The Johnny Carson website, which sells DVDs of his old shows, has some neat free stuff available for the downloading. You can listen to "podcasts" (a fancy term for MP3 files) of some old Carson monologues on this page. And you can watch video clips of Carnac the Magnificent on this page. Make sure you if you go to the latter, you at least watch the infamous "Sis Boom Bah" clip — a joke reportedly written by the late Pat McCormick. There are also some neat video clips on this page.
The one thing I don't like about the site is that it has some of its history askew. A page called The History of the Tonight Show includes the following paragraph…
"Tonight!" was originally hosted by Steve Allen in 1954. Allens regular side-kick was Ernie Kovacs. Kovacs became known as "the first commercial tonight show tv television artist." Ernie Kovacs alternated hosting the show with Steve Allen. However, it was Steve Allen who established many of the standards of late night television, introducing the desk and couch and an emphasis on conversations with guests.
There's a lot of stuff wrong with the above paragraph. Steve Allen first hosted Tonight as a local show in New York beginning in July of 1953. The show went on the NBC network on September 27, 1954. (You can view an excerpt from that first broadcast on this page.) Ernie Kovacs was not his regular sidekick. Allen had a lot of regular performers on the show, including announcer Gene Rayburn who might be called his regular sidekick, but Kovacs only appeared with Allen a handful of times. In late 1956, Allen cut back and Ernie Kovacs began hosting the Monday and Tuesday night editions much as Johnny turned Monday nights over to Joan Rivers and then to Jay Leno. Neither of them were Johnny's "sidekick."
I have no idea by what criteria Ernie Kovacs would be called "the first commercial tonight show tv artist." And while Allen did do conversation with guests, that was not a big feature of his Tonight show, which included a lot of stunts, games, sketches and musical performances. If anyone, it was Jack Paar who established the emphasis on conversation.
Also, Carol Wayne was not the original "Matinee Lady." Many actresses — including some big stars who were otherwise guesting on the show — played Art Fern's bimbo assistant before Ms. Wayne got the steady job.
But other than that, it's a great website and I recommend their DVDs. I also really like the guest search feature on the site even if it isn't complete. If you do some browsing, you may note what I mentioned here a few weeks ago, which is that Johnny had a knack for sensing when some guest had run out of things to say or otherwise been on too many times. If you search for a lot of recurring Carson guests, you'll see how many a star would appear every month or two for a few years and then, all of a sudden, not be invited back for a long time. Look up Jaye P. Morgan or Stan Kann and watch it all come to a halt.