Here's…(not yet)…Johnny!

I just saw a list on one of Kliph Nesteroff's many fine sites and decided to just steal it. Don Bendetto supplied a rundown of the folks who hosted The Tonight Show between the time Jack Paar left and Johnny Carson took over.

In case you don't know the history: When Johnny agreed to take over the program, he still had six months left on his contract hosting Who Do You Trust?, the afternoon game show on ABC. It was commonly reported that the network refused to let him out early but as I understand it, it never really got to the point of ABC saying yes or no. Don Fedderson, who produced Who Do You Trust?, didn't want to let Johnny go before he had to…so that was that. By some accounts, ABC then told Johnny, "If it were up to us, we'd be glad to let you go," which of course doesn't mean they really would have.

NBC filled in with guest hosts for six months. Some of them reportedly regarded the gig as their audition to take over the show if and when Johnny failed to match Mr. Paar's ratings. Even if he succeeded, there was then the feeling that no one could host a show like Tonight for very long; that even if Carson did well, that meant he'd do four or five years and they'd then be shopping for his successor. As it turned out, a couple of them did profit from the gig, though not in the way they'd hoped. Jerry Lewis was reportedly so good as a host that he got offers to do that kind of show elsewhere, leading to his infamous, short-lived live, prime-time two-hour talk/variety show in ABC the following year.

Merv Griffin, who'd been more or less next-in-line if Johnny had said no, got himself a daytime talk show on NBC. It debuted the same day Johnny finally assumed the Tonight Show position and was obviously NBC's way of keeping Merv on deck in case Carson flopped. Actually, Merv probably wound up doing better from his deal than Johnny did. Merv's contract gave his production company some commitments to do game shows for NBC and that arrangement led to Jeopardy! and later, Wheel of Fortune. And of course, Merv wound up with his own long-running syndicated variation on The Tonight Show.

It's interesting to me to wonder which of these hosts someone at NBC thought could actually host the show after Johnny. Jerry Lewis was still wildly popular making movies in Hollywood so he was probably not an option. Art Linkletter had a successful daytime show on CBS which he might or might not have been willing to abandon if his contract permitted. Groucho had finished You Bet Your Life and was unemployed. He later said in some interview he wished he'd been considered when they were considering Carson and wished he'd gotten the gig. Some of the others seem like possibles to me, though some seem like "trade-off" bookings. Back then, they were a lot more common than they are today. That's when a big agency represents Sinatra and Herman Shmendrik, and if you want Frank to do a movie for you, you have to find Shmendrik a juicy role in that film or one of your others.

So anyway, here's the list. I remember my parents letting me stay up late so I could watch Soupy Sales one night. And I remember my disappointment that he did it in a suit without pies or puppets or big dogs or any of the things he did that I loved. I also remember Carson saying in some interviews that he couldn't watch some of those who hosted during this period because they turned the show into an hour and 45 minutes (that's how long it was then) of solid plugging. Those shows are almost certainly lost forever so we'll probably never know what they were like.

  • 4/02 – Art Linkletter (2 Weeks)
  • 4/16 – Joey Bishop
  • 4/23 – Bob Cummings
  • 4/30 – Merv Griffin (2 Weeks)
  • 5/14 – Jack Carter
  • 5/21 – Jan Murray
  • 5/28 – Peter Lind Hayes
  • 6/04 – Soupy Sales
  • 6/11 – Mort Sahl
  • 6/18 – Steve Lawrence
  • 6/25 – Jerry Lewis
  • 7/02 – Hugh Downs
  • 7/09 – Jimmy Dean
  • 7/16 – Arlene Francis
  • 7/23 – Jack E. Leonard
  • 7/30 – Merv Griffin (2 Weeks)
  • 8/13 – Hugh Downs
  • 8/20 – Groucho Marx
  • 8/27 – Hal March
  • 9/03 – Joey Bishop
  • 9/10 – Art Linkletter (2 Weeks)
  • 9/24 – Donald O'Connor