out Loud: My Life and Good Times. p. 154. ISBN 0-446-52370-4.
  14. ^ "Bio". Doc Severinsen. Retrieved January 17, 2022.
  15. ^ Myers, Marc (January 7, 2014). . JazzWax. Archived from the original on November 4, 2014. Retrieved November 4, 2014.
  16. ^ "CNN Transcripts: Larry King Live". CNN. 2006-02-22. Retrieved 2013-10-02.
  17. ^ a b Fred Allen's Mighty Allen Art Players
  18. ^ Harris, Jay S., ed. (1978). TV Guide: The First 25 Years. New York: New American Library. p. 65. ISBN 0-452-25225-3.
  19. ^ Uncle John's Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader. Portable Press. 1997. ISBN 978-1879682689.
  20. ^ Hill, Doug; Weingrad, Jeff (2014). Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live. San Francisco: Untreed Reads, LLC. p. 7. ISBN 978-1-61187-709-0.
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  22. ^ "Letterman delivers Carson-penned monologue". CBC.ca. February 1, 2005. Archived from the original on February 1, 2008.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  23. ^ . Time magazine. 1979-09-24. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-07.
  24. ^ . Time magazine. 1981-04-20. Archived from the original on November 30, 2006. Retrieved 2007-08-07.
  25. ^ a b the CNN Wire Staff. "Former 'Family Feud' host Richard Dawson dies - CNN". CNN. Retrieved 2018-11-15.
  26. ^ Bushkin, Henry; Lewis, Andy (October 9, 2013). "How Johnny Carson Nearly Quit 'Tonight' and Scored TV's Richest Deal Ever". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved September 4, 2014.
  27. ^ . Time Magazine. 1980-05-19. Archived from the original on October 29, 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-07.
  28. ^ Carter, Bill (1994). The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Network Battle for the Night. New York, NY: Hyperion. p. 27. ISBN 0-7868-8907-1.
  29. ^ "Johnny Carson Calls This Man 'Bombastic' All the Way to Bank." The Wall Street Journal, June 8, 1980, p. 14.
  30. ^ "Digital Download – Volume 1".
  31. ^ "How many Johnny Carson Episodes are missing?". Steve Hoffman Music Forums. January 1, 2022. Retrieved July 19, 2022.
  32. ^ "Pdxretro.com". May 15, 2014. from the original on May 17, 2014. Retrieved May 15, 2014.
  33. ^ "John Lennon & Paul McCartney Interview: The Tonight Show, May 14th 1968 – Beatles Interviews Database". beatlesinterviews.org. from the original on October 7, 2011. Retrieved August 11, 2016.
  34. ^ Johnny Carson: The Official Tonight Show Website, Clip Licensing.
  35. ^ "Johnny Carson". YouTube.
  36. ^ Watch Jake Ehrlich Sr. on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on Google Video.
  37. ^ Stuever, Hank (May 13, 2012). "A Heartfelt Doc Deconstructs The King of Late Night". Washington Post.
  38. ^ National Comedy Center to lead preservation of Johnny Carson archives; open new multi-media exhibit in 2022. WGRZ. October 23, 2020. Retrieved October 23, 2020.
  39. ^ Werts, Diane (June 28, 2013). "'Carson on TCM' review: Heeere's Johnny". Newsday. Melville, New York. Retrieved April 19, 2017.
  40. ^ Littleton, Cynthia (August 12, 2015). "Johnny Carson Returns: Antenna TV to Air Full ‘Tonight Show’ Episodes." Variety. Retrieved August 21, 2015.
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  42. ^ a b "Johnny Carson, 79, Dies". Live Event/Special rush transcript. CNN. January 23, 2005. Retrieved 2009-05-12. [D]uring our 17 years together, which were wonderful years, and he was the one that discovered me and he was the one that said, "You're going to be a star" the first night I worked. He was an amazing man and an amazing mentor. And then when I left the show to do my own show on Fox, he never forgave me, and that made me terribly sad. We never spoke again.
  43. ^ "Sammy Davis Jr. TV Guest Appearances". Retrieved 2017-11-19.
  44. ^ Harry Belafonte; Michael Shnayerson (2011). My Song: A Memoir. Alfred A. Knopf. p. 322. ISBN 978-0-307-27226-3.
  45. ^ Barry Gordemer (Producer) (2005-05-09). Happy 50th Birthday, Kermit! (audio recording). National Public Radio. Event occurs at 1:20–1:25. Retrieved 2009-04-24. ...Kermit hosted The Tonight Show.
  46. ^ "Joan Rivers on Johnny Carson's reaction to the start of her late show on Fox". Youtube.com. Archived from the original on 2021-11-07. Retrieved 2012-02-22.
  47. ^ Hinckley, David (August 6, 2009). "Two more football seasons for 'Friday Night Lights,' and other news from the TV Critics Press Tour". Daily News. Retrieved 2009-08-07. We didn't feel it was right to invite her while Johnny was alive," said Leno. "It was a respect thing for Johnny.
  48. ^ "Russell Crowe/Joan Rivers/The National". The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Season 1. Episode 29. 2014-03-27. nbc. Retrieved 2015-08-24.
  49. ^ Lyons, James. Miami Vice. Wiley Publishing, 2010, p. 22
  50. ^ Peter W. Kaplan, "TV Notes", New York Times, July 28, 1984, sec. 1, p. 46.
  51. ^ "Unforgettable Uri Geller Appearance on Carson Tonight Show - 08/01/1973". Youtube.com. Official Johnny Carson YouTube channel. 19 March 2021. Archived from the original on 22 March 2021. Retrieved 22 March 2021.
  52. ^ . Youtube.com. JREF. Archived from the original on 2013-08-16. Retrieved 25 August 2017.
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  54. ^ a b c Bernard Weinraub (May 23, 1992). "Fade Out for Johnny Carson, His Dignity and Privacy Intact". The New York Times.
  55. ^ a b "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson Season 30 Episode Guide". TV.com. Retrieved 2011-10-26.
  56. ^ a b Deborah Seibel (May 22, 1992). "Fans Put Johnny On The Spot". Chicago Tribune.
  57. ^ a b c Matt Roush (January 30, 2005). "Life After Johnny". Broadcasting & Cable.
  58. ^ a b Marc Shaiman (January 24, 2005). "Someone in a Tree: My view of Johnny Carson's last night". The Film Music Society.
  59. ^ "Carson: He left 'Tonight Show' with popularity still running high". The Register-Guard. Eugene, Oregon. January 24, 2005. p. A1.
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  61. ^ redOrbit (1 February 2005). "Letterman Pays Special Tribute to Carson – Redorbit".
  62. ^ TV's Most Unforgettable Finales – Aired May 22, 2011 on TV Guide Network

External links

January 07, 2023
tonight, show, starring, johnny, carson, entire, tonight, show, franchise, tonight, show, 1955, 1956, variety, show, hosted, carson, johnny, carson, show, american, late, night, talk, show, hosted, johnny, carson, third, iteration, tonight, show, franchise, sh. For the entire Tonight Show franchise see The Tonight Show For the 1955 1956 CBS variety show hosted by Carson see The Johnny Carson Show The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is an American late night talk show hosted by Johnny Carson on NBC the third iteration of the Tonight Show franchise The show debuted on October 1 1962 and aired its final episode on May 22 1992 1 Ed McMahon served as Carson s sidekick and the show s announcer The Tonight Show Starring Johnny CarsonAlso known asThe Tonight Show franchise brand Johnny Carson Antenna TV repeats GenreLate night talk VarietyCreated bySteve AllenWilliam O HarbachDwight HemionSylvester L Weaver Jr Written byHead writer Walter Kempley 1963 1967 Hank Bradford 1969 1975 Marshall Brickman 1969 1970 Raymond Siller 1974 1989 Andrew Nicholls and Darrell Vickers 1989 1992 Presented byJohnny CarsonNarrated byEd McMahonTheme music composerPaul AnkaOpening theme Johnny s Theme Country of originUnited StatesOriginal languageEnglishNo of seasons29No of episodes6 714 list of episodes ProductionProducersFred de CordovaPeter LassallyProduction locationsNBC StudiosNew York City 1962 1972 NBC StudiosBurbank California 1972 1992 Camera setupMulti cameraRunning time47 105 minutesDistributorCarson Entertainment GroupReleaseOriginal networkNBCPicture formatColorOriginal releaseOctober 1 1962 1962 10 01 May 22 1992 1992 05 22 ChronologyPreceded byTonight Starring Jack PaarFollowed byThe Tonight Show with Jay LenoRelatedCarson s Comedy ClassicsFor its first decade Johnny Carson s The Tonight Show was based at 30 Rockefeller Plaza New York City with some episodes recorded at NBC Studios in Burbank California on May 1 1972 the show moved to Burbank as its main venue and remained there exclusively after May 1973 until Carson s retirement 2 The show s house band the NBC Orchestra was led by Skitch Henderson until 1966 when Milton Delugg took over who was succeeded by Doc Severinsen less than a year later The series has been ranked as one of the greatest TV shows of all time in polls from both 2002 and 2013 3 4 Contents 1 Format 2 Show regulars 2 1 Ed McMahon 2 2 Bandleaders and others 3 Recurring segments and skits 3 1 Characters 3 2 Bits 4 Programming history 4 1 1979 1980 contract battle 4 2 Archives 4 3 Rebroadcasts and streaming availability 5 Guest hosts 5 1 Joan Rivers 6 Consequential appearances 7 Carson s last shows 8 See also 9 References 10 External linksFormat EditJohnny Carson s Tonight Show established the modern format of the late night talk show 5 a monologue sprinkled with a rapid fire series of 16 to 22 one liners Carson had a rule of no more than three on the same subject was followed by sketch comedy then moving on to guest interviews and performances by musicians and stand up comedians Occasionally Carson interviewed prominent politicians such as Richard Nixon Ronald Reagan Bill Clinton Robert F Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey however Carson refused to discuss his personal political views on the show out of concern it might alienate his audience 6 Other regulars were selected for their entertainment or information value in contrast to those who offered more cerebral conversation 7 His preference for access to Hollywood stars caused the show s move to the West Coast on May 1 1972 The Tonight Show would not return to New York until 2014 when Jimmy Fallon took the hosting reins 8 When asked about intellectual conversation on The Tonight Show Carson and his staff invariably cited Carl Sagan Paul Ehrlich Margaret Mead Gore Vidal Shana Alexander Madalyn Murray O Hair as guests 7 one television critic stated however he always presented them as if they were spinach for your diet when he did feature such names 9 Family therapist Carlfred Broderick appeared on the show ten times 10 and psychologist Joyce Brothers was one of Carson s most frequent guests Carson in general did not feature prop comedy acts Carson was not averse to using prop comedy himself such acts with Gallagher being a prominent example more commonly appeared when guest hosts helmed the program 11 Carson almost never socialized with guests before or after the show frequent interviewee Orson Welles recalled that Tonight Show employees were astonished when Carson visited Welles s dressing room to say hello before a show Unlike his avuncular counterparts Merv Griffin Mike Douglas and Dick Cavett Carson was a comparatively cool host who only laughed when genuinely amused and abruptly cut short monotonous or embarrassingly inept interviewees Mort Sahl recalled The producer crouches just off camera and holds up a card that says Go to commercial So Carson goes to a commercial and the whole team rushes up to his desk to discuss what had gone wrong like a pit stop at Le Mans Actor Robert Blake once compared being interviewed by Carson to facing the death squad or Broadway on opening night The publicity value of appearing on The Tonight Show was so great however that most guests were willing to subject themselves to the risk 7 Show regulars EditEd McMahon Edit The series announcer and Carson s sidekick was Ed McMahon who from the first show would introduce Carson with a drawn out Here s Johnny something McMahon was inspired to do by the overemphasized way he had introduced reporter Robert Pierpoint on the NBC Radio Network program Monitor The catchphrase was heard nightly for 30 years and ranked top of the TV Land poll of U S TV catchphrases and quotes in 2006 12 it has been referenced in all media going from The Shining to Johnny Bravo to a Weird Al Yankovic album cut it was even used for the character Johnny Cage in the video game series Mortal Kombat McMahon who held the same role in Carson s ABC game show Who Do You Trust for five years previously would remain standing to the side as Carson did his monologue laughing sometimes obsequiously at his jokes then join him at the guest chair when Carson moved to his desk The two would usually interact in a comic spot for a short while before the first guest was introduced McMahon stated in a 1978 profile of Carson in The New Yorker that the Tonight Show is my staple diet my meat and potatoes I m realistic enough to know that everything else stems from that After a 1965 incident in which he ruined Carson s joke on the air McMahon was careful to as he said never to go where Carson s going 7 He wrote in his 1998 autobiography My role on the show never was strictly defined I did what had to be done when it had to be done I was there when he needed me and when he didn t I moved down the couch and kept quiet I did the audience warm up I did commercials for a brief period I co hosted the first fifteen minutes of the show and I performed in many sketches On our thirteenth anniversary show Johnny and I were talking at his desk and he said Thirteen years is a long time He paused long enough for me to recognize my cue so I asked How long is it That s why you re here he said probably summing up my primary role on the show perfectly I had to support him I had to help him get to the punch line but while doing it I had to make it look as if I wasn t doing anything at all The better I did it the less it appeared as if I was doing it If I was going to play second fiddle I wanted to be the Heifetz of second fiddlers The most difficult thing for me to learn how to do was just sit there with my mouth closed Many nights I d be listening to Johnny and in my mind I d reach the same ad lib just as he said it I d have to bite my tongue not to say it out loud I had to make sure I wasn t too funny although critics who saw some of my other performances will claim I needn t have worried If I got too many laughs I wasn t doing my job my job was to be part of a team that generated the laughs 13 Bandleaders and others Edit Doc Severinsen led the NBC Orchestra beginning in 1967 he held the role until the show s finale The Tonight Show had a live big band for nearly all of its existence The NBC Orchestra during Carson s reign was originally led by Skitch Henderson who had previously led the band during Tonight Starring Steve Allen followed briefly by Milton DeLugg Starting in 1967 and continuing until Jay Leno took over the band was led by Doc Severinsen with Tommy Newsom filling in for him when he was absent or filling in for McMahon as the announcer this usually happened when a guest host substituted for Carson which generally gave McMahon the night off as well 14 The series instrumental theme music Johnny s Theme was a re arrangement of the Paul Anka composition Toot Sweet which Anka and Annette Funicello had separately recorded with lyrics as It s Really Love 15 During shows when Newsom filled in for Severinsen the band played a slightly truncated version of the theme that transitioned from the bridge to the closing phrase without reprising the first few notes of the main melody The NBC Orchestra was the last in house studio orchestra to perform on American television Behind the scenes motion picture director producer Fred de Cordova joined The Tonight Show in 1970 as producer graduating to executive producer in 1984 Unlike many people of his position de Cordova often appeared on the show bantering with Carson from his chair off camera though occasionally a camera would be pointed in his direction Recurring segments and skits EditCharacters Edit Carson as Carnac the Magnificent a reoccurring comedic role he introduced in 1964 Carnac the Magnificent in which Carson played a psychic who clairvoyantly divined the answer to a question contained in a sealed envelope This was to some degree a variation on Steve Allen s recurring The Question Man sketch The answer was always an outrageous pun Carnac examples Debate What do you use to catch de fish Baja What sound does a sheep make when it laughs Ben Gay Why didn t Mrs Franklin have any kids A loaf of bread a jug of wine and thou Name three things that have yeast Three Dog Night What s a bad night for a tree Mount Baldy What did Yul Brynner s wife do on their wedding night also How do you play horsey with Don Rickles Sis boom bah Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes Ed McMahon s personal favorite 16 If the laughter fell short when a line bombed as it often did Carnac would face the audience with mock seriousness and bestow a comic curse May a diseased yak befriend your sister or May a rabid holy man bless your nether regions with a power tool Floyd R Turbo a dimwitted yokel responding to a TV station editorial Floyd always spoke haltingly as though reading from cue cards and railed against some newsworthy topic like Secretaries Day This raises the question Kiss my Dictaphone Art Fern the fast talking host of a Tea Time Movie program who advertised inane products assisted by the attractive Matinee Lady played by Paula Prentiss late 1960s Carol Wayne the most familiar Matinee Lady 1971 81 1984 Danuta Wesley 1982 and Teresa Ganzel 1984 92 He imitated the vocal stylings of Jackie Gleason s character Reginald Van Gleason The fake movies Art would introduce usually had eclectic casts Ben Blue Red Buttons Jesse White and Karen Black and nonsensical titles Rin Tin Tin Gets Fixed Fixed Fixed This would be followed by a four second stock film clip before coming back for another commercial usually catching Art and the Matinee Lady in a very compromising position On giving directions to a fake store he was touting Fern 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 The character was previously named Honest Bernie Schlock and then Ralph Willie when the Tea Time sketches first aired in the mid to late 1960s At least one surviving pre 1972 Art Fern sketch that originated from New York had its movie show title as The Big Flick an amalgam of two movie show titles in use at the time by New York station WOR TV The Big Preview and The Flick On that sketch Lee Meredith was the Matinee Lady Carson s Comedy Classics features an episode where Juliet Prowse is in the role of Matinee Lady from 20 August 1971 Aunt Blabby an old woman whose appearance and speech pattern bore more than a passing resemblance to comedian Jonathan Winters character Maude Frickert A frequent theme would be McMahon happening to mention a word or phrase that could suggest death as in What tourist attractions did you check out to which Aunt Blabby would respond Never say check out to an old person El Mouldo mysterious mentalist He would announce some mind over matter feat and always fail although triumphantly shouting El Mouldo has done it again Ed McMahon would take exception noting El Mouldo s failure Did I fail before asked El Mouldo Yes replied McMahon to which El Mouldo said Well I ve done it again El Mouldo was in large part a continuation of Carson s mentalist character Dillinger which he had performed on The Johnny Carson Show in 1955 on CBS TV Dillinger was an obvious spoof of Dunninger leading to complaints and threats of lawsuits against Carson and CBS David Howitzer Consumer Supporter a thinly veiled satire of consumer reporter David Horowitz Howitzer s segments in a rare example of prop comedy for the show usually featured purported counterfeit consumer goods usually gag props that unscrupulous mail order companies had sent his unsuspecting viewers for example a woman who spent thousands of dollars on an oriental rug instead received a cheap toupee made in Taiwan Ronald Reagan During President Reagan s term in office Carson developed an impersonation of the president that was featured regularly in a Mighty Carson Art Players segment 17 Carson also did a less memorable impersonation of Jimmy Carter during his term as President Bits Edit 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 Severinsen 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 David Letterman revived this bit later along with the CBS Orchestra on his Late Show The Mighty Carson Art Players 17 depending on one s point of view the name was an obvious tribute to or ripoff of radio legend Fred Allen s Mighty Allen Art Players While Carson s show was primarily a talk show with performances by guests periodically Carson and a group of stock performers would perform skits that spoofed news movies television shows commercials and past events A Mighty Carson Art Players appearance would usually be announced along with that night s guests during McMahon s introduction 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 such as The Edge of Night while the camera randomly chose an unsuspecting audience member whom Carson claimed was for example the butler from the soap Headlines developed by Jay Leno and seen only during nights when he guest hosted beginning in 1986 featured humorous stories and typos from newspaper clippings This carried over when Leno became permanent host in 1992 How was it a recurring call and response during Carson s monologues Carson would set up the joke with a passing comment about for instance the weather with the phrase It was so hot prompting the audience to respond HOW HOT WAS IT Carson would then follow with several punch lines e g I heard Burger King singing If you want it made your way cook it yourself Carson would occasionally throw the audience off with an anti joke such as it was worth the trip in wasn t it Programming history Edit Carson s first Tonight Show on New Year s Eve 1962 shown with Skitch Henderson and Ed McMahon Jack Paar s last appearance was on March 29 1962 and due to Carson s commitment to the ABC game show Who Do You Trust he could not take over until October 1 the day his ABC contract expired His first guests were Rudy Vallee Tony Bennett Mel Brooks and Joan Crawford 18 Carson inherited from Paar a show that was 1 3 4 hours 105 minutes long 7 The show broadcast two openings one starting at 11 15 p m and including the monologue the other that listed the guests and re announced the host starting at 11 30 p m The two openings gave affiliates the option of screening either a fifteen minute or thirty minute local newscast preceding Carson Since 1959 the show had been videotaped earlier the same broadcast day As more affiliates introduced thirty minutes of local news Carson s monologue was being seen by fewer people To rectify this situation Ed McMahon and Skitch Henderson co hosted the first fifteen minutes of the show between February 1965 and December 1966 without Carson who then took over at 11 30 Finally because he wanted the show to start when he came on at the beginning of January 1967 Carson insisted the 11 15 segment be eliminated which he claimed in a monologue at the time no one actually watched except the Armed Forces and four Navajos in Gallup New Mexico 19 January 1965 September 1966 Saturday or Sunday 11 15 p m 1 00 a m reruns initially billed as The Saturday Tonight Show September 1966 September 1975 Saturday or Sunday 11 30 p m 1 00 a m reruns now identified as The Saturday Sunday Tonight Show The Weekend Tonight Show by 1973 January 2 1967 September 12 1980 Monday Friday 11 30 p m 1 00 a m By the mid 1970s Tonight was the most profitable show on television making NBC 50 to 60 million 210 to 250 million in 2021 each year 7 Carson influenced the scheduling of reruns which typically aired under the title The Best of Carson in the mid 1970s and in 1980 the length of each evening s broadcast by threatening NBC with in the first case moving to another network and in the latter retiring altogether In order to work fewer days each week Carson began to petition network executives in 1974 that reruns on the weekends be discontinued in favor of showing them on one or more nights during the week 20 In response to his demands NBC created a new comedy variety series to feed to affiliates on Saturday nights that debuted in October 1975 Saturday Night Live In 1980 Carson renewed his contract with the stipulation that the show lose its last half hour On the last 90 minute show September 12 1980 Carson explained that by going to an hour the show would feel more fast paced and have a greater selection of guests For a year Tom Snyder s existing talk show Tomorrow was expanded to 90 minutes and forced to change its format adding gossip reporter Rona Barrett as a co host and taking on the name Tomorrow Coast to Coast This was short lived as a year and a half later Snyder had quit and Tomorrow Coast to Coast had been canceled Carson was given authority to fill the vacant time slot and used it to create Late Night with David Letterman 1982 1993 Today The Tonight Show remains one hour in length and is still followed by Late Night currently under the title Late Night with Seth Meyers 2014 September 15 1980 August 30 1991 Monday Friday 11 30 p m 12 30 a m September 2 1991 May 22 1992 Monday Friday 11 35 p m 12 35 a m 21 In May 1991 following positive viewer reception during tests in St Louis KSDK and Dallas Fort Worth KXAS NBC reached an agreement with Carson Productions to delay the show s start time by five minutes beginning September 2 allowing its stations to include more commercials during their local newscasts The timeshift would also affect Late Night Later with Bob Costas and station programmed overnight syndicated shows NBC executives had been proposing the five minute delay idea to Carson since 1988 only to be repeatedly rebuffed amid concerns that some of its affiliates particularly those that had unsuccessfully sought permission to delay the Tonight Show by a half hour would begin preempting the program entirely and replace it with syndicated reruns to generate extra revenue from local advertising 21 In an onscreen eulogy to Carson in 2005 David Letterman said that every talk show host owes his livelihood to Johnny Carson during his Tonight Show run 22 1979 1980 contract battle Edit With Dick Cavett and Alan King In 1979 when Fred Silverman was the head of NBC Carson took the network to court claiming that he had been a free agent since April of that year because his most recent contract had been signed in 1972 Carson cited a California law barring certain contracts from lasting more than seven years NBC claimed that it had signed three agreements since then and Carson was bound to the network until April 1981 23 While the case was settled out of court 24 the friction between Carson and the network remained and Carson was actively courted by rival network ABC which was willing to double Carson s salary and offer him a lighter work schedule and ownership of the show NBC in turn was ready to offer The Tonight Show to Carson s most frequent guest host at the time Richard Dawson 25 Eventually Carson reached an agreement that paid 25 million a year while reducing his workload from 90 to 60 minutes with new shows airing only three nights a week 37 weeks a year a guest host would appear Monday nights and for most of Carson s 15 weeks of vacation and Best of Carson reruns would air Tuesdays and also give him ownership of the show as well as its back catalog and of the time slot following the Tonight Show which became Late Night with David Letterman produced by Carson Productions 26 27 In September 1980 Carson s eponymous production company gained ownership of the show 28 29 after owning it from 1969 to the early 1970s 7 Archives Edit Some memorable moments Top left Carson s first show with Groucho 1962 Top right Carson practices pitching at Yankee Stadium 1962 Bottom left Tiny Tim s wedding 1969 Bottom right Carson does a skydiving demonstration 1968 Only 33 complete episodes of Johnny Carson s Tonight Show that had originally aired prior to May 1 1972 are known to exist 30 All other shows during this period including Carson s debut as host are now considered lost Carson s shows were preserved by NBC into the early 1970s but then thrown out to free storage space after the show moved to Burbank California When Carson later learned of their destruction he was furious 31 Other surviving material from the era has been found on kinescopes held in the archives of the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service or in the personal collections of guests of the program while a few moments such as Tiny Tim s wedding were preserved New York meteorologist Dr Frank Field an occasional guest during the years he was weather forecaster for WNBC TV showed several clips of his appearances with Carson in a 2002 career retrospective on WWOR TV Field had maintained the clips in his own personal archives citation needed There are also two appearances by Judy Garland in 1968 that still survive John Lennon and Paul McCartney s joint appearance on the May 14 1968 episode guest hosted by Joe Garagiola with a guest appearance by Tallulah Bankhead one of her last was preserved on poor quality home kinescope and audiotape in separate recordings by Beatles fans 32 33 Similarly the Supremes May 22 1967 appearance survives on poor quality kinescope and an audio recording of their April 5 1968 appearance honoring the recently slain Martin Luther King Jr was preserved The program archive is virtually complete from 1973 to 1992 34 Carson Productions has also made clips available on YouTube and Antenna TV 35 Although no footage is known to remain of Carson s first broadcast as host of The Tonight Show on October 1 1962 photographs taken that night survive including Carson being introduced by Groucho Marx as does an audio recording of Marx s introduction and Carson s first monologue citation needed One of his first jokes upon starting the show after receiving a few words of encouragement from Marx one of which was Don t go to Hollywood was to pretend to panic and say I want my nana This recording was played at the start of Carson s final broadcast on May 22 1992 citation needed The oldest surviving video recording of the show is dated November 1962 while the oldest surviving color recording is from April 1964 when Carson interviewed Jake Ehrlich Sr as his guest 36 The 30 minute audio recordings of many of the missing episodes are contained in the Library of Congress in the Armed Forces Radio collection Many 1970s era episodes have been licensed to distributors that advertise mail order offers on late night TV citation needed The later shows that exist in full were stored by Carson in a bomb proof underground salt mine outside Hutchinson Kansas 37 The non tape archives pertaining to Carson s show are held by the Elkhorn Valley Museum in Carson s hometown of Norfolk Nebraska Beginning in 2020 the museum began working with the National Comedy Center to preserve the archive 38 Rebroadcasts and streaming availability Edit A large amount of material from Carson s first two decades of The Tonight Show 1962 1982 much of it not seen since it had first aired appeared in a half hour clip compilation syndicated program known as Carson s Comedy Classics that aired in 1983 Audio clips from the show were featured nightly on WHO AM in Des Moines Iowa in the mid 2000s In 2014 Turner Classic Movies would begin rerunning select interviews from the program for a new series called Carson on TCM presented by Conan O Brien who himself hosted The Tonight Show briefly 39 The digital multicast network Antenna TV acquired rerun rights to whole episodes of the series in August 2015 Unlike the previous clip shows Antenna TV s airings feature full broadcasts as they were originally seen with the only edits being removal of The Tonight Show name with the show being renamed simply as Johnny Carson as of January 2018 the broadcasts air opposite the current edition of The Tonight Show in much of the United States and NBC still owns the trademark on that name and with bumpers walk on music and the closing theme being replaced by generic music cues from the Warner Chappell Production Music library Most musical guest segments are also removed Antenna TV began airing the show seven days a week beginning January 1 2016 Currently sixty minute episodes from September 1980 May 1992 air Monday through Friday nights and ninety minute episodes from 1972 September 12 1980 Saturday and Sunday nights 40 Selected episodes of Carson s show are available on NBC s Peacock streaming service Shout Factory launched a 24 7 streaming channel devoted to the series in August 2020 which is distributed through free over the top platforms including Stirr Xumo and Pluto TV Recently The Roku Channel began streaming JohnnyCarsonTV on its multi channel platform LiveTV Guest hosts EditJack Paar had often asked Carson to guest host Tonight in its earliest years and repeatedly claimed he had been responsible for NBC s selection of Carson in 1962 as his replacement Steve Allen also utilized guest hosts including Carson and Ernie Kovacs particularly after he began hosting The Steve Allen Show in prime time in 1956 and needed to reduce his workload on Tonight citation needed The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson had guest hosts for entire weeks during Carson s vacations and other nights he had off Many guest hosts were already large names in their own right among them Frank Sinatra Burt Reynolds and Don Rickles Comedian Woody Allen guest hosted three times between 1966 and 1971 The following is a list of those who guest hosted at least fifty times during the first 21 years of the show s run Joey Bishop 177 times 41 mostly in the 1960s Joan Rivers 93 41 during the 1970s and 1980s 42 John Davidson 87 41 Bob Newhart 87 41 David Brenner 70 41 McLean Stevenson 58 41 Jerry Lewis 52 41 mostly in the 1960s David Letterman 51 mostly between 1980 and 1981 41 Sammy Davis Jr guest hosted in April 1965 becoming the first African American to host a talk show 43 Harry Belafonte guest hosted for a week in February 1968 and among Belafonte s guests were Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr just months before both men were assassinated King in April Kennedy in June 44 On April 2 1979 Kermit the Frog was guest host 45 In addition many other Muppets appeared for skits and regular segments Frank Oz voiced Fozzie Bear and Animal while Jerry Nelson performed Uncle Deadly a Vincent Price inspired Muppet during a segment with the real Price Richard Dawson guest hosted 14 times during 1979 and 1980 and was being considered as a full time replacement should Carson have retired during his 1980 contract dispute with NBC 25 Carson s contract that took effect in 1981 reduced his work schedule to three nights a week 37 weeks a year Best of Carson reruns aired on Tuesdays in the weeks that Carson was hosting new shows Monday night shows and shows for most of the 15 weeks that Carson had off were hosted by guest hosts Due to the frequent need for substitutes starting in 1983 permanent guest hosts were hired in order to give the program more stability The permanent guest hosts were Joan Rivers 1983 1986 41 then after about a year where a wide range of guest hosts were used Garry Shandling alternating with Jay Leno 1987 1988 and finally Leno alone 1988 1992 after Shandling left to focus on his Showtime series It s Garry Shandling s Show 41 Leno who first guest hosted in 1986 would do so 333 times before becoming the next Tonight Show host in 1992 Though the concept of using permanent guest hosts was fairly strictly adhered to occasionally illness or some other situation necessitated a substitute guest host as when David Brenner filled in for Joan Rivers on October 31 and November 1 1985 when Rivers s husband was briefly hospitalized During the show s run its cast and crew collaborated with a number of NBC sitcoms to produce spoof episodes of the Tonight Show These spoofs typically ran in the sitcom s usual spot on the broadcast schedule and featured one of the sitcom s main characters as the guest host Joan Rivers Edit Main article The Late Show 1986 talk show In September 1983 Joan Rivers was designated Carson s permanent guest host a role she had been essentially filling for the previous year In 1986 after years as a guest and 190 total appearances as guest host she left the program for her own show on the then new Fox Network According to Carson Rivers never personally informed him of the existence of her show Rivers on the other hand disagreed 46 Nevertheless Rivers new show was quickly canceled and she never again appeared on The Tonight Show with Carson Nor did she appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno a ban maintained by Leno out of respect for Carson 47 She also never appeared during Conan O Brien s seven month run After Carson s death in 2005 Rivers told CNN that Carson never forgave her for leaving and never spoke to her again even after she wrote him a note following the accidental death of Carson s son Ricky in June 1991 42 On February 17 2014 Rivers returned to the Tonight Show as part of a skit in which numerous celebrities paid new host Jimmy Fallon after having lost the bet that he would never become the host of the program Rivers appeared for a full length interview segment on March 27 2014 48 The program of July 26 1984 with guest host Joan Rivers was the first MTS stereo broadcast in U S television history 49 though not the first television broadcast with stereophonic sound Only NBC s flagship local station in New York City WNBC had stereo broadcast capability at that time 50 NBC transmitted The Tonight Show in stereo sporadically through 1984 and on a regular basis beginning in 1985 citation needed Consequential appearances EditAccording to Skepticism activist James Randi Carson invited Uri Geller who claimed paranormal powers onto the Tonight Show specifically to disprove the Israeli performer s claims Randi later wrote that Johnny had been a magician himself so prior to the date of taping Randi was asked to help prevent any trickery Per Randi s advice the show prepared their own props without informing Geller and did not let Geller or his staff anywhere near them When Geller joined Carson on stage he appeared surprised that he was not going to be interviewed but instead was expected to display his abilities using the provided articles Geller said This scares me and I m surprised because before this program your producer came and he read me at least 40 questions you were going to ask me Geller was unable to display any paranormal abilities saying I don t feel strong and he expressed his displeasure at feeling like he was being pressed to perform by Carson 51 52 8 10 According to Adam Higginbotham s Nov 7 2014 article in the New York Times The result was a legendary immolation in which Geller offered up flustered excuses to his host as his abilities failed him again and again I sat there for 22 minutes humiliated Geller told me when I spoke to him in September I went back to my hotel devastated I was about to pack up the next day and go back to Tel Aviv I thought That s it I m destroyed 53 However this appearance on The Tonight Show which Carson and Randi had orchestrated to debunk Geller s claimed abilities backfired According to Higginbotham To Geller s astonishment he was immediately booked on The Merv Griffin Show He was on his way to becoming a paranormal superstar That Johnny Carson show made Uri Geller Geller said To an enthusiastically trusting public his failure only made his gifts seem more real If he were performing magic tricks they would surely work every time 53 Carson s last shows EditAs his retirement approached Carson tried to avoid sentimentality but would periodically show clips of some of his favorite moments and again invited some of his favorite guests He told his crew Everything comes to an end nothing lasts forever Thirty years is enough It s time to get out while you re still working on top of your game while you re still working well 54 Carson hosted his penultimate show featuring guests Robin Williams and Bette Midler on May 21 1992 55 The last of Carson s monologues was delivered on this episode and was written by Jim Mulholland Steven Kunes and Rift Fournier Once underway the atmosphere was electric and Carson was greeted with a sustained two minute intense standing ovation 56 Williams was especially uninhibited with his trademark manic energy and stream of consciousness lunacy 54 57 Midler was more emotional 57 When the conversation turned to Johnny s favorite songs I ll Be Seeing You and Here s That Rainy Day Midler mentioned that she knew a chorus of the latter She began singing the song and after the first line Carson joined in and turned it into an impromptu duet Midler finished her appearance from center stage where she slowly sang the pop standard One for My Baby and One More for the Road Carson became unexpectedly tearful and a shot of the two of them was captured by a camera angle from across the set that had never before been used on the show 58 The audience became tearful as well and called the three performers out for a second bow after the taping was completed 56 This show was immediately recognized as a television classic that Midler considered one of the most emotional moments of her life and eventually won an Emmy for her role in it 57 58 59 Carson had no guests on his final episode of The Tonight Show on May 22 1992 which was instead a retrospective show taped before an invitation only studio audience of family friends and crew 54 55 More than fifty million people tuned in for this finale which ended with Carson sitting on a stool alone at center stage similar to Jack Paar s last show He said these final words in conclusion And so it has come to this I uh am one of the lucky people in the world I found something I always wanted to do and I have enjoyed every single minute of it I want to thank the gentlemen who ve shared this stage with me for thirty years Mr Ed McMahon Mr Doc Severinsen and you people watching I can only tell you that it has been an honor and a privilege to come into your homes all these years and entertain you And I hope when I find something that I want to do and I think you would like and come back that you ll be as gracious in inviting me into your home as you have been I bid you a very heartfelt good night A few weeks after the final show aired it was announced that NBC and Carson had struck a deal to develop a new series Ultimately however Carson chose not to return to television He gave only two major interviews after his retirement one to The Washington Post in 1993 and the other to Esquire magazine in 2002 Carson hinted in his 1993 interview that he did not think he could top what he had already accomplished He rarely appeared elsewhere after retiring providing only a guest voice on an episode of The Simpsons which included him performing feats of strength and featured Bette Midler as well Carson s final television appearance was cameo on the May 13 1994 Late Show with David Letterman where he handed over a copy of a Top 10 List and sat in Dave s chair for a minute He was prepared to say a few words but the crowd s cheering was so loud and so sustained that he humorously decided to leave without saying anything although as he exited he could be heard saying Thank you good night In 2005 after Carson s death it was revealed that he had made a habit of sending jokes to Dave Letterman via fax machine which Letterman would then sometimes incorporate into his monologues The January 31 2005 episode of the Late Show with David Letterman which featured a tribute to Carson began with a monologue by Letterman composed entirely of jokes written by Carson himself after his retirement 60 61 In 2011 the last Carson Tonight show was ranked No 10 on the TV Guide Network special TV s Most Unforgettable Finales 62 See also EditThere s Johnny References Edit Bill Zehme June 2002 The Man Who Retired Esquire Retrieved 2010 06 09 Carson brought the show back to Manhattan in November 1972 and again in May 1973 TV Guide Names Top 50 Shows Cbsnews com Retrieved 2011 10 26 TV Guide Magazine s 60 Best Series of All Time 23 December 2013 Drury Jack February 16 2008 Fort Lauderdale Playground of the Stars Arcadia Publishing ISBN 9780738553511 via Google Books American National Biography Online a b c d e f g Tynan Kenneth February 20 1978 Fifteen Years of the Salto Mortale The New Yorker Retrieved 2011 03 16 Carter Bill March 20 2013 Tonight Show Expected to Return to New York With Fallon The New York Times Retrieved March 20 2013 Simon Jeff 2013 07 08 The return of Johnny Carson on TCM The Buffalo News Archived from the original on 2013 09 27 Carlfred B Broderick Noted Sociologist Dies at 67 USC News September 6 1999 Retrieved April 30 2017 Episode 145 Gallagher WTF with Marc Maron wtfpod com Here s Johnny is top TV quote December 7 2006 via news bbc co uk McMahon Ed 1998 For Laughing Out Loud My Life and Good Times p 154 ISBN 0 446 52370 4 Bio Doc Severinsen Retrieved January 17 2022 Myers Marc January 7 2014 Tonight Show Theme Evolution JazzWax Archived from the original on November 4 2014 Retrieved November 4 2014 CNN Transcripts Larry King Live CNN 2006 02 22 Retrieved 2013 10 02 a b Fred Allen s Mighty Allen Art Players Harris Jay S ed 1978 TV Guide The First 25 Years New York New American Library p 65 ISBN 0 452 25225 3 Uncle John s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader Portable Press 1997 ISBN 978 1879682689 Hill Doug Weingrad Jeff 2014 Saturday Night A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live San Francisco Untreed Reads LLC p 7 ISBN 978 1 61187 709 0 a b Carter Bill May 22 1991 NBC Moves Johnny Carson Starting Time by 5 Minutes The New York Times Letterman delivers Carson penned monologue CBC ca February 1 2005 Archived from the original on February 1 2008 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint bot original URL status unknown link Television Family Feud Time magazine 1979 09 24 Archived from the original on September 30 2007 Retrieved 2007 08 07 Law Rent a Judge Time magazine 1981 04 20 Archived from the original on November 30 2006 Retrieved 2007 08 07 a b the CNN Wire Staff Former Family Feud host Richard Dawson dies CNN CNN Retrieved 2018 11 15 Bushkin Henry Lewis Andy October 9 2013 How Johnny Carson Nearly Quit Tonight and Scored TV s Richest Deal Ever The Hollywood Reporter Retrieved September 4 2014 People Time Magazine 1980 05 19 Archived from the original on October 29 2007 Retrieved 2007 08 07 Carter Bill 1994 The Late Shift Letterman Leno and the Network Battle for the Night New York NY Hyperion p 27 ISBN 0 7868 8907 1 Johnny Carson Calls This Man Bombastic All the Way to Bank The Wall Street Journal June 8 1980 p 14 Digital Download Volume 1 How many Johnny Carson Episodes are missing Steve Hoffman Music Forums January 1 2022 Retrieved July 19 2022 Pdxretro com May 15 2014 Archived from the original on May 17 2014 Retrieved May 15 2014 John Lennon amp Paul McCartney Interview The Tonight Show May 14th 1968 Beatles Interviews Database beatlesinterviews org Archived from the original on October 7 2011 Retrieved August 11 2016 Johnny Carson The Official Tonight Show Website Clip Licensing Johnny Carson YouTube Watch Jake Ehrlich Sr on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on Google Video Stuever Hank May 13 2012 A Heartfelt Doc Deconstructs The King of Late Night Washington Post National Comedy Center to lead preservation of Johnny Carson archives open new multi media exhibit in 2022 WGRZ October 23 2020 Retrieved October 23 2020 Werts Diane June 28 2013 Carson on TCM review Heeere s Johnny Newsday Melville New York Retrieved April 19 2017 Littleton Cynthia August 12 2015 Johnny Carson Returns Antenna TV to Air Full Tonight Show Episodes Variety Retrieved August 21 2015 a b c d e f g h i j History of The Tonight Show JohnnyCarson com Retrieved January 22 2010 a b Johnny Carson 79 Dies Live Event Special rush transcript CNN January 23 2005 Retrieved 2009 05 12 D uring our 17 years together which were wonderful years and he was the one that discovered me and he was the one that said You re going to be a star the first night I worked He was an amazing man and an amazing mentor And then when I left the show to do my own show on Fox he never forgave me and that made me terribly sad We never spoke again Sammy Davis Jr TV Guest Appearances Retrieved 2017 11 19 Harry Belafonte Michael Shnayerson 2011 My Song A Memoir Alfred A Knopf p 322 ISBN 978 0 307 27226 3 Barry Gordemer Producer 2005 05 09 Happy 50th Birthday Kermit audio recording National Public Radio Event occurs at 1 20 1 25 Retrieved 2009 04 24 Kermit hosted The Tonight Show Joan Rivers on Johnny Carson s reaction to the start of her late show on Fox Youtube com Archived from the original on 2021 11 07 Retrieved 2012 02 22 Hinckley David August 6 2009 Two more football seasons for Friday Night Lights and other news from the TV Critics Press Tour Daily News Retrieved 2009 08 07 We didn t feel it was right to invite her while Johnny was alive said Leno It was a respect thing for Johnny Russell Crowe Joan Rivers The National The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Season 1 Episode 29 2014 03 27 nbc Retrieved 2015 08 24 Lyons James Miami Vice Wiley Publishing 2010 p 22 Peter W Kaplan TV Notes New York Times July 28 1984 sec 1 p 46 Unforgettable Uri Geller Appearance on Carson Tonight Show 08 01 1973 Youtube com Official Johnny Carson YouTube channel 19 March 2021 Archived from the original on 22 March 2021 Retrieved 22 March 2021 James Randi Secrets of the Psychics Documentary Full Youtube com JREF Archived from the original on 2013 08 16 Retrieved 25 August 2017 a b Higginbotham Adam 7 November 2014 The Unbelievable Skepticism of the Amazing Randi The New York Times Retrieved 25 August 2017 a b c Bernard Weinraub May 23 1992 Fade Out for Johnny Carson His Dignity and Privacy Intact The New York Times a b The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson Season 30 Episode Guide TV com Retrieved 2011 10 26 a b Deborah Seibel May 22 1992 Fans Put Johnny On The Spot Chicago Tribune a b c Matt Roush January 30 2005 Life After Johnny Broadcasting amp Cable a b Marc Shaiman January 24 2005 Someone in a Tree My view of Johnny Carson s last night The Film Music Society Carson He left Tonight Show with popularity still running high The Register Guard Eugene Oregon January 24 2005 p A1 Hancock David January 18 2005 Carson Feeds Jokes To Letterman CBS News Associated Press redOrbit 1 February 2005 Letterman Pays Special Tribute to Carson Redorbit TV s Most Unforgettable Finales Aired May 22 2011 on TV Guide NetworkExternal links EditOfficial website The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson at IMDb The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson at The Interviews An Oral History of Television Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson amp oldid 1131588473, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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