Brian Dreger, who sends me a lot of good questions, wrote…
I really enjoyed your post about Rod Hull, and I very much enjoyed the video even more! It was great how Johnny and Richard Pryor both looked at the puppet if it were real! When Pryor said, at the end, "Will he go good with dumplings?," I laughed as hard as I've ever laughed!
My question is about people who push the line with Johnny and lost. There's a rumor that I've seen online — but I can't substantiate — that Dick Shawn was banned from The Tonight Show because he tipped Johnny Carson's desk over during some sort of schtick and pretended it was a canoe. Johnny, watching from home, was offended. Does any of that ring true? I looked on your blog and Wikipedia and I couldn't find anything about it (though maybe I missed it)…
I heard the story from…well, I can't remember where I heard it but I think it was from a good source. Reportedly, Rich Little was guest-hosting, Shawn was a guest and he did indeed turn Johnny's desk over and pretend it was a canoe. As I heard the tale, not only was Shawn not on the show again but it was quite a while before Rich Little was asked back.
There have been a lot of people who were once welcome on Johnny's show and then were not. I always think "banned" is the wrong word for this situation. "Not asked back" is a more accurate term and it could happen just because Johnny decided someone wasn't funny or entertaining. There was a long list of people who were frequent guests and then one day, he decided they'd worn out their welcome or just didn't sparkle anymore. That may sound cruel but it's kind of the way most show business works.
Folks like Tony Randall, Charles Nelson Reilly, Charles Grodin, Robert Blake, Jaye P. Morgan, Orson Bean and many others went abruptly from being very welcome to very unwelcome. Johnny could be pretty ruthless in that regard and also was pretty firm in dismissing writers who, he felt, weren't handing in enough usable material.
Other sins a guest might commit would include excessive plugging and straying wildly from the conversation discussed in the pre-interview. Carson might lead a guest to a topic that had not been planned but they were faulted for going there on their own. Some former guests claimed they'd been dropped from the talk show guest list because Johnny thought they were appearing too often with his competitors.
Getting back to Dick Shawn: I don't think he was ever a Carson favorite. The alleged canoeing occurred on a guest host night and I don't recall him ever appearing with Johnny. If he did, it wasn't often…so it was no big deal that Johnny didn't have him on after that. One of Carson's producers, Fred DeCordova, used to say that they got over 500 submissions per week of possible guests. They needed a dozen or less per week so they could afford to be selective.
By the way: Here's an article on talk show sets.
