Johnny Carson . .checks out . . sad ..

Grazie wrote on 1/23/2005, 11:38 AM
And its good night to you too Johnny . . . sad. Just heard on our C4 News .. . sad .. . I remember him and the Beatles .. . and way before with the Elvis thing!

G

Comments

beatnik wrote on 1/23/2005, 11:54 AM
I'm 40, I grew up watching him! He will be missed.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 1/23/2005, 12:59 PM
Wow, me and my Dad use to watch him every night. He was an incredible comedic talent and, like the members of the “rat pack”, defined an era in entertainment that simply doesn’t exist any more. Rest in peace Johnny.

~jr
mrjhands wrote on 1/23/2005, 2:31 PM
...and at some point later in his Tonight Show run, he began taking Fridays off and having guest hosts, and I remember watching the episode where John Lennon was in town and just popped in on a Friday show, expecting to and wanting to surprise JOHNNY, but alas, who was guest hosting that episode?...anyone remember who it was? (he totally botched a potentially landmark appearance and interview of Lennon) :-(

I miss you already Johnny
DGates wrote on 1/23/2005, 3:18 PM
Really sad.

It's interesting that he and Leno didn't have a friendship after he left the show. On Leno's first night of it being his own show, he never mentioned Carson. Now Leno's a nice guy, so who know's what went on.

When Carson did make a couple of apperances early on, they were on Letterman's show.
DavidMcKnight wrote on 1/23/2005, 6:10 PM
What I appreciated was the fact that he stayed completely out of the limelight when he retired. You heard nothing from or about him. Zip. Nada. Not that he wasn't missed.....I too am 40 and grew up watching him and all the great comics he introduced to the world.
p@mast3rs wrote on 1/23/2005, 6:35 PM
While I am not one to say bad things about someone who has passed, I personally never found his comedy very funny and even more annoying with old Ed always yucking it up. It is sad to see anyone pass on but I am sure he is in a better place. For everyone else that smokes, take heed and quit now.
riredale wrote on 1/23/2005, 8:08 PM
I loved watching him back in the 70's and 80's. He got a bit "long in the tooth" towards the end, and all the audience was moving over to Arsenio (remember him?) and Letterman. There was an article in the paper just recently that said that Carson years later still wrote the occasional joke, but he would always send them to Letterman, never to Leno.

There was a very funny skit on "Saturday Night Live" with Dana Carvey portraying Carson and Phil Hartman as Ed McMahon. The skit showed Carson as this friendly but utterly clueless guy, not realizing that his time in the limelight was over. A bit over the top, but still had some truth to it.

Anyway, Carson had more influence over the popular culture than most people realize. If you were the repeated butt of Carson's jokes he told during the monologue, you were in trouble, or a celebrity, or both.
boomhower wrote on 1/23/2005, 8:12 PM
mrjhands: The guest host was Joe Garagiola and he stunk up the joint

I remember watching Carson almost every night growing up....One of the greats. Every latenight host since has tried to be him in one way or the other. Zoo animals never had a chance to be on latenight until Johnny....

According to various reports, he actually continued to write a joke here and there for Letterman up until just recently. Makes you wonder what happened between he and Jay?? Who knows...

Also found it interesting that (according to Jerry Lewis) he evidently planned some of the bomb jokes during the monos since the audience really enjoyed the way he dealt with the stinkers.

He'll be missed.
BillyBoy wrote on 1/23/2005, 8:36 PM
The way I heard the "story" was that Carson wanted badly for Letterman to replace him as host of the Tonight show and his anger was more at NBC rather than Leno.
VegasVidKid wrote on 1/23/2005, 8:53 PM
He was a class act, although I have heard he was a bit of a control freak. Interesting, I haven't heard anything mentioned about Joan Rivers yet. She used to guest host for Johnny quite often, until she got a short-lived show up against him, on Fox, I believe. From that point on, the rumor is that he would not speak to her.
busterkeaton wrote on 1/23/2005, 10:40 PM
I remember during high school staying up too late to watch Letterman on his early shows. He was incredible. Carson was never that way for me. This probably a generational thing. I never got see Carson night in and night out in his prime. It's like seeing Letterman now. If you have only seen Letterman now, you don't understand how revolutionary he was. All of a sudden his sense of humor was everyone's sense of humor. It turned up in other shows, commericals, everywhere. Carson must have been like that for an earlier generation. Comedians don't tend to be reverent, but they were about him. There is simply no stage for a comedian today that compares to the first shot they got on the Tonight show. There is no equivalent.

There's a good behind-the-scenes book about the battle to replace Johnny Carson, The Late Shift. They made a TV movie out of it and HBO was showing it recently. I think Jay Leno never mentioned Johnny Carson when he took over The Tonight Show at his manager's urging. She is portrayed as out of control and crazy aggressive . Kathy Bates plays her in the movie. The book claims that without Leno's knowledge, she manufactured a campaign in the press to get Johnny Carson to retire early and was the source behind a really unflattering front-page story on Carson in the NY Post. When Leno first became the host of Tonight, it was kind of a temporary thing, the network figured they could still bring in Letterman. The network forced Leno to fire his manager as the producer of the Tonight show. When Leno finds out she was behind the anti-Carson campaigna and lied to him about it, he does fire her. The book also portrays Letterman as willing to turn down CBS and accept a really crappy deal (way less money, no ownership of the show) from NBC just because he doesn't want to lose the Tonight Show twice. The end credits of the movie tell you that when Letterman moved to CBS he consistently beat Leno in the ratings until the night that Hugh Grant went on the Tonight Show to talk about his arrest for prostitution. From that night own Letterman beat Leno.