As several of you have alerted me, Heritage Auctions is currently taking bids on the set from which Johnny Carson did his last ten years of The Tonight Show. The minute I saw this, my first thought began "If I had a spare room in my house and a spare couple hundred thousand dollars…" but then I instantly realized that (a) I don't have the spare room, (b) I don't have the spare couple hundred thousand dollars and (c) this thing belongs not in a private residence but in some museum somewhere.
And then I got to wondering things like where has this been since May 14, 2015 and who's selling it now? Parts of one of Johnny's old sets can be seen up at the Magic Castle in Hollywood but we know how those got there. The late John Shrum — he died in 1988 — was the Art Director for The Tonight Show when it moved to California in 1972 and he was also the Art Director for the Castle back then.
But who had Johnny's entire last set? The auction description says "All items (except the microphone) were acquired directly from Johnny Carson" and I did a bit of research and found out that uber-collector James Comisar is the one who acquired it from Carson…
He's now selling it along with tons of other TV memorabilia including the bar from Cheers, the Batman and Robin costumes from the Adam West era and David Letterman's set…
I'm curious where all this stuff is going to wind up and how much it will go for. I'm going to follow (but not bid on) the Johnny Carson set and the David Letterman set. You might want to keep an eye on some of these other historic goodies. And if you buy Johnny's set or Dave's or even the Cheers bar, invite me over to sit in it.