I was going to try and get out of the Carson-linking business but this one's too good to deny you. An old friend of mine, Donna Schwartz Mills, wrote to thank me for all I've posted here and to tell me she has her own weblog where she's posting things about Johnny. Donna was on the Tonight Show staff for a number of years during the Carson Era, so her recollections are personal and quite interesting. Go to this posting and then use the links at the top of the page to read forward to the most recent.
And since I'm back doing this, I'll mention that Pat Sajak, who was among those who went up against Carson and failed, has written an article that's mostly about himself. It's also a little odd in its history. He says that in 1986, he was asked to guest-host for Johnny but that (a) there was a Writers Guild strike in progress and (b) the Directors Guild was also threatening to strike. The rest of the article may be true, and probably is, but neither of those unions entered into negotiations in 1986. The WGA struck in 1985 for 13 days and in 1988 for 22 weeks. The DGA negotiated a three-year contract in 1984 so they couldn't threaten a strike again until 1987…which they did. That was the year of the only DGA strike ever, which lasted all of five minutes. (I'm not kidding. Five minutes.) At no point during those years was there ever a moment when the WGA was on strike and the DGA was threatening to go out.