Who Was Johnny Carson, Really? A Look Into America’s King of Late Night

00:00:10
Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people, coming to you from the city where the West begins, Fort Worth, Texas. Johnny Carson aficionado Mark Malcoff has amassed more Carson stories from original sources than anyone in entertainment history. And now, in his book “In Love with Johnny Carson,” he sets the record straight of Carson’s life, career, legacy, and character. Let’s take a listen, and now, ladies and gentlemen, he.

00:00:47
Speaker 2: Johnny. Johnny Carson, for thirty years, was the most famous man in America, maybe after the President, certainly the most recognizable. He dominated popular American culture for decades. People would tune in to get Carson’s take on what was going on in the day. I do not know any better time capsule of thirty years, from nineteen sixty-two to nineteen ninety-two, on what the fashion was, the politics, what was socially acceptable, who was famous in everything from athletics to fashion to sports. This is a man who, if he set a book on air, it could be a bestseller the next day. He mattered to people. Johnny Carson grew up in Nebraska, and he was this Midwestern man, and even though he was one of the highest-paid people in Hollywood, the Nebraska never left him. He was a very polite Midwest gentleman. And it showed.

00:01:47
Speaker 3: The Midwest, kind of a normal—I guess what you’d call a normal upbringing, you know, the part of the country. My folks were supporting what I wanted to do.

00:01:55
Speaker 4: Did you always know what you wanted to do?

00:01:56
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, at the very beginning. Oh, sure.

00:01:58
Speaker 5: How old?

00:01:59
Speaker 3: Want used to have been a mine? Twelve, thirteen years old, and I knew I wanted to entertain.

00:02:03
Speaker 6: You liked the attention?

00:02:04
Speaker 7: Oh, sure. But why, why you? I mean, why at age twelve or thirteen?

00:02:10
Speaker 3: Because I was at a play or something, and I got up and I did something, and people laughed, and all of a sudden, you say, “Hey, that sounds pretty good.” So it makes you the center of attention.

00:02:20
Speaker 4: Yes, but why did you want to do attention?

00:02:24
Speaker 7: Why did you want?

00:02:26
Speaker 3: Why did I want the attention? Because I was shy.

00:02:29
Speaker 7: Oh?

00:02:29
Speaker 3: Because I was shy. Oh, that sounds like an ambivalence, right? No. On stage, you see, when you’re on stage in front of an audience, you are kind of in control. When you’re off of the stage or in a situation where a lot of people, you’re not in control. And I felt awkward. So I went into show business, thinking it would give me a little more. I could overcome that shyness.

00:02:47
Speaker 4: Where do you think the shyness emanated from?

00:02:50
Speaker 2: I bought it in Chicago.

00:02:51
Speaker 6: I don’t know.

00:02:54
Speaker 2: The one thing, talking about Johnny Carson, the most successful late-night host in the history of the medium, consistently, that people would tell me is that the people that knew him very well that he was the same Johnny on and off camera, which was very surprising because the media made him out to be very cold and aloof, and Johnny Carson was this very funny, polite person.

00:03:15
Speaker 7: John’m a downd or a fellow.

00:03:17
Speaker 3: Just wants you to know that. As a matter of fact, today I got out the old hammock, went out, climbed in, and laid there for a couple hours, sipping a lemonade. And then I went back, and my two butlers were getting tired holding.

00:03:27
Speaker 2: Up the hammock. People would tell me that, you know, Mark, Johnny Carson, he would be out in public, and people would literally grab him by the arm because he was on five nights a week and say, “Johnny, come meet my husband, come meet whoever,” and the man just could not get any rest.

00:03:47
Speaker 3: I think you have to give up a certain amount of your freedom, of your privacy in this business. It’s a funny thing. It’s a paradox when you’re first starting. That’s what you want: you want to be well known, you want to be successful. And part of being successful, I suppose, in the entertainment business, is being recognized and people coming up to you. And then after a while, you realize that you pay a certain amount for that, especially with children, if you have kids and you go someplace. I remember once we went to ice skating at a Rockefeller Center, and I thought, you, that would be fun. Turned out that it wasn’t fun at all.

00:04:16
Speaker 2: Johnny started performing magic when he was fourteen years old in Nebraska, and he really did struggle for compliments from his mother.

00:04:25
Speaker 3: No matter how important you think you are or how much pressure you get, mothers, especially, are always able to kind of level it real good. Remember, I got the Governor’s Award in the Television Academy in nineteen eighty, and I called my mother and I said, “Mom, they’re giving me the Governor’s Award. You know, it’s for your body of work in the television industry.” And my mother said, “I guess they know what they’re doing.”

00:04:52
Speaker 2: Back then, in the Midwest, at least, it was very common for parents to compliment their kids to their friends or family, but they didn’t want to give their kids swelled heads. They set her egos.

00:05:02
Speaker 3: Thank you. You really should stop applauding because you’ll give me a big head. And no, then my crown won’t fit anymore.

00:05:11
Speaker 2: So a lot of times they just would not praise their kids.

00:05:14
Speaker 3: You’re always raised as a kid, you know, that she should be modest. But unfortunately, in the entertainment business, that does not work if you don’t have a certain amount of ego. Now, that doesn’t mean cock sure inness. It means a confidence in your own ability, that I know what I do, I do it well, and when I walk in front of an audience, I know that I am good. If you don’t have that attitude, shouldn’t be out there.

00:05:36
Speaker 2: Johnny started doing magic, and that was the one thing that he felt his mom was proud of. You would entertain Ruth Cars and his mom her clubs and her groups, and he said it felt amazing to make my mother proud. Because Johnny Carson had a brother, Dick, and made a sister, Catherine, and two of Johnny Carson’s wives said that Ruth Carson did not like boys. It was very clear that she loved Catherine more than Dick and Johnny. And Johnny, throughout those teen years doing magic and even doing The Tonight Show, part of the reason that really drove him was to get the compliments and try to find love from his mother.

00:06:11
Speaker 3: I took up magic when I was young. Yeah, because I was somewhat shy and within myself. I thought her that would be a good way to go to parties. When I read those ads, you know: “Be the life of the party and get girls.” Mainly, I got it. I did it to get girls. Neither one worked well, but lots of people do that. They’d like to get up and perform. You can be the center of attention without being yourself.

00:06:31
Speaker 2: His mother would watch The Tonight Show every single night. She would compliment him again in interviews, but never to his face. But the myth became that she said that she did not find her son funny, which was not true. But Johnny was very hurt that that was the myth that was put out there: that she did not find her son funny.

00:06:53
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Mark Malcoff, and he’s the author of “In Love with Johnny Carson: One Obsessive Fan’s Journey to Find the Genie Behind the Legend,” and we’re doing just that. He’s explaining and telling the story of so much of what made Carson Carson, from his Midwest upbringing to all that time spent in magic—a.

00:07:58
Speaker 8: Eden here.

00:08:08
Speaker 1: And we continue with Our American Stories and the story of Johnny Carson, as told by author Mark Malcoff. Let’s pick up where we last left off.

00:08:21
Speaker 2: After a few years of Johnny doing The Tonight Show, he became responsible for twenty-five percent of all of NBC’s profits. He was the biggest star in television. And this is somebody who turned down the job numerous times. The gentleman who hosted The Tonight Show previously before him was Jack part, and Jack Parter was known for being controversial, for being very weepy on camera, just very emotional. And Johnny and everyone else in the entertainment said, “Nobody can replace this guy.” And it was Johnny’s wife, Joanne, who was the one that orchestrated everything behind the scenes.

00:08:55
Speaker 2: One of Johnny’s producers, Peter Lesally, told me Johnny had no idea that his wife was running the show behind the scenes. She was hiring producers for The Tonight Show, firing, and she is the one behind Johnny’s back. They got two NBC executives to show up to a Friars Club Rose where Johnny was performing and orchestrated him being offered The Tonight Show.

00:09:22
Speaker 2: He turned it down, and Joann to him out to dinner to a restaurant in New York City, Danny’s Hideaway, and she said, “I know you can do this, Johnny, I know you can do this.”

00:09:33
Speaker 2: And he said, “Nobody knows this, but the game show that I host, ‘Who Do You Trust’,” which was on ABC.

00:09:36
Speaker 5: Now.

00:09:36
Speaker 7: You may not, you know, you may not realize this, but every move you make, your delivery, every little inflection that you have, is exactly the way I work. And I don’t think it’s fair.

00:09:51
Speaker 2: And he said, “I don’t think I can do an hour and forty-five minutes,” and she said, “Won’t work as a team.” He finally said yes.

00:10:00
Speaker 2: And for two years, the rumors were that Jack Parr and Murk Griffin was going to replace Johnny. Newspapers and even viewers would write end and said, “We missed Jack Parr. Where’s the controversy?” And Johnny said, “I am going to do an entertainment show.”

00:10:18
Speaker 2: People at eleven-thirty, eleven o’clock, are going to sleep with me. They want an entertainment show. And he never deviated. The Jack Parr program was quite controversial.

00:10:27
Speaker 3: Why did you change the format? What was your reason for that? I think shows that have gone in just for controversy. To bring on the two people with opposing views is very easy night after night. It’s easier to do that kind of a show than it is to get last.

00:10:38
Speaker 2: And after about two years, people started to catch on, and before he knew it, two years in, he breaks Judy Garland’s nightclub record in Las Vegas, the Sahhara Hotel, and is one of the highest-paid performers in Las Vegas. Johnny is booking every big star on The Tonight Show.

00:11:10
Speaker 3: I simply believe, when a man is well dressed, you just aren’t aware of his clothes. I wear the suit; it doesn’t wear me. If you agree with this philosophy, I’d like you to take a look at the totally coordinated Johnny Carson collection for spring.

00:11:25
Speaker 2: He starts wearing turtlenecks on the air. Suddenly, everybody in popular culture is wearing turtlenecks because of this man, Johnny Carson.

00:11:33
Speaker 2: Johnny said, especially in the sixties, that all he would thick about is the show, and that was one of his flaws, was being overly competitive. In nineteen seventy-one, he was living at The Un Plaza Bilited. His neighbors were Robert F. Kennedy and Truman Capoti, and Johnny at eleven-thirty in nineteen seventy-one had four TVs right next to each other in his home. At eleven-thirty, he’d be watching himself, The Dick Habot Show, David Frost’s TV show, and then, I believe, it was either Merv Griffin or Joey Bishop.

00:12:09
Speaker 2: There was never a more competitive individual in the history of the medium. He was torn in nineteen seventy, the year before, because he has all this competition. Dick Havevitz, ten years younger than him. This other gentleman, David Frost, was fourteen years younger than him, and his girlfriend at the time, who became his third wife, convinced him to stop dyeing his hair so he was looking older.

00:12:31
Speaker 2: And his mom, Ruth, who he revered, said, “You are looking so old,” and Johnny didn’t know what to do. So, he faked hepatitis in nineteen seventy, told everyone that he had hepatitis, had to go to the hospital when he was actually getting eye cosmetic surgery from the most famous plastic surgeon in Manhattan, Doctor Tom Reese, and Johnny was horrified when he learned that hepatitis is contagious.

00:13:00
Speaker 2: So everybody at NBC on the staff had to get a painful Gamma Goblin shot. Over two hundred people—guests like Tony Randall and all these famous people that had been on the show, owned the last couple of weeks—had to come in and get shots.

00:13:20
Speaker 2: But then you had people that weren’t even around Carson, that were in NBC Vice President’s employees, that weren’t even around Carson, that wanted the shots so they could brag to their friends that the most famous man in America, that they had proximity next to him.

00:13:36
Speaker 2: So they were getting shots, and it became this right of passage that they could brag to their friends, “You know, I have this shot because I know Johnny Carson.” But everyone did want to know Johnny, and watching him, people really felt that they know him. They would write Johnny letters, they would call up the show and ask to talk to him. They really, during very dark times, thought of him as a friend. Come home at night, turn on the TV, you just want to have a laugh.

00:13:59
Speaker 3: He never brought you down to, “Oh, he is what’s going on. All my life was horrible.”

00:14:00
Speaker 2: He always elevated everybody up, and I think that was the key: you felt good after watching the show.

00:14:09
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty-eight, you have Martin Luther King, who was assassinated. You have Johnny’s neighbor, Robert F. Kennedy, who was good friends with Johnny, who was assassinated, who would come to Johnny’s all this, and they would—they would spend time together, and you have this really dark time with Vietnam, and Johnny every single night was the one thing that was consistent. After the news, the depressing news, you could escape with Johnny. You never knew Johnny’s politics.

00:14:19
Speaker 7: Johnny would come out and equally make fun of everybody and never questioned anybody’s patriotism.

00:14:21
Speaker 2: It was always about what they said or did.

00:14:24
Speaker 3: Do you get sensitive about the fact that people say he’ll never take a serious controversy? Well, I have an answer to that. I said, “No. Tell me the last time that Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Benny, comedian, used his show to do serious issues?”

00:14:40
Speaker 7: That’s not what I’m there for. Can’t they see that?

00:14:44
Speaker 3: But you and I do.

00:14:44
Speaker 3: They think that just because you have The Tonight Show, that you must deal in serious issues. That’s a danger. It’s a real danger. Once you start that, you start to forget that self-important feeling. That’s what you say has great import. And, you know, strangely enough, you could use that show as a form; you could sway people, and I don’t think you should as an entertainer.

00:15:05
Speaker 7: In fact, in thirty years, you’d be hard-pressed to guess who Johnny ever voted for.

00:15:10
Speaker 3: And that’s the way it should be.

00:15:11
Speaker 2: Why alien ate half your audience every presidential administration? They thought that Johnny was biased against them. Jimmy Carter’s mom did not like Johnny’s jokes and was upset until she finally went on the show and met him and thought he was very charming and changed his opinion. Nancy Reagan called the show twice when Ronald Reagan was President. The first time she was upset. She said, “My husband, Ronnie, does not dye his hair.”

00:15:38
Speaker 2: So Johnny went on the next night and said, “I just want to let everyone know Ronald Reagan, our President, does not dye his hair, but he does bleach his face.”

00:15:44
Speaker 3: I mean, that’s not… How do you balance the budget? Well, balancing the budget is like protecting: you don’t spend more than you take in, right? It’s like protecting your virtue.

00:15:51
Speaker 4: You have to learn to say no.

00:15:57
Speaker 2: So Johnny, when he was seventeen, after he graduated High scho, he hitchhiked to Los Angeles. The first thing he did was by a map where all the famous stars lived, and he went to Jack Benny’s house. Jack Benny was his heros comedian, and waited for Jack Benny to come out of his house, which he didn’t do. And then Johnny went to the Navy. He had enlisted, but he wasn’t officially a member of the Navy. So he bought a uniform, and he dressed up, and he snuck into the USO shows and got to see Orson Wells do magic. He danced with Marlene and at Dietrich. He saw Rita Hayworth, and he was promptly arrested and charged. I think he had to pay fifty dollars bond. He had his aunt and uncle bail him out, but he was impersonated an officer.

00:16:34
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Mark Malcoff, and he’s the author of “In Love with Johnny Carson: One Obsessive Fan’s Journey to Find the Genius Behind the Legend,” and we’re doing just that. He’s explaining and telling the story of so much of what made Carson Carson, from his Midwest upbringing to all that time spent in magic—a.