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/
Appendix A - Sources
1. Sharon,
World Connect Project pages of Sharon,
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GED&db=royalancestors.
2. Compiled
by: Find A Grave, Find A Grave (http://www.findagrave.com/), Find A Grave, PO
Box 522107, Salt Lake City, UT 84152-2107.
3. Compiled
by: Find A Grave, Find A Grave .