From October of 1972, it's Johnny Carson's tenth anniversary special. I wonder, if you'd offered that evening to bet Johnny he would do the show until May 22 of 1992, what kind of odds he'd have given you.
The audio on this material is not good but the guest list is impossible to ignore. I remember that when it was originally advertised, the names of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were casually mentioned in the lineup and some people got excited, thinking it was a reunion of Martin and Lewis. They must have been disappointed that Dean was only in a pre-taped introduction…which was the only way they could have the two of them both "on" the show. If they'd been together in the studio, the event would have been about them instead of being about Johnny.
I also remember hearing — and I can't remember where — that Johnny hated this format, which is why they never did it again. He didn't like not having his desk and he didn't like having the guests all out there at once, placed in locations where it felt unnatural for him to talk to them and them to talk to each other. It was a lovely set but it's obvious the NBC crew hadn't quite figured out how to shoot it. Note that when you first see the layout, there's an awkward shot of the boom mike and there's a stagehand running through the shot.
This runs about 50 minutes and gets a little tedious around the time Rowan and Martin come out, if not before. It's in five parts which should play one after another in the player I've embedded below…
