I’m not one to buy stuff off the tube, but during a severe case of the flu about a month ago I happened to be up at 3:30 a.m. and saw an ad on T.V. for a set of video tapes for “The Best of Carson.” I took the plunge and ordered.
The Tonight Show was a nightly ritual for me from the time I was about 15. It made getting up for school the next morning a bit rough, but it was, IMHO, worth it. We even had an unofficial club at school (including more than a few teachers) for those of us that watched religiously. We called ourselves the Burbank Irregulars.
I don’t know that I have any favorite moments from the show, but a few do stick in my mind-
Cleetus the Slack-Jawed Yokel brought his pit bull terrier on to show Johnny that it could climb trees. Doc (dressed in one of his trademark suits) said that if the dog could climb trees he’d kiss its ass. Sure enough, the dog scampers up a pole set up on stage and grabs hold of a flag at the top. When the dog gets back down, Cleetus doesn’t seem to want to leave the stage. Johnny thanks him and the guy says, “But I want to see him kiss my dog’s ass.”
“Take A Shower with Johnny” - The crew has set up a shower on stage and an audience member gets to take a shower with Johnny. The woman chosen is really playing it up - rubbing all over him, hanging on him, etc. Johnny Carson is an intensely private man, and you can tell that he’s hating this whole thing. A staff member is trying to take a picture for the woman as a souvenir but the camera won’t work. Johnny, with barely disguised rage in his voice, is saying “Take the picture…take the picture now…take the picture please.” I would hate to have been that staffer once Fred DeCordova got through with himm.
Plus all of the great music - Benny Goodman, Pete Fountain, Buddy Rich, just lots and lots of jazz masters.
Leno can’t hold a candle to him.
So, Dopers, what’s your favorite memomry of The Tonight Show, starring Johnny Carson.
On one of many visits by Joan Embery, she brought along a cheetah or similar big cat in an open-top tank. On being invited to see the cat up close, Johnny remarked that it was important to show no fear when approaching a wild animal.
So he walks confidently to the tank, and bends down to peer at the cat. The cheetah took one look at Johnny, and with no warning growled and lunged for him. Johnny leaped and recoiled with no semblence of stage presence whatsoever. But on reaching relative safety recovered his wits and jumped into Ed McMahon’s arms.
The first time I saw this I nearly peed myself and rewound it about a dozen times.
“Cleetus?” Barney Oldfield and Flatnose. Flatnose could flat out climb trees.
I don’t remember the name of the potato chip lady. She was about a hundred and ten and collected potato chips in the shape of people, trees, flowers, whatever, when it came out of the package and looked like something, she saved it. She had tray after tray of odd-shaped potato chips. She had just got through showing off her Yogi Bear potato chip and turned away from Johnny when he reached under the desk to a bowl of ordinary-shaped potato chips he had stashed and ate one really loud. She whirled and I thought she would take his head off. He yanked that bowl up fast, that’s for damn sure.
Johnny is classic, and I love those videotapes. We bought them for my dad one Father’s Day and whenever we’re at the house and someone brings up anything Tonight-Show related, sure enough Dad will jump up and toss in one of the tapes at warp speed.
It’s always been close to my heart b/c I was born during the Tonight Show on July 14, 1974.
My favorite single clip was a really old clip of Johnny with Ed Ames. This was the clip where Ed was showing Johnny how to throw tomohawks. Ed threw one at the silhouette on the board, and hit it right in the crotch! After several minutes of ensuing laughter, Johnny replied, “I didn’t even know you were Jewish.”
Was was intersting about that clip was that Johnny used to play it at every anniversery show, until about 1986 or so, when he decided not to show it any more. Then on the 2nd to last show, he showed it one more time.
My favorite shows were the last 2. The 2nd to last had Bette Midler and Robin Williams. The audience was taken thru the full range of emotions during that show and it was one I’m sure most will never forget. The last show was IMHO a really great tribute to Johnny as he hosted the show over the years. I remember that day vividly. It’s hard to believe it will be 10 years next year that Johnny retired from the show.
I miss Johnny Carson. I loved that show. I loved it when Jane Fonda asked him about the Zsa Zsa Gabor-pussy cat thing. http://www.snopes2.com/radiotv/tv/zsazsa.htm Scroll down to the bottom to see the video.
I’ve posted about my favorite Carson bit in an Abbott & Costello thread. His take on “Who’s on First” was the most requested clip every time he did an anniversary special, and for good reason. From memory:
Pres. Reagan (Carson) is at his desk in the oval office with one of his staff. The phone rings and the staffer answers.
S (into phone): “The Chinese ambassador wants to speak to the President? Put him through.” (to Reagan)“Sir, Who’s on the phone.”
R: “I give up. Who is on the phone?”
S: “Who’s on the phone.”
R: “You tell me, who is on the phone?”
S: “Who is on the phone.”
R: “Who?”
S: “Right. He’s on the phone.”
R: “Wright’s on the phone?”
S: “No, Who.”
(phone rings again and Staffer answers)
S: “It’s Watt, sir. He wants to know if you’re still going swimming with him tomorrow at the Y.”
I grew up with the show in my childhood. Two things:
Johnny and Jack Webb doing the “Copper Clapper Caper,” which was part parody of the “Dragnet” style, but a tongue-twisting challenge. I remember seeing it, and also just copped a copy of the MP3 recently.
Shortly after Carson’s son died (in an accident on the Pacific Coast Highway, IIRR), Johnny closed his show by saying a few words about the love he felt for his son, and his sorrow at his death. There followed a selection of his son’s photography work, no narration, just a public expression of private grief.
(In his memoir, talk-show host and former Carson writer Dick Cavett used to tell how interviewers would always be asking him about Carson’s “coldness,” which pissed him off to no end. One time, he blew up and told the writer that he once found Carson sleeping nude in his dressing room, shoved a thermometer up his ass, and the mercury froze.)
You know, for all his human failings, Carson did wonderful work, night in and night out, and I hope he believes how much we really loved him.
Johnny’s guests were always a treat, but what really got me were the ordinary people he had on the show. Like the potato chip lady cited above for example. They were pretty special in their own way.
One “celebrity” that made me laugh did so completely unintentionally. Danny Cooksey, who played the new son on “Different Strokes” after the father remarried, was on Johnny’s show when “Different Strokes” was popular. This kid was precocious to the max, and had obviously been coached, and told that everybody loves him, so he felt he could get away with anything. He insisted on singing a song, and Johnny allowed him. And so this kid, age about ten, got up and sang “Lookin’ for Love in All the Wrong Places.”
Not only was it a horrible rendition, but the subject matter was not exactly suitable for a ten-year-old. The audience erupted in gales of laughter, and so did I.
I was fortunate enough to be in Johnny’s studio audience twice, and I remember Doc’s band playing all through the commercial breaks. You folks at home got important messages, but we in the audience got three minutes of the NBC Orchestra. It was great to finally hear them play the way they should have been heard, and not just for the theme song.
Johnny’s second to last show before his retirement was shortly after the LA-Rodney King riots and lootings. Robin Williams was a guest on the show, and came through the curtain lugging a big piece of furniture. He turned to Johnny and said “I just got this for you really cheap.”
-Johnny had participants from the Alaskan Eskimo Olympics on the show. These people did really marvelous and strange feats of great daring and skill. I’d tell you what they were, but I can’t remember them enough to describe them. Carson asked them how they came up with these things, and one said that they did them just to entertain themselves. After they were through Eddie Murphy came on as the next guest. His first comment was, “Man, they have some really tough audiences up there in Alaska.”
The one that had me laughing the most was 3 or 4 episodes from the last one, Steve Martin came on and did a skit called “The Great Flydini” which he never did in public before. Very hilarious.
Omigod, YES, Dragwyr. What made it funniest was Ed Ames was rather dignified–NOT a prankster–and the flub was so accidentally perfect. I mostly remember the camera panning between Ames finally cracking up, Carson doubled over the desk in hysterics and that fool tomahawk quivering dead center in the silhouette figure’s crotch. The waves of laughter just kept rolling in…then Carson’s quip just set it all off again.
How about the time when Johnny returned after Don Rickles had been subbing for him, and discovered that his cigarette box was broken. He got up, and had the camera follow him as he stormed onto the neighboring soundstage, where Rickles was filming an episode, for his C.P.O. Sharkey series, and confronted him with the broken box. I don’t remember what happened then, but I was surprised to see JC step out of his suave host persona.
Every spring, Carson had this teacher on who “coached” a team of students who whistled bird calls. The teacher’s formality and the student’s creativity and skill made it an unforgettable moment every year.