Joan Rivers and Johnny Carson: It Was Complicated

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Joan Rivers, who died a few months ago, was never my favorite. I know many people who thought she was funny. I didn't.

But a lot of people did.

And they thought so long before she made her first appearance with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show 50 years ago today. In the '50s, she was on the stage. Her first role, as I understand it, was as a lesbian who was infatuated with a character played by Barbra Streisand. She appeared in New York comedy clubs in the early '60s and got a gig writing for Candid Camera — where, thanks to her relative anonymity up to that point, she was both a gag writer and an on–camera participant, luring the unsuspecting into bizarre situations.

She spent some time in front of the camera as well as behind it. When she appeared with Carson 50 years ago tonight, it was not her first time on the Tonight Show. She had been on the program when it was hosted by Jack Paar.

Rivers had lots of irons in the fire, as the saying goes, which was how she lived her life. She was always involved in several projects at once. In the '60s, she also appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, and she had a part in a movie with Burt Lancaster. For awhile, she even had her own daytime talk show on TV. She had several shows, in fact.

But it was her appearance with Carson that changed the trajectory of her life. He was one of those who thought Rivers was funny, and she made many appearances on his show over the next 18 years — until Carson named her the permanent "guest host" of the show.

Carson was unique in many ways, but one of the most remarkable (I always thought) was the fact that, even when he took time off, he believed his audience deserved fresh material. He refused to run a rerun of one of his old shows. Instead, he would have a "guest host" fill in while he was gone. (Carson always went to England for two weeks in the summer to attend the Wimbledon tennis tournament so that was the plum assignment for an up–and–coming comedian.)

Some of Hollywood's most talented people filled in for Carson over the years, and Rivers did her share. It was a floating assignment, and regular viewers got to see a wide assortment of talent sitting behind Carson's desk whenever he was taking time off. But by August '83, Carson was ready to name Rivers his permanent guest host. That was as good as making her his heir apparent.

But that wasn't how it played out. The Fox Television Network, which was about to go on the air, offered Rivers her own late night talk show. She accepted, and Fox announced it before she could speak to Carson. When she did, she said, Carson hung up on her.

I don't know if that is how it happened or not. I don't know if Rivers wanted to speak to Carson first. If she did, she should have said something to Fox executives and asked them to withhold any statement until she confirmed that she had spoken to Carson. Perhaps she wanted to approach it as her asking for career advice from Carson or perhaps seeking his blessing instead presenting it as a done deal in which he had not been consulted.

Of course, if the Fox executives told her they would keep quiet and then spilled the beans, it was Fox's fault.

However it happened, I know that Carson and Rivers had no relationship in public — or, apparently, in private — after that. According to Rivers, he never spoke to her again.

But it all began 50 years ago tonight when Rivers made her first appearance with Carson on the Tonight Show.

Comfort Food for the Soul

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"It was so hot today that Burger King was singing, 'If you want it your way, cook it yourself.'"

Johnny Carson, 1977

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It was 10 years ago today that Johnny Carson died.

And it's been almost 23 years since his last Tonight Show.

Time goes by too fast. Didn't I watch Carson just last night on the Tonight Show? He did another one of his hilarious Carnac the Magnificent routines, followed by a visit from George Carlin and those wonderful animals who visited from southern California zoos.

The Carson show was like the embodiment of Mother Gump's truism. It truly was like a box of chocolates. You never knew what you were going to get. The only thing you could be sure of — about 99% of the time — was that it would be satisfying in that way that comfort food is.

That's what Carson was — comfort food for the soul. If you were going through a rough patch, if you were anxious and couldn't sleep, you could switch on the Carson show, and it was like a visit from an old friend. When the show was over, your anxiety would be gone, and you could sleep through the night. Honest.

One of the things I admired most about Carson was how he interviewed the guests on his show. He understood what all great interviewers have understood — that the best interviews are the ones where the interviewer says very little.

That's easier said than done. I have conducted enough interviews in my life to know that sometimes you have to interview people who don't like to talk. I guess the assumption is that, because of the nature of their line of work, entertainers never tire of talking about themselves. I'm sure that is the case with some, perhaps many, but, in a TV career that spanned 30 years, Carson must have encountered celebrities who were reluctant to talk. Offhand I can't remember any.

That is an indication of how good Carson was. Even with the difficult interview subjects, he made it look easy — so easy that, even after you watch video clips from his Tonight Show career, you can't be sure that any of his subjects were difficult.

But there had to be some. There must have been, human nature being what it is.

Carson was always secure with himself and his talents. Each year, he tended to take off for a couple of weeks to go to England to watch the Wimbledon tournament. Whenever he went on vacation, he arranged for guest hosts to fill in for him. He never ran a repeat of an earlier show. He felt his audience deserved fresh material so, even though he wasn't there, he arranged for someone with talent to fill in for him.

He was always missed when he went on vacation, but people still tuned in because they knew Johnny would leave them in capable hands. Jay Leno was a guest host on the Carson show. So were George Carlin, David Brenner, Richard Belzer, Flip Wilson and Joan Rivers and many others.

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It seemed to me that Carson filled the void that was left by the cancellation of the Ed Sullivan Show. Carson and Sullivan co–existed on network television for several years, and my impression, even though I was quite young and we didn't have a TV until I was in elementary school, was that Sullivan continued to be the guy who brought fresh, new talent to the American public. He was the one who gave America its first exposure to Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Carson, meanwhile, tended to stick with the tried and true.

That changed after Sullivan's show was canceled.

Carson probably never had the same kind of impact on American culture that Sullivan did. He didn't introduce the public to anyone who became as influential as Elvis or the Fab Four, but he still did his part to give Americans that exposure to up and coming talent.

We're brought up with the knowledge — the expectation — that everything dies. Some folks decide that, for whatever reason, they will be the exception to that natural law, but we know that, when all is said and done, no one will escape death. We cannot prove that everyone will die because clearly there are billions of living people on the planet. But there must have been billions who came before us in all of human history, and we know that, with the exception of a few people who were born around the start of the 20th century, all have died. Whatever your religious beliefs may be, that is an eternal truth. It passes no judgment on whether there is an afterlife.

If there is an afterlife, though, I hope Johnny Carson is hosting some sort of program to entertain the residents of heaven. If anyone deserves the best, it's the souls in heaven.

And Carson was the best.

Johnny's Farewell

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"I am one of the lucky people in the world; I found something I always wanted to do, and I have enjoyed every single minute of it."

Johnny Carson
May 22, 1992

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Was that really two whole decades ago?

Twenty years ago tonight, Johnny Carson appeared in his final Tonight Show.

As I mentioned yesterday, his final show was unlike any of the others he had done from 1962 to 1992. The audience included only family and friends — his and the rest of the crew's — and there were no guests, only clips of memorable moments on the Tonight Show.

In the course of that evening, viewers saw clips of great comedians and great musicians who had appeared on the Tonight Show over the years. They saw the famous and the powerful, politicians who became president and who sought to be president.

And they saw people they had never heard of before they were given a few minutes of national exposure, thanks to Carson.

Carson was kind of his generation's Ed Sullivan — but he did it five nights a week (except when he took his annual vacation to the Wimbledon tennis tournament), not one.

Twenty years ago tonight, the audience applauded when particularly beloved (and, often, departed) guests, like Lucille Ball and Judy Garland, were shown in those highlight clips.

The memories were thick that night, whether they were actually shown or were only in the viewers' memory banks.

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I thought of many moments when I watched that last show. Most people probably did. Johnny Carson was unique in entertainment. Even 20 years later, after so many have tried so hard to duplicate what he seemed to do so effortlessly, I can say that.

He was always a reflection of the times, whether it was through jokes he made in his monologue or his recurring routines as Carnac the Magnificent or Aunt Blabby or Floyd R. Turbo, American.

For awhile, at least some of the Tonight Show's commercials were done by Carson or his sidekick Ed McMahon, and there were times when they had to bail each other out in some way.

A memorable example was the time when McMahon was trying to do an advertisement for Alpo, but the dog who was supposed to scarf up the dog food didn't cooperate — and it fell to Carson to take his place.

And everyone in America was moved when Carson made his parting remarks:

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When he was finished, the cameras panned the applauding audience, and the band played one of Carson's favorite tunes, "I'll Be Seeing You." It seemed appropriate.

Like most people, I figured we would get to see him again. But, even though he spoke, in those final remarks, of perhaps returning to TV when he had a project of some kind that he wanted to share with the viewers, he only made one more TV appearance of which I am aware — a very brief (and wordless) one on David Letterman's show.

It was over.

And now, it's been 20 years since his last Tonight Show.

My heart tells me it can't possibly have been that long ... but my head tells me that, yes, it is true.

A Dog Named Beau

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Thirty years ago tonight, the world was anticipating the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in a matter of hours.

And, in fact, an estimated audience of three–quarters of a billion people the world over tuned in to watch Charles and Diana's wedding. Millions of those viewers were Americans who got up early — or stayed up very late, if they were on the West Coast or in Hawaii — to watch the ceremony.

I must admit now, I was one of those people who got up early to watch the proceedings from London. It was a memorable sight, a "fairytale wedding," said some, the "wedding of the century," said others.

Yes, sir, it was a memorable moment — but it wasn't the only one.

I was a bit more blurry–eyed that morning than I had expected to be, even with the alarm going off at around 4 a.m. I had had every intention of getting to bed earlier than usual the night before, but then I heard that actor Jimmy Stewart would be a guest on The Tonight Show the night before the wedding — and I decided I had to stay up long enough to see that.

American TV viewers had a different kind of memorable moment when Stewart, mostly retired by that point, recited a poem he had written in tribute to his deceased golden retriever, Beau.

When he finished, there couldn't have been a dry eye in the studio — or in America. Certainly, there wasn't a dry eye among those viewers who had ever loved a dog.

The poem probably was, as Carson's sidekick, Ed McMahon, later recalled, "forgettable." Stewart had a folksy style that was endearing in its way, but the words of his poems were far from profound, and it isn't likely that you would find any of them in an anthology of great literary works.

"[B]ut Johnny was moved by the way Jimmy Stewart delivered it," McMahon wrote. "Jimmy was a blend of great actor and great person. Both Johnny and I were in tears. Just a couple of maudlin mutt mourners."

They weren't alone.

I think the truth is that Stewart was just being himself, the same guy he had always been. He just didn't know any other way to be.

"I've always been skeptical of people who say they lose themselves in a part," Stewart said once. "Someone once came up to Spencer Tracy and asked, 'Aren't you tired of always playing Tracy?' Tracy replied, 'What am I supposed to do, play Bogart?' You have to develop a style that suits you and pursue it, not just develop a bag of tricks."

What America saw on The Tonight Show 30 years ago tonight was no bag of tricks.

It was Jimmy Stewart being himself — the same guy who once threw tennis balls to Beau and stroked Beau's head when he climbed into Stewart's bed.

And that was a priceless gift.

So, too, is the memory of watching two of the truly gentle gentlemen — Stewart and Carson — together.

Animal Crackers

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The other day, with all the Jay Leno–Conan O'Brien stuff in the news, I wrote about my yearning for the days when Johnny Carson was the king of late night.

I didn't realize, when I wrote that, how timely it was. In fact, I didn't realize it until today, when I discovered that yesterday was the fifth anniversary of Carson's death.

Actually, it's been even longer since Carson left The Tonight Show. He retired in May 1992. For anyone who grew up with Carson, it is astonishing to believe he has been gone from our TV screens nearly 18 years.

At the risk of sounding like someone in the grip of "Good Old Days Syndrome," as I have heard it described, Carson was the best. Perhaps this is the most accurate barometer: You could never tell from watching him on his show how intensely private he was. I've heard it said that Ed McMahon, Carson's sidekick, referred to him as "the most private public man who ever lived."

And if anyone would know, it would be Ed McMahon.

Carson made it look so easy. That is something people with talent tend to do. They make difficult things look easy. You see them doing whatever it is that comes naturally to them, and you think to yourself, "I could do that!" And then, when you try, you suddenly discover how much effort is required to make something difficult look so effortless.

Dennis Miller touched on this very thing not long after Carson died. He was a guest on The Tonight Show, and he was telling Leno about how poorly he had done the first time he hosted a talk show. When the show was over, he received a call from Carson, who told him, "It's not as easy as it looks, is it, kid?"

Missing Johnny

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The recent Jay Leno–Conan O'Brien flap has made me more nostalgic than usual for the days when Johnny Carson was the host of The Tonight Show.

If you're too young to remember Johnny Carson, you have my sympathy. You missed what was truly a golden age for television. Frankly, I don't think either Jay or Conan is very funny, and The Tonight Show was never as good after Johnny retired. It's probably been 16 or 17 years since I've watched it.

But Johnny was different. It was one of the indisputable signs that I was growing up that my parents agreed to let me stay up to watch The Tonight Show occasionally. But even when I got into high school, it wasn't the sort of thing they let me do every night, so, when I moved on to college and I was living in the dorm, there were few things that made me feel as grown up as being able to watch Carson whenever I wanted.

Carson continued to define that feeling of freedom for me. And it was constant. I probably moved five or six times before Carson retired, and every place I lived, I could switch on my TV on a weeknight and see the familiar face and hear the familiar voice of Johnny Carson. I was home.

It reminds me of a lady who knew my parents. After they retired, she and her husband traveled around in an RV, visiting their children and grandchildren — and old friends, like my parents. Once, when they were visiting, I was in the RV with my mother and her friend, who was showing us the window sill over her sink, which was filled with doodads — salt and pepper shakers, a small figurine of a bird, a framed picture of one of her grandchildren.

"Everywhere I go," she said, "I make my little home."

That was what Carson's presence did for me. It made my little home. It was reassuring, like being able to see Walter Cronkite deliver the news of the day.

How could NBC get me back as a viewer? Start running reruns of the old Carson shows in the slot that is currently being given to The Tonight Show. I would stay up and watch those.

Leno Calls it a Night

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Jay Leno wrapped up 17 years of hosting "The Tonight Show" last night.

I don't know what the ratings were, but I didn't watch the show — in part because I just never embraced Leno as the host after Johnny Carson left in 1992, and I just never watched the show but also because I know that this isn't the end for Leno. He'll be back in the fall — in prime time.

I suppose it's a milestone for young viewers who have no memory of the days when Carson was the undisputed king of late night TV. But expecting someone like me, who remembers TV's really significant final acts — like the final episode of "M*A*S*H" or Carson's last "Tonight Show" after three decades — to get choked up about Leno's last show is as unrealistic as expecting me to get worked up about the last episode of "Friends." I know it means something to some people. It just doesn't mean anything to me.

I wish Leno well. But, honestly, how does his final show compare with Carson's?

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See what I mean?