Here’s Jackie Gleason in his only appearance on “Tonight.”
Carson brings up Jackie’s infamous “game show” “You’re in the Picture,” indicating that he was a contestant. Jackie doesn’t seem to remember that part, although remembering some of the other names—and so far there’s no evidence to indicate it actually happened.
Kinda strange.
According to The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, the contestant on You’re in the Picture were Pat Harrington, Pat Carroll, Jan Sterling, and Arthur Treacher.
After the fiasco of the opening (and Gleason’s apology the next week), the show became an interview show. It’s possible that Carson might have been one of the guests (he was working for CBS at the time), but the show was no longer called You’re in the Picture. A quick check of the NY Times database doesn’t show this to be the case, but that is inconclusive, since TV listings didn’t necessarily list everyone.
The problem with the second part is that Carson’s comments are fairly explicit about this being You’re In The Picture in terms of format.
Interestingly, another name Carson remembers (Milt Kamin) is also someone not in the aired episode. Based on that, I suspect that Carson may have done either a pilot or run-throughs for the program, and, after the fact (remember, this interview is from twenty-three years or so after he would have done this), misremembered what he had done.