Like many Americans around my age I grew up watching Carson and I felt his death pretty deeply as celebrity deaths go. The AM segment on him which I watched last night was pretty interesting. Covered a lot of his early years that I never new much about. I knew a little about his interest in magic and drums but didn’t realize he was as good at that as he was. I was quite surprised to see him singing while playing guitar! Who knew?
One highlight for me was Drew Carey getting choked up while recounting his Tonight Show debut.
A pretty thorough overview of Johnny’s life, I thought.
Anyone else watch? Anything left out?
Top notch show! Well balanced with a lot of details I was unaware of beforehand.
I watched all but the last few minutes. He was a big part of my life too, and I have his final show on VHS. I remembered a few of the bits they showed – Doc kidding about being invited to Johnny’s house, and of course Ed Ames and the hatchet.
Jerry Seinfeld was right when he said if you did well on Johnny’s show, it was the career boost. Except that some people were only on Carson – I sure don’t remember seeing Brother Theodore anywhere else. And Andy Kaufman – who else would have booked him?
And Drew Carey was right when he said it was special to be invited over to the sofa after the act was over – that didn’t happen all the time.
I had thought all of his wives were named Joanne (or a variation thereof), but just two of the four were Joannes. I didn’t even know about his fourth wife.
His biographer didn’t seem to like him very much. Everything he said was negative. Might have been true, but it was kinda surprising.
Is there a psychological term for someone who loves the limelight but only when in character? There weren’t many people on the show who were identified as “friends”.
And how sad about his mother.
The show also gave me another reason to dislike Joan Rivers. What a coward, not to tell him she was going into competition with him.
What’s going to happen with all those master tapes?
My take on Carson? He had the bizarre luck to become a tremendous success in a world that really was not that welcoming to people like him, with his background or sensibility. That private nature might very well have come from having to deal with and, ultimately, rely upon an army of garden-variety show business weasels. And yes, Joan Rivers, whatever else you think of her, behaved like a class A weasel to him in doing what she did.
Johnny’s comic sense, abilities and class came from a very different place than the traditional entertainment world. Although America at large found him refreshing and relatable, he still had to depend on an entertainment industry infrastructure that operated on a much older and more established model. He probably found it distasteful in the extreme.
Deep down, he probably agreed with Ma Carson more than he would have liked to admit: his achievements and status, however much he enjoyed the houses and boats and cars and women, really weren’t anything to be impressed about.
I for one had no idea that he had so quietly left $156 million to start a charitable foundation. Hopefully that act brought him peace in his last years.
Kaufman was on SNL at least once; Theodore had been on Merv Griffin’s show in the '60s and was an early regular on Letterman.
Not if you’re familiar with the traditions of show biz biography. You basically have two choices: canonize your subject or make him tragically, even distastefully, flawed. The latter will generally sell more copies.
As the years pass, the audience for them will dwindle but the legal costs to bring them out will stay steady or increase. I expect they’ll molder in the vaults for that reason.
I missed the beginning, but I thought it was a very interesting show. Some of it, I knew already. I knew he was extremely private and introverted. The part about him being a bad drunk was interesting.
I thought it was telling that the two people who teared up about Carson were Carey and Doc Severinsen. I think they both knew he gave them a tremendous opportunity and he didn’t have to. They both knew they owed him a lot. That is not to take away either’s talent in anyway.
The others, such as Seinfield and Sandling, knew Carson gave them a big break, but I also felt they thought they would have made it anyway.
I would like to see serious documentary on the whole Leno-Letterman-Carson business that’s not a made-for-TV mess.
Both Brother Theodore and Andy Kaufman appeared frequently on Letterman. Kaufman was on Saturday Night Live several times.
Thanks for restating that. Straight info gets overlooked easily when the poster has a reputation for ranting.
But weren’t they on Carson first? Maybe I remember it that way because I watched more Carson than SNL or Letterman.
ETA after preview: Who’s the poster with a reputation for ranting?
Read Joan’s account before you judge her. In summary, according to her, they never gave her a definite indication she really would be his successor. So she took the firm offer.
I’d rather stay mad at her. 
I think it’s fine that she took the job on the other network, but cowardly of her not to tell Carson about it. Does she give a reason for not telling him?
Incidentally, I noticed the show implied that nearly all the tapes from Carson’s 30 years were in the vault. If so, that’s significant news because it was my understanding that nearly all the tapes of the shows from Carson’s New York years (1962 to 1972) were either wiped out so NBC could use the videotape again or scrapped to save space. One of the notable shows lost was Carson’s October 1, 1962 debut (which only exists in form of audio and some film footage). Carson supposedly offered a handsome sum to anyone who happened to have a tape of the broadcast.
I’m a little too young for the Carson generation so I didn’t see his show much, and when I did, his shtick and the guests he had were too passe for me. But I was intrigued partly because I knew so little about him, and partly because I saw a lot of myself in him. Loved the line from Jay Leno (who, nevertheless, strikes me as a ruthless prick the more I hear about him) about the mid-western husband who loved his wife so much, he almost told her.
As someone who wasn’t part of the whole Carson phenomenon, I thought it was very interesting. He’s far from the first unhappy comedian, but he did come off as a remote, very lonely person. In a way it’s surprising that someone like that could occupy the role he did, but when they said he had an unfailing feel for his audience, that sounded exactly right.
The first three were Jody, Joanne, and Joanna.
Rivers did come off worse in the documentary’s version of the story than in other versions I have heard. But there’s no denying that his response was very vindictive. As the documentary tells it, he was not shy about getting ahead himself but he was ruthless when dealing with any perceived challenge. Talking to him ahead of time would’ve been thoughtful and the right thing to do, but to refuse to let her explain and not speak to her for 20 years? Neither of them looks very good in that story.
I watched him from the mid-60s on, and he is so far above any other talk show host (even Steve Allen) that it’s not funny. I actually was in the audience for his game show, Whom Do You Trust. He made fun of the commercials during the breaks, and even at about 9 I could tell he had charisma.
I don’t think he was in character - he wasn’t Colbert. Being in a structured environment can be very comforting, and I say that as someone who would much rather be giving a talk in front of 1,000 people than mingling at a cocktail party.
I can endorse this point of view as one who has done a fair amount of stage work and radio as well as leading a large hobby group as president in my earlier years. Whether as “myself” or as a character I’m attempting to portray, it’s the almost anonymity, coupled with being the “center of attention” that makes it much more comfortable than trying to relate one-on-one or in a small group. I have observed that trait in many of the people I’ve been around in similar situations. Unless a performer is performing he or she tends to remain “off to the side” in more intimate situations.
I watched the show on Carson tonight. He was such a remarkable and talented guy. I often wondered why he didn’t attempt a professional career as a magician. He probably could have been really good.
Instead, he hitched his wagon to what was then still a fairly new and risky medium. He achieved so much in television. There were a lot of opportunities that he passed up. I’ve read he was strongly considered by Carl Reiner for what became the Dick Van Dyke show after Johnny turned it down. He was smart to stick with the Tonight Show for those 30 years.
Johnny was a very complicated and private guy. He obviously was strongly influenced by a mother that never seemed to acknowledge or praise anything he ever did. Having a cold & remote mom like that would effect any kid growing up. It’s amazing he could project so much warmth on stage.
I watched pretty frequently in the late 70’s and 1980’s. I remember the loud suits and longish hair Carson and Ed had. They were trying a little too hard to appeal to my age group. I enjoyed watching Carson. I always watched the monologue and then turned it off unless the guests interested me.
That would be me. But I’ve been trying to cut down.
Well, no. Not *all *of us do that.
I didn’t see the show.
I have always been a huge Carson fan, and as someone else mentioned, one of the very few celebrity deaths that touched me.
What’s the deal with his mother? Can someone expound on that?