Back in this post, we discussed (and linked to videos of) You're in the Picture, the disastrous 1961 game show hosted by Jackie Gleason. I mentioned there that among the many things that went wrong with its first (only) telecast was that one of the panelists, Keenan Wynn, had to be replaced just before airtime and comedian Pat Harrington Jr stepped in.
About a dozen people wrote me to say I had it wrong; that it was Johnny Carson that Harrington stepped in to replace on the first (only) telecast. The way most of them told it, Carson attended a rehearsal session, realized the show was going to stink and took a hike. Naturally, I was intrigued and also concerned I'd dispensed erroneous history here.
Last evening, I was at a meeting of this group I belong to called Yarmy's Army — a club of folks in and around the comedy profession, mostly older. (I'm one of the younger members.) Pat Harrington Jr was there so I grabbed the opportunity to ask him about it. He said he never heard anything about Mr. Carson doing the show.
As far as he knew, he stepped in when Keenan Wynn either couldn't or wouldn't do it. Pat never heard a reason. His father, a rather prominent actor, was friends with Gleason and that had something to do with Pat, who was well-known from his appearances with Steve Allen and elsewhere, being called in shortly before the live broadcast. And that's about all he remembered of the show except that nobody liked it and he only did the one episode.
Speaking of J. Carson: The website www.johnnycarson.com has just been redesigned to promote two enterprises using the vast (but not as vast as it should be) library of old Carson Tonight Shows. One is that they've digitized the entire library and cross-indexed it for guests and words that are spoken…and now if one is a potential customer for this service, which you probably are not, one can search the whole thing online and view clips for licensing. I have a feeling they'll eventually open it to anyone who pays a fee just for the online access but right now, you have to be someone who's likely to want to pay to use a clip in some proper venue.
The other venture is that they're launching another DVD club — I think they tried this before — where you can subscribe to receive Carson DVDs every so often. In this case, it's every six weeks, you'll get two new ones in the King of Late Night series. The first one's ten bucks plus shipping and handling. Thereafter, they're twenty each plus shipping and handling. How much is shipping and handling? I dunno. You seem to have to actually give them your credit card info and place an order and then they'll tell you. But the offer's even more mysterious than that. I think (but am not sure) these are full episodes, sans commercials. I also think (but am not sure) there's more than one episode on each DVD but if the website says how many, I can't find it.
This is rather distressing for us Carson fans. A lot of us would love to have those old shows but to receive them, we're basically being asked to make a significant financial commitment of some inexact amount to receive an unspecified quantity of Tonight Show episodes…and we don't even know which ones, either. I'm sorry. I love Johnny but I'm not comfortable ordering anything on that basis and I suspect most folks are like me and the company won't get enough orders to warrant continuing the series. If anyone does sign up, would you please drop me a line and let me know what you get and how much it costs you?