For a few months early in 1974, there was a fad in this country called "streaking" which at times seemed like it existed to serve two purposes. There were people who always wanted to be naked in public and this gave them an excuse to do it and seem trendy as opposed to perverted. And it gave news programs and other shows a way to advertise that if you tuned in, you just might get a glimpse of a naked person…something you almost never saw on your TV back then.
Oh — and it also resulted in a hit record for Ray Stevens. If by some chance you don't know what streaking is, this will clue you in…
A lot of people I knew then did it…once. And I'll own up and confess that I got talked into doing it…once. I was twenty-two years old, which is just about the upper limit for when you should do something like that.
I was dating a lady who lived in a huge apartment complex near the Marina. It was full of single people and on the weekends, there were a dozen parties in various apartments or by each of several pools there. She was throwing one of those apartment parties one Saturday evening and an idea somehow came up during it. I have no idea who first suggested it; only that it wasn't me.
My lady friend was close with a tenant named Ginny who was throwing a simultaneous party in her apartment on the other side of the complex. Suddenly, from outta nowhere, there was a discussion at our party about us all streaking Ginny's get-together.
There were, I think, ten couples at ours and for about a half hour, there was a lot of "I'll do it if you'll do it" and "I'll do it if everyone else will do it." My lady friend said to me, "Well, if I do it, you have to do it" and a couple of other folks said that to their dates. Bluffs were being called left and right and then finally, one young woman began taking her clothes off and announcing, "Let's not think about it. Let's just do it!"
So we didn't think about it. We just did it. A minute later, we were all nude and running through the complex, giggling a lot and getting cheers and applause from everyone who spotted us. And before you ask: This was not the kind of party where a significant amount of alcohol or recreational drugs get consumed. None of us had had any of that and now, close to half a century later, I still haven't.
We got to Ginny's apartment and one of us knocked. Then someone said, "Streakers don't knock" and we tried to go in. The door was locked so one of us rang the bell and when Ginny answered, she started cheering, "Yay! We're being streaked! We're being streaked!" This was, at the moment, a great honor…or something. We ran in to a thunderous ovation and laughter, then ran through the apartment and out the back door.
And that's when we found ourselves bareass naked out on the sidewalk in a very nice residential section of Marina Del Rey. This is the kind of thing that can happen when you don't think about something, you just do it.
We had to walk around to the front of the building where, since my lady friend didn't have a key — or anything else on her — she had to buzz Ginny's apartment and ask her to please buzz us in.
We later heard that at that moment, a raucous debate was going on at Ginny's party about whether they should all take off their clothes and streak our party and if so, how long they should wait to make sure we were all clothed again. I mean, what's the point of streaking naked people? They ultimately decided to think about this instead of just doing it so they decided not to do it.
Everyone at our party was soon back in my friend's apartment, many of us saying, "I can't believe we just did that!" Actually, a very interesting discussion ensued about bodies and nudity and freedom and beauty. It turned out at least three of the couples had not seen each other naked before and they seemed eager now to do more of that; just not in front of others. The general consensus was that we were kind of glad we'd done it…once.
Now, this may sound like an abrupt change of subject but it isn't. As my lady friend said before we streaked, bare with me…
The video below is The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for March 28, 1974. To put this into context, Johnny's show was still based in New York then but several times a year, they'd come out and do a few weeks of shows from NBC Burbank and claim it was "Hollywood." Two months after this, Johnny moved the show out here permanently, claiming they'd occasionally go back to New York for a few weeks — which they never did.
Among the many things that changed with the move was that one of the world's great comedy writers, Pat McCormick, joined Johnny full-time. Pat had been employed whenever the show was in town but he got a steady gig there as a writer and occasional sketch player. And in this episode, he also filled the role of Streaker.
Knowing Pat as I did in later years, this was either his idea or if someone else suggested it, he was only too happy to volunteer.
It happened at the end of the monologue so it didn't interfere with Mr. Carson's jokes. Near the beginning of that monologue, Johnny mentions that there's a rumor that they'll be "streaked" some time that evening…as if he didn't know exactly when it would happen, who would do it and what he would ad-lib after it.
I once heard Pat talk about it and he said the original idea involved him and a bevy of Playboy-type ladies and that Johnny okayed it based on that. In fact, Johnny suggested they lose Pat and keep the bevy. Alas, Standards and Practices said that if they did that, the whole thing would have to be edited out of the show. It could stay in if the naughty bits were electronically masked and it was just one guy. Pat, of course, would be the one guy and he did it wearing athletic shoes and a Johnny Carson mask.
Later on, the press revealed who'd dunnit and it claimed NBC was doing some sort of investigation that might conclude he should be fired for moral impropriety. I assume that was said just for show and that no such inquiry was done. If there had been one, it would surely have concluded that streaking the Tonight Show was among the more wholesome things Pat McCormick ever did.
This video is of the whole show with the original commercials. If you want to keep watching, they play "Stump the Band" and then Johnny chats with Michael Landon and the man who was arguably the all-time best talk show guest ever, Carl Reiner. They're followed by a song from Gloria Loring and then the last guest is Joanna Cassidy. This is from when the show was ninety minutes…
