Here's a great bit of video from The Tonight Show. The folks at Johnny Carson's company that put it on YouTube say it's from 10/04/65. Johnny had brought his show out for a week or two to Hollywood…and considering that he started on The Tonight Show only three years before, this may have been their first such trip.
His guests as you can see in it, included George Segal and Carol Andresson. Mr. Segal was not that well known as an actor then and Ms. Andresson was even less well-known. The whole idea of taking the show to Hollywood (Burbank, actually) was to get superstar guests so I'm a little curious about the bookings.
If one looks at the Internet Movie Database — which as I just mentioned is not always accurate — one finds a listing for The Tonight Show for 10/05/65 and the guests are listed as Bill Cosby, George Segal, Carol Andresson, and Paul Revere and the Raiders. I can explain the discrepancy in dates. Those times when Carson brought his show out here, it aired for some technical reason on a one-day delay. This installment was probably taped on 10/4 and broadcast on 10/5. (When Joey Bishop launched his competing talk show in 1967, it was always on a one-day delay.)
Johnny's show stopped being on a one-day delay whenever it emanated from Hollywood on February 9, 1971. That morning, there was a 6.6 earthquake in the city and Johnny called NBC Mission Control (or someone) and said they had to go "same day" that evening so the show could talk about the quake. Whatever had to be arranged was arranged and Johnny came out that night and started his monologue by announcing, "The God is Dead rally has been canceled," a much-quoted joke that has been credited to Pat McCormick, who was then on his writing staff. Thereafter, the show always aired the day they did it.
So that explains the date thing. Mr. Cosby presumably left before this clip starts and Paul Revere had presumably played. What I can't explain is why the IMDB listing does not mention that Groucho Marx did a "surprise" walk-on…and not a short cameo, either. He was on for twelve minutes. This is Groucho still in his prime and, as opposed to his screen appearances and quiz show, appearing with no script or pre-written "ad-libs."
In my lifetime over one in-person chat and two phone conversations, I only spoke to Johnny Carson for about twenty minutes total. The night before one of those phone conversations, he'd had a "surprise" walk-on on his show, I think by Bob Hope. I somehow asked Carson, "How many times were you ever surprised by a surprise walk-on on your show?" He instantly said, "Never," then added, "Well, sometimes I'm not sure quite when they're walking on but I know they're coming out." Then he further added, "Maybe in the earlier days, it happened once. And there was one time I was really pissed when Danny Thomas did it."
I think I know the Danny Thomas incident. He walked on holding his daughter Marlo's record album, Free to Be You and Me. He plugged it, plugged something else she was doing, plugged some special he had coming up and where he was appearing live, then walked off. You could tell Johnny was furious and he muttered something about having NBC send Mr. Thomas a bill for sponsoring the show that night.
Anyway, here's Groucho just dropping-by as planned. And in there, there's also a commercial for the Jolly Green Giant's corn in butter sauce. Yes, that's Paul Frees voicing the little man in Giant Land…