Lastly: Understandably lost in recent news was the passing of Fred DeCordova, of natural causes, at age 90. Producing and directing The Jack Benny Show and Burns and Allen for TV, and producing The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson were only a few notches in an incredible career that also included motion pictures and the Broadway stage. For a time, Mr. Carson was firing producers — among them, a couple of his closest friends — at a brisk clip. When DeCordova stepped into the post, folks were probably betting on how many weeks he'd last, but Fred fooled 'em all. He lasted more than twenty years in what they called the hottest seat — excepting, perhaps, Johnny's — in all of show biz.
Fred was a strange, frenetic man, capable of both great charm and killer instinct in the same conversation. He produced a show that introduced some of America's top comedians but seemed to have little talent for spotting comic talent. Almost every stand-up who succeeded on the show during those years has a tale of DeCordova trying to "improve" perfectly good acts and/or predicting they would bomb. Still, he never got in their way. He was mired in "old" show biz and, had he been solely in charge of booking the show, Johnny might never have talked to anyone younger than Jimmy Stewart. Still, newer stars made it to the couch. He had a non-charming way of lording his high salary over the poorest-paid members of the staff but, at the same time, he kept the operation operational…though not quite to the end. Late in his tenure, Fred lost favor with Johnny and was reduced to figurehead stature while others (Peter Lassally, primarily) did the actual producing. I believe he went unmentioned on Carson's last show.
I sometimes ran into him over at NBC, and he was always willing — even, eager — to chat about his days working with George Burns or Bob Cummings, and he practically worshipped Jack Benny. Jay Leno retained him as a consultant for a time — in part, I suspect, because Fred had nothing else to do. "All my friends are dead," he often sighed. It would be nice to believe they're all, at last, reunited.