Monthly Archives: January 2005

I just cribbed the following off the weblog of a gent named Fred Bals…

One of the funniest live moments I ever saw was on the Carson show during that summer — a guest appearance by Rose Marie (of "Dick Van Dyke" fame), whose age Carson had jokingly referred to in his introduction. Another guest — whose identity I've long forgotten — mentioned the joke to Rose Marie, and compounded it by saying that Carson had claimed that when they were building the first stage, Rose Marie held the hammer.

"Ooookay," a mock-angry Rose Marie said, smiled at Carson, stood up and walked off the set. In close order, each of the other guests got up, smiled at Carson, and also left, until only McMahon was there. And then he got up and left, leaving Carson with what must have been the living embodiment of a talk show host's nightmare.

"Is it time to go to a commercial?" he asked. "Not for five minutes," came the offstage reply as the audience roared.

A desperate Carson eventually went into a stripper act, peeling down to his bare chest, as the orchestra blared out "The Stripper." And then all the male guests returned to the stage, each of them bare-chested too, as the audience went into hysterics.

Well, you had to be there. And it was funny, funny enough to me that I can still remember the details from a show I saw only once nearly 40 years ago. They cut to a commercial, and when the show came back on, Carson and the bare-chested guests were seated and he looked into the camera and dead-panned, "Welcome to Rawhide."

I remember that night and it was just as funny as Fred recalls. The guests were Debbie Reynolds, Carl Reiner and John Byner…and then Rose Marie came out. When Carson introduced her, he got the words all botched up and it sounded like he was saying she was ancient. She came out and Johnny apologized for the awkward intro. She said she hadn't heard it backstage. Johnny said, "Good," and tried to move on but Reiner loudly announced, "John Byner will tell you what he said."

Byner (and hey, there's a very funny man who isn't on television nearly enough) said, "He implied that when they build the first stage, you held the hammer." Just like Fred recalled. Johnny kept trying to explain and apologize but he just kept making it worse and worse until finally, all the guests walked off on him. And then it happened just as Fred said. To fill time, Johnny started doing a mock striptease, taking off his jacket, tie, shoes, socks and shirt. When Reiner, Byner and Ed McMahon came back out, they all had their shirts off, too.

I'm guessing this was in 1969 or 1970 because I recall discussing it the next day with a friend of mine who I haven't seen since around then. A very funny moment…and one that I suspect is lost forever due to all the tapes that have been destroyed over the years. Carson's company has most of the shows from the mid-seventies and up but only a few before then. A couple of the older clips, like Ed Ames and that tomahawk we're all sick of seeing, exist only because they were repeated in anniversary shows.

This coming Saturday, Game Show Network will run a six-hour marathon of old quiz programs on which the late Mr. Carson appeared. Here's a schedule.

Every few years, Johnny Carson used to sit for a major interview of some sort. Back in '78, he let writer Kenneth Tynan tag along with him for a while and the result was a long profile in The New Yorker, which Tynan later reprinted in his book, Show People. The New Yorker folks have put it up on their website, presumably for a limited time. So if you're interested in Carson, go read it or at least download it.

In 1979, he let 60 Minutes and Mike Wallace interview and profile him…though I believe he actually okayed the interview, allowed a day or two of filming, then changed his mind and cancelled, then changed again and cooperated. A version of it has rerun several times on the TV Land show that recycles old 60 Minutes TV-related profiles, but they're going back to that footage again tomorrow night on 60 Minutes Wednesday.

One thing that may interest some is Carson's manipulation of that line I quoted in my first post about his passing. In the Tynan profile, you'll read this…

Press grilling is routine stuff, except for:

Q: What would you like your epitaph to be?

CARSON [after pause for thought]: I'll be right back.

Laughter and applause for this line, the traditional cliché with which talk-show hosts segue into commercial break. Subsequent research reveals that Carson has used it before in answer to same question. Fact increases my respect for his acting ability. That pause for thought would have fooled Lee Strasberg.

I believe the footage of him being asked that question at that event is in the 60 Minutes profile. It's a good example of the gift that most great talk show hosts and comedians have…that of making scripted or planned material seem spontaneous.

Esquire Magazine has reposted the 2002 article by Bill Zehme about Carson in retirement. I guess it will forever qualify as Johnny's last interview.

Steve Martin says goodbye to Johnny in The New York Times. I set this link up so you shouldn't have to register. (For some reason, a lot of folks still don't want to sign up for sites like the Times, even though it's free, it doesn't seem to generate Spam, and you can easily get a special, separate e-mail address for such registrations if you want to keep your regular e-mailbox pure.)

If the Nielsen report I just received is accurate, Leno's show last night got a monster rating…11.2, which is more than double what The Tonight Show usually gets. As I said, I thought it was a nice, tasteful hour and I thought Jay did a good job of not making it be about him. I'm seeing him faulted on a number of websites for not being more emotional and making more of a personal statement but I think he hit the proper note.

From Frank Conniff comes this message…

In my opinion, the best Carson Tribute would that NBC could have done would have been to show five Carson shows in their entirety all this week with short wraparounds by Leno at the beginning and end.

It's my understanding that something of the sort was discussed, not necessarily with Leno doing bookends. Apparently, Carson Productions, which owns all of Johnny's old shows, didn't want that. Just as they don't want a public memorial service, they've declined a lot of proposals which would have made the mourning period too long or too elaborate. One presumes this is in keeping with how Johnny would have wanted it.

Roy Currlin notes…

…you mentioned no one has rerun a clip on a night when a guest host was on. Carson actually did a couple of times…a clip of Bobby Kennedy when Harry Belafonte was sitting in.

You're right. I am also told by a couple of Beatles authorities that they've never seen the episode where Joe Garagiola was guest hosting and John Lennon and Paul McCartney came on to announce they were starting up this thing called Apple Corps. The tapes, it is said, no longer exist. (Here's a web page that has some photos of that broadcast, which occurred on May 14, 1968, and this page has a partial transcript. Reportedly, Garagiola was ill-prepared to conduct the interview and he just kept saying over and over, "Boy, my kids are gonna be so impressed that I met you guys.")

Hey, I'll tell you the clip I would kill to see in full. (I have a partial video of it.) One night back in the early seventies, Joey Bishop was guest-hosting when Albert Brooks came out and did the single funniest routine I've ever seen on The Tonight Show. It wasn't exactly stand-up. He was seated in a chair, calmly explaining how he had run out of material but he was doing the show anyway to plug his new album…and then, after two or three minutes of that, he said, "Oh, I could get laughs if I wanted to…" and then he hit himself with a pie, sprayed himself with seltzer, dropped his pants, broke eggs on his head, etc. But of course, he explained, that kind of stuff was too easy and below the standard he'd set for himself…so he was just going to get out of show business. And he waddled off into a spotlight with his pants still around his ankles and waved goodbye to show business.

The audience was in hysterics and applauding their heads off and I think they were on their feet, which was rare back then. And when the camera cut back to Joey Bishop, you could see that Bishop didn't understand the routine. The folks in the audience got it but he didn't, and that made it even funnier.

I remember seeing that and aching from laughter. But at the same time, I was thinking, "I'll never get to see that again…I can't show it to anyone." This was before any of us even had Betamaxes. The better shows with Johnny were rerun on weekends and during vacation periods as The Best of Carson…and if Johnny had been behind the desk that night, the Brooks spot alone would have guaranteed that episode would get rerun. But they never reran guest host shows.

Like I said, I do have a partial video of it, but it's minus Bishop's intro and post-bit bewilderment, plus the end of the routine itself was trimmed off. A lot of Tonight Show comedy just doesn't work as well out of that quasi-live, "real time" context. I'd love to find a complete copy if it exists. For that matter, I'd love to find a tape of all of Brooks's old stand-up routines. Nobody funnier.

I noticed one other change in tonight's Tonight Show as it aired. After her song, k.d. lang went over to the guest chair and said a line or two about how wonderful it always was to appear with Johnny. That was cut, presumably to make room for the clip they edited in of Carson and Rickles.

As I mentioned, I spent some time this morning chatting with Paul Harris on his fine radio show out of St. Louis. We talked about Carson, of course, and Paul has now posted an MP3 file of that conversation over on his website. Prowl around a bit and you'll find conversations with a lot of folks, many more interesting than me.

And I see someone there had the sense to edit in a little of the clip of Carson going across the hall to interrupt Rickles during his C.P.O. Sharkey taping. They didn't run it when I saw the show taped earlier today.

By the way: This will only be of interest to about three of you but I was watching the night it originally occurred, and the entire segment was covered by the Tonight Show cameras, so you saw it as shot from the hallway. When Carson reran the incident on his anniversary shows, they always used the feed from the cameras in the C.P.O. Sharkey studio. In the clip they ran tonight on The Tonight Show, they were using the feed from the Tonight Show cameras again, meaning that someone went back to the original footage in the Carson archives. For some reason, I like that.

I wish someone would try marketing all that material in its original form. After retirement, Johnny reportedly became quite determined to find a way to keep his old shows before the public and to make money off them. Unfortunately, they kept trying to put out edited versions, emphasizing comedy sketches or stand-up spots and such, and they never attracted an audience. I don't think that material works well when it's taken out of its quasi-live context. What we'd really like to see is the old shows in their original form, especially with monologues intact. Maybe someday, someone will start The Talk Show Channel and run old Carson shows (and Merv and Dick and Mike, etc.) intact.

Thanks to an invite from one of the Tonight Show writers (gracias, Marvin), I went out to watch the taping of this evening's episode, which is all about Mr. Carson. The guests were Ed McMahon, Don Rickles, Bob Newhart, Drew Carey and K.D. Lang — or as most folks type it, k.d. lang. I thought it was a pretty good show…way too short to do justice to Johnny but fine for what it was. Jay Leno came out beforehand and explained to the audience that they'd be seeing a slightly different kind of show — no monologue, no high-fives with the first row, etc. Much of the show consisted of clips we've seen over and over on the news since yesterday, but as a TV reporter just explained to me in an e-mail, Carson Productions has made one batch of material available and they're too swamped to honor special requests. (The Tonight Show did have a few I haven't seen in a while, plus one I've never seen, which I'll write about in a minute.)

Jay opened with a nice little speech about Johnny…though I thought a little of what Jay said before the taping was better. Ed spoke about his years with Johnny, then dashed off to (I assume) appear with Larry King. Newhart and Rickles came out together and talked about their experiences. Drew Carey discussed his first time on the show, and got a huge laugh when he came out and told Leno, "You know, when you die, they're not going to do all this for you." k.d. lang did a number and…well, it airs in a little while if you want to catch it. I thought it was a pretty tasteful hour. The montage of comedians' first appearances with Johnny even included a clip of Letterman, which I thought was a nice touch.

One thing I enjoyed was a clip that Johnny wasn't even in. You may remember a night — this is going way back, to around 1976. Don Rickles was starring in a sitcom called C.P.O. Sharkey, and one Monday night he was on with guest host Bob Newhart. During the proceedings, Rickles pounded on the desk and broke Johnny's cigarette box. If you tuned in the following night, you saw Carson notice the broken box and get a bit angry. He said he'd just seen Rickles in make-up, getting ready to tape his sitcom across the hall. Then he seemed to have a devilish idea and asked his producer (or someone) if there was any way he could get over there with a camera.

I probably need to choreograph this: Carson then taped in Studio 1. The Rickles show was in Studio 3, directly across the hall. The two studios share a common corridor between them which is lined with dressing rooms and a make-up room.

That night, you saw Carson grab a hand microphone and signal for one of his cameras to follow him across the hall. He burst into Stage 3 and as it "happened," Rickles and some of his cast members were on a set that was right next to the door via which Carson entered. Johnny confronted Rickles about the busted cigarette box, Rickles stammered a lot and it was very funny. It also seemed very spontaneous, which was a testament to Johnny's acting ability. It was only years later that I realized that, while Rickles himself might not have known about it in advance, obviously Carson's crew had planned it all out and arranged with the producers of C.P.O. Sharkey to have Don on that part of the set at that precise moment. But Johnny sure made it seem like he'd decided on the spot to burst in on Rickles's taping.

Jay had Rickles and Newhart tell the story about that moment…and they showed the clip of Rickles on with Newhart, breaking the cigarette box, which I hadn't seen when it originally occurred. I think they were about to then show the clip of Carson interrupting Rickles but Don told the story of what happened so well that I guess it didn't seem necessary. I wish they'd included it but I have it on tape here, and I was glad to finally see the first part of the story. It's one of the first times anyone has ever rebroadcast anything that occurred on a Guest Host night from the Carson era. (I'm guessing Joe Garagiola's interview with two of the Beatles has turned up somewhere.)

I think that's about all I have to report. If I let this run longer, the show will already have aired, so I think I'll post it and go have some dinner.

They've cancelled their planned guest line-up (Paris Hilton, et al) and they're having on Ed McMahon and some veteran comics — Rickles, Newhart and others who appeared often with Carson — who'll sit around and talk about Johnny. If I can get through with an appointment in time, I'm going to run out and go to the taping.

Paul Harris is devoting much of his popular radio program this afternoon to talk of J. Carson. I will be among those talking on KMOX, the voice of St. Louis, heard at 1120 on your dial…that is, if your dial is located in or around St. Louis. Alas, KMOX does not yet stream to the web so if you're outta range, you'll have to be content with a download at Paul's website in a day or so. I wish they did stream because what I've heard of Paul's show has been terrific and I'd sure listen in. Even when I'm not the guest.

Cartoonist Daryl Cagle gets the drop on all others who are composing Carson obit drawings.

James Randi is an expert magician who specializes in debunking those who use magic techniques to claim psychic or otherwise unworldly powers. He appeared several times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, exposing frauds of that nature, and Johnny was a big supporter or his work. He shares his thoughts on Carson's passing.

I keep finding good articles about Johnny on the web. Here's Paul Brownstein with a largely on-target piece about The Tonight Show serving as a showcase for new comedians. [Los Angeles Times, they make you register]

My pal Andy Ihnatko remembers Johnny.