On January 31, 1968, Johnny Carson devoted most of a 90-minute Tonight Show to New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison. Garrison was then making the news with a series of claims that he'd solved the Kennedy Assassination and that he would start by prosecuting a local businessman, Clay Shaw, for his role in a grand conspiracy. Later on, most reporters who covered Garrison would decide he was reckless, that he was throwing out charges with no basis whatsoever, and that he didn't have the slightest sliver of evidence against Shaw. A jury later acquitted Shaw in a matter of minutes…to the surprise of no one who followed the case.
Garrison was rehabilitated as a hero played by Kevin Costner in the Oliver Stone film, JFK. The movie was a mix of reality and fiction that seemed calculated to get audiences to accept the fiction as factual. I thought it was a terribly dishonest film and one scholar even issued a list of 100 errors of fact and judgment. There are a lot more than a hundred.
Johnny, it is said, later regretted having Garrison on, feeling he'd given a lot of airtime to a con artist. In this short clip, you can see how unhappy Johnny is, not just with what Garrison was saying but also with the fact that they hadn't prevented the D.A. from packing the audience with supporters…