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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
As celebrities would later guest-host his show, Carson occasionally filled in for Jack Paar on "The Tonight Show," and when Paar left in 1962 Carson slipped into the slot, bringing McMahon along. A longtime jazz fan and sometime drummer, Carson retained Paar's house band, led by Skitch Henderson and featuring a young trumpet player named Doc Severinsen.
For the next three decades Carson crafted a 90-minute nightly cavalcade of sketches and guests that, although shot in New York and Burbank (after 1972), was most accessible to the unwashed masses between the coasts. His studio audiences were primarily tourists from the Midwest, and his writers injected this WASPish heartland flavor throughout every element of the show: a scorn for the pretentious, an appreciation for funny animals and strange eccentrics and a cosmic shrug about the inevitability of taxes, ex-wives and hangovers. The result was hundreds of moments that have become engrained in our psyche:
The segment in which Ed Ames threw a tomahawk at an outline of a human target, the hatchet stuck handle up in the crotch and Johnny ad-libbed, "I didn't even know you were Jewish." The Dragnet-style "Copper Clappers" wordplay bit, with a straight-faced Jack Webb. The scared marmoset that crawled onto Johnny's head and peed on him. The near-masochistic recycling of ukulele oddball Tiny Tim, staging his on-air wedding for 50 million viewers. The actor Jimmy Stewart tearing up while reading a poem about his dog. A man who rendered the national anthem by making flatulent noises with his hands. The winners of a bird-call competition. A loaded Dean Martin secretly tipping cigarette ashes into the cocktail of an oblivious George Gobel. An eccentric old lady who presented her beloved collection of potato chips shaped like faces of celebrities -- when Carson munched blithely on a chip, the woman nearly had a coronary, until he revealed a separate bag behind the desk.
Carson exploited politics, but only for quick one-liners, or to give room for his credible Ronald Reagan impression. The show was never about him, it was about the world he beheld. When he invited guests to come on the show, he listened with curiosity, took them seriously, and the audience followed his cue. Critic Kenneth Tynan profiled him for the New Yorker in 1978, and observed, "It is only fair to remember that he does not pretend to be a pundit, employed to express his own opinions. Rather, he is a professional explorer of other people's egos."
Carson had a soft spot for comedians, from insult king Don Rickles, to his idol Jack Benny, to ponytailed George Carlin, who gave America its first taste of network dope humor. Sweating young comics experienced their show-biz debut via Carson -- among them Jerry Seinfeld, Roseanne Barr, Jay Leno and David Letterman -- anxiously awaiting the "Good stuff!" comment of approval, or even better, the wave to come over and sit down.
Some moments never made the greatest hits clips. One night the material bombed so badly, Carson lit the pages on fire and solemnly tossed them into a wastebasket, accompanied by Severinsen playing "Taps." In 1974, a fat cigar-chomping man carrying a cocktail streaked nude across the set of the show, forcing NBC censors to black out the lower half of the screen; the streaker was arrested and later released, said Carson, for "lack of evidence." A newly successful Eddie Murphy was asked if he enjoyed buying things with his Hollywood money, and he answered mockingly with a blackface accent: "Hey Amos, get a loada that coat -- that's a mighty big watch there." An obviously unhip Carson watched helplessly as Murphy then invited his friend from backstage to come out and do an impression of Prince.
"Tonight Show" guests developed a reputation just for their appearances. A maniacal Mel Brooks ran amok for an entire program, bumping all scheduled guests. Comedian Buddy Hackett spent 15 minutes telling one anecdote about a corned beef sandwich. A seemingly irritable Charles Grodin purposely disagreed with everything Johnny said. Albert Brooks did celebrity impressions while eating various foods. Flamenco guitarist/sexpot Charo was perennially asked back to dance the "hootchie cootchie." A fully made-up Alice Cooper politely drank a can of Budweiser during his interviews. Don Rickles once congratulated McMahon with sincerity upon his recent marriage, then turned to Johnny and barked, "I give it about a week, tops."
Carson hit his professional peak during the indulgent late '60s and early '70s. "The Tonight Show" was then firing on all cylinders, square enough to make Hollywood's old guard feel comfortable, yet hip enough to appropriate the party. The show swung right from the opening theme, when Carson parted the curtain and blinded viewers with a nightly arsenal of Nehru jackets, noisy-patterned sportcoats, and neckties the size of beaver tails. This was America's late-night cocktail lounge, the televised nephews of the original Rat Pack. Guests smoked and drank on camera without guile. Marriage was just a punchline, as gleaming medallions nestled in thatches of chest hair, braless breasts spilled out of dresses. Guests never chuckled -- laughter was accompanied by a thrown-back head, a fit of cigarette coughing, a spill of the bourbon. Carson frequently erupted in a loud cackle, sending him out of his chair. The show often returned after a commercial break to catch Johnny drumming with pencils along with the band, after which he would turn to Ed and joke about their bender the previous night, like a couple of tomcats on the town chasing skirts.
