Yesterday, I posted this video link to Jackie Gleason's one-and-only appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Jim Held wants to know…
Any take on why this was the only time Gleason appeared on The Tonight Show?
Did he have something he really wanted to plug and his handlers/producers just thought that Tonight was the place to do it? Did Gleason feel he wasn't treated with the massive deference he thought he deserved? Or did Carson and his handlers just think Jackie was a pain in the butt and not worth dealing with any more?
No, I think this is all easily explainable as a matter of geography. Mr. Gleason moved his TV show and residence to Florida in 1964, less than two years after Johnny Carson took over The Tonight Show. He was probably not on before that move because he was a CBS star and Carson was on NBC and back then, the networks really frowned on having on guests who top-lined shows on a competing channel.
It happened but it didn't happen often. When you watch old talk shows, you'll often see someone mention that they have a show on "another network" as if it's a curse word to say that network's name. By the time that went out of fashion, Gleason was happily a resident in Florida and he rarely left. He didn't like to fly and usually when he did, it was because he was being paid a lot of money to appear in some big movie. You'll notice in the video, he mentions he was in town shooting a film with Tom Hanks.
He popped up occasionally on TV shows shot in New York or Hollywood but very rarely. One of the rare times was on this 1968 episode of Here's Lucy which also featured Jack Benny. Earlier in '68, Gleason was in L.A. to shoot his scenes in Skidoo and then How to Commit Marriage, back-to-back. I don't know where How to Commit Marriage was filmed but a lot of Skidoo was shot at Paramount and so was Here's Lucy. Maybe Lucy's producers just heard he was on the lot and wrote him into the script…
(By the way: The gent playing the tour guide in that clip is the legendary Sid Gould, who worked with everyone but especially Lucy.)
I doubt Gleason didn't want to appear on Mr. Carson's show and I doubt Johnny didn't want him. It was probably an inability to coordinate Jackie's schedule with whatever he was in town to do.
