Of possible interest is this letter which ran yesterday in the Wall Street Journal…
In his column regarding Charlie Douglass and his Laff Box, Michael Judge said canned laughter had littered such fine television programming as I Love Lucy, The Tonight Show and Seinfeld for the past half-century.
As one who spent 30 years of that half-century with The Tonight Show, I can assure Mr. Judge that what the home audience saw and heard was exactly what the live studio audience saw and heard. We never used canned laughter or "sweetened" the audience reaction in any way — ever.
I don't mean to sound peevish, but I wouldn't want people's memories of The Tonight Show to be dimmed because they believed the laughter they heard wasn't genuine, but that we faked it. We didn't!
Johnny Carson
Malibu, CA
Hey, it's only a letter…but even this much of Johnny is nice to have.