John William CARSON

First Generation

      1. John William CARSON  "Johnny"¹  was born²  on 23 Oct 1925 in Corning, Adams, Iowa. He died³  on 23 Jan 2005 in Burbank, Los Angles, California.  The cause of death was emphysema.

Johnny Carson, the legendary "King of Late Night TV" who dominated the medium's nether

hours for three decades, was born in Corning, Iowa, but moved with his family to nearby

Norfolk, Nebraska when he was eight years old. It was in Norfolk, where he lived until he was

inducted into the US Navy in 1943, that he started his show business career. At age 14,

Carson began appearing as the magician "The Great Carsoni" at local venues.

In 1962, Carson was chosen by NBC to succeed the controversial Jack Paar on "The Tonight

Show" after Paar's resignation over what he deemed censorship, particularly as regards his

on-air enthusiasm for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Carson would never be controversial like

Paar, preferring to good-naturedly skewer politicians and celebrities in his opening

monologue and staging stunts such as the on-stage marriage of retro-singer Tiny Tim to his

Miss Vicky in 1969. His popularity with the late-night audience became so great, and the

income from advertising on his show so profitable, that in 1967, NBC had to lure Johnny back

to "The Tonight Show" after a walkout with a three-year contract guaranteeing him a minimum

of $4 million. In the early 1970s, TV Guide reported that Carson was earning $2 million a year,

making him the highest paid TV entertainer ever, a record he repeatedly surpassed, pulling

down a then-record $5 million annual salary in the 1980s.

Carson created a sense of intimacy with his guests and audiences that made him the

unvanquished "King of Nighttime TV." Countless talk shows hosted by the likes of Joey

Bishop and Dick Cavett and other non-talk show programs were launched against him year

after year only to fail, with the notable exception of ABC's "Night Line" half-way through his

reign. Aside from his loyal audience, Carson was beloved by his guests and the legions of

young comics whose careers were launched on "The Tonight Show," colloquially known as "

The Johnny Carson Show." His tempestuous love-life, which included two high-profile

divorces, became the fodder of such celebrity staples as "The National Enquirer" and later "

People" Magazine, and he was even the subject of a roman a clef pulp novel in the early

1970s. There have been at least seven published biographies of Carson.

Carson's career was exclusively in television, starting with work at Nebraska TV stations in

the late 1940s which preceded his 1951-53 skit program "Carson's Cellar" (1953) on Los

Angeles station KNXT-TV. Attracting the attention of the industry, he was hired as a comedy

writer for "The Red Skelton Show" (1951) which provided him with a career breakthrough

when Skelton was injured backstage and Carson substituted for him, delivering his first

monologue before a national audience. This led to a stint as the host of the quiz show "Earn

Your Vacation" (1954) in 1954 and the variety showcase "The Johnny Carson Show" (1955) in

1955-56. The man who would soon become the most famous late-night TV personality in

history hosted the daytime game show "Who Do You Trust?" (1956) from 1957-62, teaming up

with long-time sidekick Ed McMahon in 1958.

Before his triumph on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962), Carson tried his

hand at dramatic acting, appearing in "Three Men on a Horse" (episode # 1.29) during the

inaugural season of "Playhouse 90" (1956) in 1957. In 1960, he shot a pilot for a prime-time

TV series, "Johnny Come Lately," that was not picked up by a network. Carson had sat in for "

Tonight Show" host Jack Paar in 1958, and when Paar left the show four years later, NBC

chose Carson as his replacement, taking over the cat bird seat on Oct. 2, 1962. "The Tonight

Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962) became a major phenomenon in American pop culture

in the 1960s and beyond. Sidekick McMahon's "Heeeeere's Johnny!!!" introduction of Carson

became a cultural catchphrase, memorably reprised by Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick's

The Shining (1980) . Woody Allen's character in the Best Picture Academy Award-winning

Annie Hall (1977), stand-up comic Alvy Singer, is recognized in front of a movie theater by a

street tough due to his appearance on "The Tonight Show."

Aside from his banter with celebrities, he amused his audience for 30 years with broadly

played skit comedy by his "Mighty Carson Players" and his spoof clairvoyant "Carnac the

Magnificent." A master at quick repartee, Carson was a relaxed host with a pleasant,

ingratiating manner and was quite funny as a skit comedian, but it was the monologue in

which Carson's comic genius flourished. He made memorable put-downs of politicians and

celebrities, a format still used by his successors Jay Leno and David Letterman and legions of

comics who came after him.

But it was his ironic self-awareness that made him radically different from such monologists

as Bob Hope. When a joke bombed during his monologues, Carson would do a wounded

double-take as the audience jeered, fully aware of the awfulness of the joke he had just

unloaded. Following these bombs with a sly, self-deprecating remark engendered a sense of

intimacy between Carson and his fans. Carson typically moved the blame for a groaner onto

his joke writers, which created a "We're in this together" camaraderie with his audience that

spawned a whole new era of self-referential comedy, perhaps best epitomized by Letterman,

the man he wanted to succeed him on "The Tonight Show."

A liberal in the increasingly liberal age of the 1960s and `70s, so powerful were his opening

monologues that by the early 1970s, he could actually effect society at large outside of the

pop culture realm. A joke about a shortage of industrial grade toilet paper caused a national

panic and a run on all grades of t.p., with a resulting shortage of the product that he had

kidded about. Playing off current events such as the Watergate crisis, his comic evisceration

of President Richard Nixon was credited with some critics as exerting such a drag on Nixon's

approval rating that it made his resignation possible, if not inevitable. After Carson's reign, it

became increasingly de rigueur for politicians to appear on late-night TV talk shows and bear

the a host's jibes in order to stump for votes.

Carson's connection with the American culture was so absolute, it contributed to one of his

few failures, the rejection of "The Tonight Show" in the early 1980s by British audiences who

could not understand the topical references of his monologues. And his audience's

identification of Johnny with the "Tonight Show" effectively stopped him from work in other

media. In the mid-1960s, Carson's agents wanted to trade on his vast popularity to position

him in motion pictures as the "New Jack Lemmon," but Carson never made the foray outside

of television. His connection with the movie industry remained his hosting of three

generations of stars and his memorable turns as the host of five Academy Awards telecasts

from 1979 to 1984. In that role, he generally is regarded as the best successor to long-time

Oscar host Bob Hope. He did stretch his wings as a producer, his Carson Productions

producing TV pilots and series, TV movies and "Late Night with David Letterman" (1982) in

addition to his own talk show.

The six-time Emmy-winner considered a follow-up to "The Tonight Show," but nothing caught

his interest and he spent the last decade of his life in a quiet retirement in Malibu, California,

as befitted his private nature. Thus, it was "The Tonight Show" that remains his creative

legacy. Unlike every other TV star, he remained on top until the very end, the show winning

its ratings period every year for 30 years. When Carson retired, his last appearance was one

of the highest rated late night TV shows ever.

"I have an ego like anybody else," Carson told The Washington Post in 1993, "but I don't

need to be stoked by going before the public all the time." 'Fred de Cordova' , the producer of

"The Tonight Show" throughout Carson's 30-year run, believed that Johnny never pressured

himself to launch a follow-up as he already had achieved unprecedented success on TV. "He

is one of a kind, was one of a kind," De Cordova said in 1995. "I don't think there's any reason

for him to try something different."

Carson, who was suffering from emphysema and had quadruple bypass surgery in 1999, died

peacefully at the age of 79 on the morning of Sunday, January 23, 2005, surrounded by his

family and friends. In terms of career longevity, popularity, peer respect and impact on the

medium, Carson ranks with Lucille Ball and 'Jackie Gleason' as one of the greatest stars of

television. Not only will Johnny be sorely missed, he WAS sorely missed by his legions of

fans after his retirement.

Bio from the Internet Movie database, http://www.imdb.com/

Sources

  1. Sharon, World Connect Project pages of Sharon, http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GED&db=royalancestors.

  2. Find A Grave  (http://www.findagrave.com/).

  3. Find A Grave .