Oops! Labdad covered it in post#35. Shoulda kept reading.
I may be able to clarify this a little bit, myself.
I host a Sunday morning program with acoustic music, album cuts, odds and ends, and occasionally I do interviews on the program with whatever musician or group happens to be in the area. My general rule of thumb is that I never do much chit-chat during a commercial break or in setup, because I want to be genuinely surprised by what the interviewee has to say.
If I go on the air knowing in advance that the folks in Nickel Creek have recorded an album with Glen Phillips of Toad The Wet Sprocket, I can’t sound authentically impressed by the news. Some of us are really bad actors, and it’s not a chance I’m willing to take if I can avoid it. I don’t know if Carson/Letterman/whoever would do it for the same reasons, but it’s possible.
Yeah, I know Carson had people pre-interviewed, as does Letterman, and I assume Leno and everyone else…but I’ve always understood that those pre-interviews are simply to establish what questions will be acceptable to the interviewee.
For what it’s worth, none of my interview subjects appeared to be distressed by my approach; they understood that I wouldn’t idly talk for a very good reason. I’d keep it to “do you need more coffee” or the weather, and they seemed fine with it. I suspect somebody like Joan Rivers wouldn’t necessarily understand that.
Exactly! The man spent thirty years, every night for most of the year, making people laugh. He was consistant, intelligent and classy. that is alot of pressue, a kind of pressure that mere mortals can not imagine. Because if you fark up your job it is on national TV and in the tabloids. He was entitled to some privacy.
Also, IIRC, the jabs he took at his ex-wives were really about himself, not really making fun of them, but his own foibles. I may be wrong. But one of the top rules in comedy is make fun of yourself. Laugh at yourself and everyone laughs with you.
Ianzin Great, great story. thank you for sharing! Did Johnny like your book?
You have to keep in mind that this happened in the fifties, when the tabloids actually gave some celebrities some slack and slapping your wife around wasn’t quite the offense it is today. The incident happened at a cocktail party thrown by a bunch of her friends, and they got in a fight out on the verandah. The hitting was seen through the glass door, but they had at least gone outside.
To my way of thinking, a guy hits one woman, he probably hits others, especially through 3 failed marraiges…
Wasn’t it Arsenio Hall’s show, not Letterman? Because, IIRC, At that time Letterman still followed Leno on NBC.
It was both. Kushnick would blacklist any celebrity who appeared on Letterman, Hall, Dennis Miller or any of the other pop-up shows. Dennis Miller blamed the demise of his show on her (he couldn’t get guests) and went for years without speaking to Leno (who had once been a friend- they’ve now mended fences and Miller has long since donned the mass media equivalent of short-shorts and a tube-top and become a major airtime whore).
Does anybody remember the Entertainment Weekly cover from this time in which Arsenio proudly announces “I’m gonna kick Jay Leno’s Ass!”? Up there with “Peace in our time” and “Who would need a computer for the home?”.
Also, ianzin, thanks for the cool story.
Good stuff.
Since this is the one Johnny thread remaining on the front page of Cafe Society, a nice tribute by comid Larry Miller…
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/178drsnb.asp
Er, I think so. Like I said, we only exchanged a few brief emails, so it’s not as if he came out with any great praise or anything. But his tone was always friendly, warm, witty and - IMHO - refreshingly humble.
IIRC, Rivers said that, even though they said they wanted to keep her, de Cordova kept making only short-term agreements, as though they were in doubt, leaving her essentially up in the air. Fox was willing to go with something definite, so she made her choice. The news was leaked before she had a chance to talk to Carson, and when she called to explain, he just hung up on her without saying anything.
For something that some might consider more controversial, read this Metafilter thread: Two Johnny Carson Clips You Won’t See on CNN This Week
Yep, it’s spelled Norfolk but usually pronounced “Norfork” due to an old bureaucratic mixup.
I doubt you’ll find too many people from there posting in this thread. Johnny did a lot of nice things for that town.
The clip featuring Don Rickles was from the time Johnny went after Rickles for breaking his cigarette box. The “black man” bit was just Johnny mocking Rickles’ act. For anyone who has never seen Rickles’ act, it would be slightly shocking. If there was ever a non-PC comedian, it was Rickles.
(that’s the most times I’ve typed Rickles at one time)
Over on Mark Evanier’s weblog, he has a post sort-of about this. In essence, he says that Johnny Carson was a very powerful person in Hollywood, and that because of that, people were genuinely afraid of him. Anyone who got on his bad side was likely to suffer professionally. Plus, people were always trying to get him to help them in some way. It was probably easier for him to be a very private person.
Over on the Alice Cooper boards they’ve got up an audio recording of Alice’s 1977 appearance on the Tonight Show. It’s just hilarious.
Alice had just done a “Talent Search” for a snake to take on his “Lace And Whiskey” tour. He’d brought along pictures of the contestants as well as the winner - a large Boa named Angel.
Alice took Angel out of her container to meet Johnny. Apparently Johnhy had no fear of snakes and was quite willing to hold Angel. Angel was also quite willing to hold Johnny! She somehow got her tail wrapped in the mic cord and the two of them spent the next few minutes trying to extricate Angel from Johnny. Alice was giggling like a fool, Johnny was laughing and the audience were busting a collective gut! 
Gee, I wish there was video to go with it.
I’m not sure I should link it because I don’t know who owns it but Googling Johnny and Alice together ought to bring it up.
(The best part? Johnny asked where Alice was off to next and he said “Vancouver”. I was at that show! 
)
Anyway, by '77 he certainly WAS willing to have on a Rock act and an extremely controversial one, at that.
Seconded, and I usually do.
I’ve been a huge fan of Carson’s for decades and I’ve spent literally thousands of hours watching him. For quite a while I regarded him as a role model. He was a huge success who didn’t let his success go to his head; he didn’t throw his weight around, at least not like another of my idols, Frank Sinatra; he had his feet on the ground and didn’t seem at all interested in his own celebrity or in that of the people he knew; he worked out all the time, saw his doctors regularly, and took care of himself; he was incredibly smart, had many interests and hobbies, and preferred to live a relatively “normal” life.
Regarding Joan Rivers and The Youngbloods, both issues were addressed in Fred de Cordova’s book, Johnny Came Lately, which I used to have. According to de Cordova, Carson wasn’t unhappy with Rivers for getting a show with Fox. He was unhappy with her because she tried to hire members of Carson’s own staff! She even tried hiring de Cordova himself and when he declined she told him that there would always be an opening for him if he changed his mind. Carson got wind of all this, and when Rivers called to tell him about her new show, he hung up on her. But it wasn’t because of her success or the fact that she was going up against him (he had many friends who had gone up against him and remained friends: Joey Bishop; Jerry Lewis; Dick Cavett; etc.), it was that he was quite rightly pissed that she was so disloyal as to try to hire his own people out from under him.
As for the Youngbloods, according to de Cordova, Carson had a closed-circuit t.v. in his office so that he could monitor goings-on on the set while the show was being readied each day. de Cordova said the band had been giving grief to the show’s director all afternoon, complaining about this and demanding that and just generally being demanding and difficult. Finally, Carson had enough and went down to the set himself and told them to wipe their noses and go home. IIRC, de Cordova said this was the only time Carson ever did that.
And I have no memory at all of Carson having a problem with rock musicians. I remember when he had Jimi Hendrix on. Hendrix himself, however, seemed excruciatingly ill at ease among all the high-powered, successful showbiz types he found himself trying to chat with and he bailed during the commercial break prior to his second song. Carson never said a word about it and just carried on with the rest of the show as if it had never happened.
I mentioned this earlier, but I think problem Carson had with many rock acts was not so much their music as their attitudes which he regarded as unprofessional. The episode with The Youngbloods certainly illustrates this. (Now, I realize this happened during the 60’s when every little tiff between somebody from the “counterculture” and somebody over 30 seemed like full-blown inter-generational warfare, but they really needed to get over themselves. I mean, they weren’t The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, they were The Youngbloods for God’s sake.) Alice Cooper, on the other hand, obviously never took himself seriously and (as zoogirl recalls) proved to be a much better guest.
Actually, Carson (or his producers) could also play hardball against their competitors when securing guests if they chose to. That’s one reason why Joan Rivers and Alan Thicke had such a hard time getting good guests, (Well, that and the fact both shows sucked.) Kushnick’s mistake, according to The Late Shift, was that she did so in an abrasive and strident manner whereas Carson’s people apparently employed more subtle methods.
You might say his entire act is a play on words (ridicule/Rickles).
Although several people have seconded the notion that Ed McMahon never appeared on Leno’s show, it’s not true! I very clearly remember him appearing on Leno (well before Carsion’s death). It seemed all the stranger to me that Carson never appeared on Leno, although he did appear on Letterman (and, I now learn, occasionally wrote jokes for Letterman). At the time that Carson was still running the Tonight Show, I never got the impression of any dislike there at all. Not only was Leno the permanent guest host, but IIRC Carson wanted to have a Letterman-Leno debate on his show.
Of course, I have no idea what went on behind the scenes, and I’m not sure I should believe the books writen about it.
For what it’s worth, despite what prevailing opinion seems to be, I like Leno and his style, and think it’s a lot closer to Carson’s thyan Letterman is (In his early years, I’m surprised none of the guests stood up and popped Letterman on the nose).
Another substantial difference, of course, was that Joey Bishop, Dick Cavett, Jerry Lewis et al never went up against Johnny during his 11:30 time slot; I doubt Johnny would’ve had a problem with Joan Rivers if her show had been in prime time (and kept her mitts off his staffers).