Comedy writer Hank Bradford died January 18 at the age of 88 and the cause of death was heart failure. I have a fairly-good excuse for not noting this at the time. I was then in the hospital with my stupid broken ankle and not keeping up on the news as much as I usually do. I only learned of Hank's passing when I saw that scroll on the long-form "In Memoriam" list on the Emmy Awards site.
I didn't know Hank all that well but he was a top-rate comedy writer who, among his other gigs, was Johnny Carson's head writer on The Tonight Show from 1970-1975. People always marveled at Carson's long run as host of that program for thirty-some-odd years but I would think being his head writer for five might have been the greater feat of endurance.
When I was around Hank, he made it sound like he was the main reason Carson fared so well…and not just in those five years but afterwards, as well. I thought he was exaggerating but once when I mentioned Hank's name to Fred DeCordova, who was Carson's producer during that period and after, he said that Hank was maybe not exaggerating as much as I thought. (Fred did not remember why Hank left the show and Hank kept saying that someday we'd sit down and he'd tell me the whole story…but he never did.)
I met Hank at a meeting when we both went in for "audition" meetings about writing for a new program which wound up hiring neither of us. He was gone from The Tonight Show by that point but he recommended me to whoever then had his old job there. As I think I've written here before, I wound up turning down a writer job there several times and I had four reasons. One was that each time I got an offer, I had another job current or looming that I decided would make me happier — especially in light of the other three reasons.
Number two was Hank telling me war stories about what it was like there. Number three was that I knew another former writer for Carson. He'd been fired in what he thought was a more-unpleasant-than-necessary manner and it ruined watching The Tonight Show for him for a long time after. He said, "I used to love watching Johnny but after I got kicked out, it was too painful to enjoy after that." And the fourth reason was that I simply didn't think I was strong enough in the kind of monologue joke writing it would require…so I would not last long there.
Hank told me he had trouble watching Johnny after his severance too…so I'd like to think I made the correct decision. But Hank did eventually start watching again and he also watched Johnny's successors and those inspired by The Great Carson. He rarely liked what he saw.
He called me one time — and I don't remember the precise numbers but it went something like this: "Last night, Leno did seventeen jokes in his monologue. We experimented with Johnny and found out that fourteen was the right number. Do you know anyone over at Leno? Can you call and tell them Jay is doing three too many jokes in his monologues?" Hank was also upset that David Letterman was doing too few.
Another time, it was this: "These guys — Dave, Jay, Conan, all of them — they say Carson was the best, Carson was the greatest but they don't want to have an Ed McMahon on the couch. They all think they can do it without an Ed McMahon! Johnny never went out there without an Ed McMahon!" I thought Hank was wrong about the number of monologue jokes but not wrong about the need for an Ed McMahon in some cases. Conan O'Brien, I thought, was better before Andy Richter left the show. Before that, he'd done well playing Abbott to Andy's Costello. After that — and even when Andy returned — O'Brien was trying to be both Abbott and Costello by himself.
In fact, I thought Hank was right about most of his critiques about the late night shows. He'd call me every so often and ask, "Did you see Letterman last night?" or "Did you see Conan last night?" And he'd point out something they did that Johnny would never have done. Mostly, it involved stepping on a guest's punchline or interrupting the flow of a story. A good interviewer knows when to shut up and he didn't think most of the new guys did.
De Cordova didn't think Hank got enough credit for the success of The Tonight Show in the early seventies when it truly was must-see TV. I suspect he was right. My apologies for the belated obit.