Last night, I viewed a Tonight Show with Johnny Carson from May 20, 1975 that I recently TiVoed from Antenna TV. The first guest was Joan Rivers and I've forgotten what a good comic she was back then. I came to dislike her later on when she got frantic and nasty but she was pretty good in this episode.
The second guest was Truman Capote, discussing several topics. One was the only topic he was sometimes capable of discussing: The greatness of Truman Capote. Another was the lurid details of a crime he, being Truman Capote, knew all about but couldn't tell us all about. That is to say, he couldn't tell us much about the crime but he drop many a lurid detail. He said that soon, the whole world would know about this crime and it would be the most sensational story ever…and I'm wondering if we ever did or if he just made it all up. He also dished up juicy gossip about Jackie Onassis.
And he spoke of how he was about to make his acting debut in a "mystery thriller comedy" written by Neil Simon. He didn't mention the title of the movie but he was talking about Murder by Death, which came out in June of 1976, thirteen months after this Tonight Show aired. Oddly enough, Capote said that in it, he would play a "Sam Spade type detective."
He did not. In the film, Peter Falk played the Sam Spade type detective and Capote played the much smaller part of a host who invites the Spade doppelgänger and other parodies of great fictional detectives to a party where murders are committed. I cannot believe anyone but Capote ever thought he could or would play the larger role Falk played and I wonder how he got confused or just what happened there. He also said the film would start shooting in October so I guess they had plenty of time to disabuse him of his errant notion.
Neil Simon, by the way, hated Capote's amateurism in the role and spent the entire filming period trying to persuade the producer, Ray Stark, to fire Capote and replace him with "any actual member of the Screen Actors Guild." He did not get his way.
Simon's first choice for the part, who wanted to do it but was committed elsewhere just then, was Orson Welles. One time when I heard Simon doing a Q-and-A with an audience, he was asked what the big difference was between writing for the stage and writing for the screen. He mentioned Murder by Death and said, "If I'd done that as a play, I would have had the power to fire Truman Capote."
Finally, the last guest Mr. Carson welcomed was Bob Speca, who had spent the morning before they taped setting up a display of dominoes to be knocked down during the program. These days, one can see exhibitions in which teams of domino setter-uppers spend days, even weeks, arranging squadrillions of dominoes to be knocked down, usually setting some record that will stand for about as long as the dominoes did. Mr. Speca, arranging 7,500 dominoes all by himself in about six hours, seems to have started the fad/sport with this, his first appearance on the Carson show.
At least, I remember never seeing anyone do it before and I also recall how the next day, everyone was talking about it and fraternities were organizing bigger, more elaborate domino pushovers. According to Craig Tennis, who was a Talent Coordinator for Johnny at the time, he was the one who'd found and booked Speca…and everyone on the program thought he had lost his sanity. That was until the segment was a colossal success and it was often included in anniversary shows thereafter.
From the night of Speca's appearance, every Talent Coordinator on Johnny's staff and every other talk show would aspire to finding something comparable. It was The Great Talent Coordinator Success Story.
And what's Bob Speca doing these days? Amazingly, he's still setting up and knocking down dominoes. Here's a recent example of his handiwork. Nice to see he's made it pay off…