Jeff Stockwell has this to say…
One genuine surprise I remember seeing as a kid was when Johnny Carson, in the middle of a show, walked "across the hall" to where Don Rickles was shooting C.P.O. Sharkey, right in the middle of a taping. It was amazing. Carson was giving Rickles such a hard time, and Don Rickles, of all people, was speechless. He just couldn't stop laughing.
And David Letterman was infamous for bursting onto the set of the New York NBC affiliate right in the middle of their 5:00 newscast. Of course, the Letterman crew planned to do it, but they really didn't have any way of knowing exactly what the reaction would be. Because he did it so often, one night they were going to do another raid only to be greeted by a locked door and a security guard. (I think it was a guard. It might have been a page.) I suppose that could have been a planned bit, but Letterman actually looked surprised at the locked door.
Those things happened thirty years ago. I don't think you would see anything like that today.
The Carson/Rickles thing was quite amazing. If you haven't seen it, here's a link to a video. Bob Newhart was guest-hosting, despite what Johnny says in the clip. Rickles was a guest and at one point, he broke the cigarette box Carson kept on his desk. The next night when Johnny was back, he took a camera across the hall and demanded an apology from Don.
As you watch it, if you watch it, keep in mind that everyone was in on it except Rickles and the other actors on his show. Johnny did a great job of pretending it was a spontaneous idea but it was planned and certainly cleared in advance with the producers of Rickles's show. (For one thing, the C.P.O. Sharkey sets were all over the stage and they had to plan things so Don would be on the set closest to the door Carson would come through.) Johnny was also savvy enough to not have a lot of prepared lines for the occasion, thereby making it seem like he really did have the idea on the spur of the moment. And since Rickles was ad-libbing, Johnny had to, as well.
(By the way, Rickles was taping on Stage 3 at NBC Burbank. That's the same stage where we did The Half-Hour Comedy Hour and had Jayne Kennedy surprise Arsenio Hall.)
The point, of course, is that professionals do not disrupt each other's shows. The folks who did the Live at 5 newscast at NBC must have known that Dave was going to come in and interrupt them. They might not have known exactly when but I'll bet the producers of both shows coordinated to make certain Dave didn't barge in on coverage of a funeral or tragedy. And how good a sport do we think Dave would have been if Al Roker or someone suddenly marched onto his show without it being cleared in advance?
There have been actual surprises on TV shows but not lately. I didn't see it so I can't verify it's true but one of Carson's writers told me the following; that one time, Danny Thomas did an actual no-one-knew-about-it-in-advance walk-on on The Tonight Show. He was doing some show down the hall and on a whim, and since he was already in makeup, he went down to Carson's studio where no one backstage stopped him. They all knew he was Danny Thomas and figured something had been arranged.
So Johnny's talking with a guest and suddenly, out comes Mr. Thomas to plug a TV show he was doing or maybe a book or a St. Jude Telethon and also something his daughter Marlo was doing…then he told a joke and departed. The writer said Carson was royally pissed because it harmed the interview he had going and because it was just a blatant plug and not much else. If it is true, I'll bet it never happened again and that the stage crew knew enough to body-tackle anyone who looked like they might do it.
When I talk about a lack of spontaneity on talk shows, I'm not talking so much about surprise walk-ons. Mostly, I'm talking about having the conversation carefully planned and when the host has to do something physical, like cook or interact with animals, having it all rehearsed and the host's seeming ad-libs scripted and maybe even on cue cards. I'll betcha Letterman, Leno, O'Brien and a few others could do an entertaining show without all that prep. They just don't.
Several people, by the way, wrote me that Graham Norton, who does a "chat show" in Great Britain, is everything the American talk show hosts these days are not. They're right. He's very good. You can catch Mr. Norton's program on BBC America.
Also: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are quite unscripted in their interviews…and one interesting thing about Stewart: Last week, Ronan Farrow came on to plug his new MSNBC show and was not asked a word about the Woody Allen controversy, nor did Stewart ask him the "Who's your daddy?" question. I assumed it was a condition of the appearance that he not be asked about those two things…but now Farrow is insisting that he never demands anyone not ask him anything.
So what do we think about this? Did he show up on the Daily Show set with the assurance Stewart would not ask him about the rape controversy? Was he promised he wouldn't be asked if he knows who his biological father is. (Why would you not want to know that, especially if you hate the presumed name?)
And if Stewart could have asked him about that and chose not to for reasons of decorum…well, how many other interviewers are there on television who would miss that opportunity?