Sunday, January 23, 2005

Also...

My pal Andy Ihnatko remembers Johnny.

• Posted at 11:48 PM · LINK

Still More Carson Stuff

And I just remembered an article that I wrote about Mr. Carson back in 1990, discussing what his work meant to me, and the first time I met the man. I don't recall where this appeared (someone, help me) but I had it on my harddisk, so here it is. A few of my opinions on him have changed since then, plus you'll note that I said his departure was nowhere in sight. A year later, it was suddenly in sight, but I was hardly the only one who didn't see it coming.

• Posted at 11:25 PM · LINK

More Carson Stuff

My pal Aaron Barnhart, a TV critic who specializes in late night, writes a nice piece on Johnny. Of course. And here's a piece by Tom Shales.

• Posted at 10:54 PM · LINK

Carson Stuff

For those of you who feel the need to read or hear about Johnny Carson on this sad day...

• Roger Ebert has a nice essay up on what it was like to appear with Mr. Carson.
• ABC News is out interviewing celebrities on Johnny's impact.
• TV critic Sid Smith has a pretty nice overview of Johnny's skill. [registration required, I think]
• NBC will do a Carson tribute tonight on Dateline NBC, which runs at 7 PM in most markets. And there seems to be a special on MSNBC at 8 PM.
• Here's the Los Angeles Times obit [registration required] and here's the New York Times [registration not required]. The latter also reprints this old Frank Rich column [registration perhaps required] on Johnny's last night and the text of Johnny's last monologue [registration maybe required but maybe not].
• Looks like Larry King will have Ed McMahon and many close associates on his show tomorrow night. One assumes Mr. Leno will do some kind of long tribute tomorrow night. Letterman is scheduled to be in reruns this week but, rumor has it, will not let this go unnoted until the following Monday.

One of many other things I could have mentioned in the piece I posted earlier: Johnny did a lot to boost the careers of certain stand-up comedians who appeared on his show...but he also did a lot to simply boost the art and commerce of stand-up comedy for all. Before the advent of HBO, Showtime, Comedy Central and other venues that like to air stand-up acts because that means you don't have to hire writers, Carson's show was one of the few places where a stand-up could get on television, perform and bolster his career as a stand-up. A lot of the clubs, like the Comedy Store, almost seemed to exist as try-out rooms for Carson. We all know how it helped Leno, Letterman, Seinfeld, Stephen Wright, Roseanne, Ellen, Shandling and so many more to do well on the Tonight Show stage. But everyone who performs stand-up owes a little something to the Tonight Show, to Johnny Carson and to his scouts, like Jim McCawley.

• Posted at 3:37 PM · LINK

Carson Lore

Someone wrote to suggest I link to this article I have elsewhere on this site. It's chock full of trivia about The Tonight Show.

• Posted at 1:39 PM · LINK

Johnny

My first two thoughts at hearing that Johnny Carson has died of emphysema: Do we need any more proof of what smoking can do to the human body? And he actually did what he'd decided to do: He retired, gave up public life, and resisted all temptations to get back in. After he left The Tonight Show, he was offered anything and everything...but he decided it was classier to exit the stage and stay off. Having seen an awful lot of stars who lingered in the spotlight long enough to become sad caricatures of their former selves, I have to admire that decision and the ability to stick with it.

There will be no shortage of tributes to the King of Late Night TV. Most will, I suspect, overemphasize how many careers he launched: Leno, Letterman, Seinfeld, etc. I always felt too much was made of that side of Carson. Yes, he cleared time for new comics, sent out his scouts to find them, then gave them a good showcase and encouragement. But that helped The Tonight Show as much as it helped the comics, and it's not like Johnny actually went up to the Comedy Store, sat through hundreds of bad acts and picked out the good ones.

He will also be praised for knocking off all competition, which I suspect is giving him too much credit. Who else tried a talk show opposite Johnny? Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett, Alan Thicke, Pat Sajak, Joan Rivers, Rick Dees, David Frost and not all that many others. A couple of those shows would have failed even if they'd only been opposite a test pattern. Carson's rep probably scared off a lot of contenders who might otherwise have gone against him...but one reason he achieved a shade over thirty years was simply a lack of competition.

What was amazing about Carson was his dedication to keeping The Tonight Show fresh and funny. I got to see Johnny backstage a few times and you could almost see the perspiration. Long after audiences fell madly in love with him, Mr. Carson declined to coast. He worked just as hard on his last shows as he probably had on his first. Before each taping, Carson was a mass of nerves. I will never forget seeing him make that walk from his dressing room/office down to the stage to go on. The times I saw him, he was accompanied by his director, Bobby Quinn, and a uniformed Burbank police officer. It was verboten to interrupt Johnny, and you wouldn't have dared anyway, just from the tension that surrounded him. Quinn would hold his hand, almost literally, assuring him everything was in order, that the audience was "hot," that there was no reason to be nervous. Then, at the appropriate moment, Quinn would not only cue Johnny through the curtain but practically shove him out there to do the monologue. Hard to believe Johnny Carson, about to appear before an audience that adored him, was nervous...but he was.

As Carson, Quinn and the bodyguard walked down to the stage, you could hear Ed McMahon concluding the warm-up and Doc Severinsen cuing up the theme song. They were neither thirty seconds too early or too late: Carson had the timing down to a science. But then, he always did, on-camera and off. He sensed when it was right to cut Tonight from its original 115 minute length to 90 minutes and then to 60. He knew when it was time to move the show from New York to Hollywood. He knew when it was time to stop inviting certain guests or to stop making jokes on certain topics. He even knew the precise moment to retire...while he was still a legend and not one in decline.

Carson's monologues were the most amazing marathon in the history of television comedy. Night after night, he went out there with totally untested material, much of it topical to the extreme. He had an almost-unerring knack for judging what would work and for "saving" the moment when it did not. He also had the skill to make almost any interview work, even when the person in the guest chair was tongue-tied or (worse) full of themselves and hell-bent on plugging some current endeavor.

It's also easy to forget that Johnny was a comedian. He didn't need to do all those "Mighty Carson Art Players" sketches on his show but — and this gets back to that willingness to work hard — he did them. For several years, the first one of each year would be an interview with "The New Year's Baby," and Johnny could fill either role. Some years, Ed McMahon would be the interviewer and Johnny would come out in a diaper and play the kid. Other years, Johnny would interview and they'd have writer-performer Pat McCormack in the bonnet and Pampers. I always thought one of the secrets of Johnny's longevity was that he was one of the few comics who could play Abbott or, when necessary, play Costello. That was also a key skill he demonstrated in the interviews. If the guest was funny, Johnny could work straight and set the other guy up for the laughs. If the guest wasn't funny, he could slide effortlessly into the other role. Most of those who have hosted talk shows can do one but not the other, and some aren't even willing to not be the funny one. All Johnny cared about was that the show was entertaining. If people went to bed chuckling at the guest, not at him, that was just fine.

I met Carson three times, I think, plus he called me once on the phone after his retirement to thank me for some information I'd relayed to his secretary. He was always disarmingly gracious. People called him cold and impersonal off-camera, but I think that was a bum rap. He simply could not be friendly with all the people who wanted to be his buddy and, like many performers, coped with the onslaught by erecting fences. One of his associates told me that post-abdication, Johnny became a much happier and friendlier person because he was no longer suspicious that everyone he met was angling to get something out of him, especially a Tonight Show appearance. When I heard that, my admiration for the guy went up another notch. It was more important to him to be at peace than to hear applause.

This is all just off the top of my head. I'll post more later.

• Posted at 12:06 PM · LINK

Johnny Carson, R.I.P.

They once asked him what he'd like his epitath to be. He said, "I'll be right back."

Sadly, that's not likely to happen...nor will anyone else probably ever dominate one corner of television the way Johnny Carson did. I'll post some more thoughts later today.

• Posted at 10:56 AM · LINK

Just a Doll, a Girl and a Dragon

I cribbed this link from Jerry Beck over at Cartoon Brew but it's too good not to spread. Not only does Scrappy now have his own website but there's an entire site devoted to the legendary TV kids' show, Kukla, Fran and Ollie. It has pictures and clips and info and...oh, just go there and see for yourself.

It also has a clip of one of the "hand ballets" that the show's puppeteer, Burr Tillstrom, performed on the NBC TV show, That Was the Week That Was. He did several but the one about the Berlin Wall was the most famous...and you have to wonder: If you walked into one of the major networks today and said, "I want to do a political commentary piece that will only show my hands acting as puppets," exactly how far do you think they'd drop-kick you out of the industry? But someone let Tillstrom do it back then, and it was amazingly effective and entertaining. I wish someone would dig out the old episodes of TW3, as it was usually abbreviated, and put them out on DVD. The series was full of wonderful moments like that one.

• Posted at 12:10 AM · LINK