Is Jay Leno really as magnanimous as we’ve been led to believe? I’ve never heard a bad thing said about him in terms of his personal character. He’s involved in charity work and seems like a genuinely nice guy. Surely, there must be some incidents of him totally flipping out and slapping an NBC page to the ground or something along those lines. Or is it possible that that he was always a great guy who was not changed by the hideous whore that is fame?
There is no reason to think that Jay Leno is secretly a monster. By most accounts, he’s a fairly decent man.
But a saint? Not at all. In his early days as a standup comic, virtually all of his gigs were at strip clubs and topless bars, where his routines were mostly raunchy stuff (a far cry from the harmless stuff he tends to do on “Tonight”).
And in his early days ashost of “Tonight,” Leno proved himself a real cuttthroat competitor. He regularly threatened celebrities with permanent banishment from “Tonight” if they ever dared make appearances on competing talk shows. This didn’t hurt David Letterman, but it made life very tough for Arsenio Hall and Dennis Miller, former friends of Leno, who found that guests they wanted were afraid to appear on their shows.
For years afterward, neither Miller nor Arsenio would speak to Leno, whom they regarded as a phony and a backstabber (though, apparently, all is forgiven now).
Actually Jay Leno’s former manager, the now deceased Helen Kushnick, was the one who used cutthroat tactics against Leno’s competitors. For instance, Travis Tritt was not booked on Leno’s show after appearing on Arsenio Hall.
Jay eventually got fed up with her and broke off relations.
You should read The Late Shift. It is a pretty good book about how Leno got the late show and Letterman moved to CBS. Supposedly it paints them in a bad light and Letterman and Leno don’t like it. I read it and didn’t think that it said much of anything that would really discredit either Letterman or Leno. About the only thing you can say is that Leno’s agent went to bat for him. I am pretty sure the agent in question is Helen Kushnick.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0786889071/qid=1003443197/sr=12-2/103-0559531-3555804
Leno seems like a great guy. I think he feels uncomfortable around some of his more arrogant guests. He also LOVES his wife very much. On the show and in interviews he’s always praising her. Once in a while he writes and even CALLS people who write him complaining about a joke being “too racy”, and tells them he’s sorry for offending them but he’s just doing it for laughs.
One time there was a band waiting outside of the studio, who wouldn’t get up unless Leno let them play on the show. Instead of getting security to throw their asses out of the lot, he said the best he could do for them is give them balcony seats. When the show started, these people ran out on stage… I guess they wanted attention. By that time they were kicked out.
Doesn’t it strike anyone as interesting that Hollywood has become so rotten and spoiled that a guy who just goes to work, does his job, treats his friends well, and then goes home to his family and hobbies is considered a SAINT? Jeez, there are about 100 million other Americans who must qualify for sainthood then.
He’s an average guy. He likes cars, he likes working in his garage. He loves his wife, and he loves his job. The only reason that seems incredible is because he’s in Hollywood.
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Moving to IMHO.
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I have a friend that lives near Leno. One day she had a flat tire on the way home. A car pulls over, a guy gets out to give her a hand. You guessed it – Jay Leno. She said he was amazingly nice. He helped her fix her tire, and she went on her way.
I tape the Tonight Show almost every night to watch during breakfast. I wish Jay and Mavis had kids, because they are such wonderful people.
Two responses: first, Leno’s not the only celebrity who’s a genuinely nice guy. From everything I’ve heard about him, Jack Benny was the sweetest guy on earth, and he was one of the most fabulously popular entertainers around for decades. Other celebrities, like Cal Ripken, have been noted as being terminally nice, as well.
Second, Hollywood is different from the rest of society only in that much of it exists in a fishbowl. Stop and think about where you work. There is a mix of people who are abnormally nice, who actually go out of their way to help out, there are others who are pleasant enough, and perhaps helpful, but not overly so (the majority of people, I would guess), and others who you just want to pinch. Assholes and saints exist in every walk of life, whether it be Hollywood or the local supermarket.
I saw him live about 10 years ago and he is a very good comic in person too. He was great at asking questions of the audience and then making jokes out of the answers. But it was all clean stuff. I don’t know if he does much stand-up anymore, this was before he was named Tonight Show host.
“The Late Shift” book is very good, I don’t think Leno comes out bad in it. NBC was going to can Leno in 1992 after he was only host for a short time because they wanted to give it to Letterman. They even made Letterman a contract offer but they would not put in it writing (I suppose so they could deny it later) Letterman insisted it be on paper and NBC then withdrew the offer. A really funny part of the book was that Leno actually overheard some of the NBC execs on phone calls when they were trying to hire Letterman to take Leno’s place. He listened to their end of the phone calls by hiding in a closet!
I always like to hear about celebrities who are genuinely nice people, and I also hate when an unpleasant incident gets twisted all around. If I have a bad day and snap at the clerk cashing me out, I’m just being bitchy. If Angelina Jolie* did the same thing, she’s suddenly a prima donna who thinks she’s better than everyone else. I’ll be forgiven for my indiscretion. She never will. Suddenly, she’s difficult to work with, throws tantrums on the set, etc. It’s terribly sad that humans tend to look for the worst in people.
*No idea what sort of person Jolie is. Just happened to be the first female actor I thought of.
It’s more of a rarity to find a celebrity who’s a decent human being because, in order to succeed in show business, you generally have to be a colossal egomaniac whose need for the approval and praise of others is accompanied by an enormous drive.
This is not the case with every celebrity. Some are artists who are there because their craft is exceptional. Others realize how lucky they really are. But I am willing to bet the majority of “stars” fall into the egomaniac category.
I also have a friend who was traveling in the California area. He got a flat tire, and Leno stopped and picked him up(in a cool sports car, of course).
They talked while they drove to a phone so the guy could call his parents. Jay wasn’t arrogant and was willing to talk about the Tonight Show and celebrities and all that. He was nice.
He even waited until the kids parents showed up, then left.
No, he’s not a saint, but he is real nice.
anybody into cars and motorcycles as deep as he is can’t be all bad, in my opinion. sure seems like a nice guy.
In his autobiography, Leading With My Chin, Leno tells some stories on himself - nothing terrible, but certainly self-deprecating. You decide if they qualify as something to deny sainthood:
- When he was living in Boston, he came home one day to find a refrigerator on the curb in front of his apartment building. He noticed that it still had the front door on it. Remembering that you’re supposed to take the door off the hinges so kids don’t get trapped in a fridge that’s destined for the trash, he took a moment and used a hammer he had with him to knock off the hinges. A few minutes later, in his hallway, he encounters a furious guy: “Nice neighborhood you have here!”
“What do you mean?” Leno asked.
“We’re moving into an apartment down the hall, and we brought our own refrigerator. We left it on the curb for two minutes, and someone vandalized it!”
“Oh, wow,” replied Leno evasively. “That’s… that’s just terrible.”
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While Leno was trying to become a full-time comic, his “day job” was working for a Boston area car dealer. Once he delivered an expensive car to a purchaser, who paid with cash – over $29,000, in a non-descript paper bag. Leno went back to the city, stopping in, as was his habit, to the local comedy club to see if anyone had cancelled and he could get some stage time. Luck was with him - he got on stage, and was able to try out some new material, taping himself on a small recorder so he could critique himself later. After he did the show, he drove home, listening to the tape… and was halfway there before he realized he had left the money at the club. Panicked, he sped back, with visions of some comic having found it and spending it on strippers. Fortunately, the bag was sitting on top of a piano right on stage, untouched. “If someone had taken that bag,” Leno says in his book, “I would probably just be getting out of jail now. My entire career never would have happened!”
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In those younger days, Leno says he bore a resemblance to English pop star Donovan. When a Rolls Royce, or some other high-end car, was at the dealership for work, a friend of his and Jay would sometimes “borrow” it and cruise the streets, Leno in the back with glasses like Donovan’s. When they’d see a couple of good-looking girls on the street, Jay’s friend would stop and ask them if they wanted to meet Donovan. “'Ello, luv,” Jay would tell them. In the book, he wonders “…if Donovan knows how well he did for himself in Boston in the early seventies.”
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He would also take dates to various make-out spots in the dealership’s fancy cars. People would inevitably ask who he was; often he claimed to be a Kennedy – “Larry Kennedy, the forgotten brother.”
I think the book makes a great read. 
- Rick