Johnny Carson

In January 2005, one-time Late Show with David Letterman (1993) producer Peter Lassally revealed that Carson occasionally contributed material for Letterman's monologues. What he missed most in retirement was performing his own "Tonight Show" monologues, according to Lassally.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 65-68. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007.

Having smoked 4-5 packs of Pall Mall cigarettes a day, Carson began to suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) by the late 1970s, but continued to smoke heavily. On March 19, 1999, he underwent emergency quadruple bypass surgery at Santa Monica Hospital (CA) after suffering a severe heart attack.

"He is one of a kind, was one of a kind", De Cordova said in 1995. "I don't think there's any reason for him to try something different".

"I have an ego like anybody else", Carson told The Washington Post in 1993, "but I don't need to be stoked by going before the public all the time". Frederick De Cordova, the producer of "The Tonight Show" throughout Carson's 30-year run, believed that Carson never pressured himself to launch a follow-up as he already had achieved unprecedented success on TV.

When he retired in 1992, he held the record for hosting the same network series for the longest time: 29 years, 7 months, 21 days. The record was broken by Bob Barker on The Price Is Right (1972) in 2002.

First wife, Joan "Jody" Morrill Wolcott, was his college sweetheart. They divorced and later, in 1990, she lost a suit trying to increase the alimony that she was receiving. Their son, Richard Wolcott Carson, was killed on June 21, 1991 after his car plunged down a steep embankment along a coastal road. The accident apparently occurred while he was taking pictures along a paved service road off Highway 1 near Cayucos, north of San Luis Obispo (CA). Johnny Carson had two other sons: Christopher, named after his paternal grandfather, and Cory Carson.

Was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1987.

According to the PBS series American Masters (1985), Carson was seen by more people on more occasions than anyone else in American history.

On March 8, 1983, Joanna Holland filed for divorce. Under California's community property laws, she was entitled to 50% of all the assets accumulated during the marriage, even though Carson earned virtually all of the couple's income. During this period, he joked on The Tonight Show: "My producer (Frederick De Cordova) really gave me something I needed for Christmas. He gave me a gift certificate to the Law Offices of Jacoby and Meyers". The divorce was settled in 1985 with a whopping 80-page settlement, Holland receiving $20 million in cash and property.

Countless talk shows hosted by the likes of Joey Bishop and Dick Cavett and other non-talk show programs were launched against him year after year only to fail, with the notable exception of ABC News Nightline (1980) halfway through his reign.

Sidekick McMahon's "Heeeeere's Johnny!!!" introduction of Carson became a cultural catchphrase, memorably reprised by Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), Woody Allen's character in the Best Picture Academy Award-winning Annie Hall (1977), stand-up comic Alvy Singer, is recognized in front of a movie theater by a street tough due to his appearance on "The Tonight Show". Aside from his banter with celebrities, he amused his audience for 30 years with broadly played skit comedy by his "Mighty Carson Art Players" and his spoof clairvoyant "Carnac the Magnificent". He made memorable put-downs of politicians and celebrities, a format that was used by his successors Jay Leno and David Letterman and legions of comics who came after him. When a joke bombed during his monologues, Carson would do a wounded double-take as the audience jeered, fully aware of the awfulness of the joke he had just unloaded. Following these bombs with a sly, self-deprecating remark engendered a sense of intimacy between Carson and his fans.

Carson's connection with the American culture was so absolute, it contributed to one of his few failures, the rejection of "The Tonight Show" in the early 1980s by British audiences who could not understand the topical references of his monologues. And his audience's identification of Johnny with the "Tonight Show" effectively stopped him from work in other media.

His connection with the movie industry remained his hosting of three generations of stars and his memorable turns as the host of five Academy Awards telecasts from 1979-84. In that role, he generally is regarded as the best successor to long-time Oscar host Bob Hope. He did stretch his wings as a producer, his Carson Productions producing TV pilots and series, TV movies and [error], in addition to his own talk show. The six-time Emmy-winner considered a follow-up to "The Tonight Show", but nothing caught his interest and he spent the last decade of his life in a quiet retirement in Malibu, California, as befitted his private nature. Thus, it was "The Tonight Show" that remains his creative legacy. Unlike every other TV star, he remained on top until the very end, the show winning its ratings period every year for 30 years. When Carson retired, his last appearance was one of the highest rated late night TV shows ever.

"'I'll be right back.'" Carson, when asked what he'd like for an epitaph at a press conference after he'd accepted Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Club Man of the Year Award, 1977.

At the tenth anniversary party for The Tonight Show, he announced that he and former model Joanna Holland had married that afternoon, shocking friends and associates. [September 30, 1972].

In the early 1970s, TV Guide reported that Carson was earning $2 million a year, making him the highest paid TV entertainer ever, a record he repeatedly surpassed, pulling down a then-record $5 million annual salary in the 1980s. Carson created a sense of intimacy with his guests and audiences that made him the unvanquished "King of Nighttime TV".

His tempestuous love-life, which included two high-profile divorces, became the fodder of such celebrity staples as "The National Enquirer" and later "People Magazine", and he was even the subject of a roman a clef pulp novel in the early 1970s. There have been at least seven published biographies of Carson.

Carson would never be controversial like Paar, preferring to good-naturedly skewer politicians and celebrities in his opening monologue and staging stunts such as the on-stage marriage of retro-singer Tiny Tim to his "Miss Vicky" in 1969.

Interviewed in "The Great Comedians Talk About Comedy" by Larry Wilde. [1968]

His popularity with the late-night audience became so great, and the income from advertising on his show so profitable that, in 1967, NBC had to lure Johnny back to The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962)after a walkout with a three-year contract guaranteeing him a minimum of $4 million.

He made one foray into movies - he played himself in the 1964 Connie Francis movie, Looking for Love (1964). The MGM flick didn't do that well, and Carson was never seen in movies again - except for those contemporary films where The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962) is playing on a TV set in the scene.

In 1962, Carson was chosen by NBC to succeed the controversial Jack Paar and his The Tonight Show Starring Jack Parr (1957). Paar had decided to quit the show and begin a once-a-week show for NBC in prime time on Friday nights.

Before his triumph on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), Carson tried his hand at dramatic acting, appearing in Days Of Wine & Roses - Cliff Robertson & Piper Laurie, "Playhouse 90" Original TV Version: Three Men on a Horse (1957) (episode # 1.

Carson had sat in for "Tonight Show" host Jack Paar in 1958 and, when Paar left the show four years later, NBC chose Carson as his replacement, taking over the catbird seat on October 2, 1962.

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962).

In 1960, he shot a pilot for a prime-time TV series, "Johnny Come Lately", that was not picked up by a network.

A liberal in the increasingly liberal age of the 1960s and 1970s, so powerful were his opening monologues that by the early 1970s, he could actually affect society at large outside of the pop culture realm. A joke about a shortage of industrial grade toilet paper caused a national panic and a run on all grades of t. p. , with a resulting shortage of the product about which he had kidded. Playing off current events such as the Watergate crisis, his comic evisceration of President Richard Nixon was credited with some critics as exerting such a drag on Nixon's approval rating that it made his resignation possible, if not inevitable. After Carson's reign, it became increasingly de rigueur for politicians to appear on late-night TV talk shows and bear a host's jibes in order to stump for votes.

In the mid-1960s, Carson's agents wanted to trade on his vast popularity to position him in motion pictures as the "New Jack Lemmon", but Carson never made any forays outside of television.

The man who would soon become the most famous late-night TV personality in history hosted the daytime game show Who Do You Trust? (1956) from 1957-62, teaming up with longtime sidekick, Ed McMahon, in 1958.

29) during the inaugural season of Days Of Wine & Roses - Cliff Robertson & Piper Laurie, "Playhouse 90" Original TV Version (1956) in 1957.

This led to a stint as the host of the quiz show Earn Your Vacation (1954) and the variety showcase The Johnny Carson Show (1953) in 1955-56.

Once appeared on American Bandstand (1952) and stood in for a drummer.

Attracting the attention of the industry, he was hired as a comedy writer for The Red Skelton Hour (1951) which provided him with a career breakthrough when Skelton was injured backstage and Carson substituted for him, delivering his first monologue before a national audience.

Had a lifelong interest in magic, and sent away for a mail-order magic kit when he was 12. Soon he started performing for bridge clubs and church socials as a 14-year-old magician/comic, under the name "The Great Carsoni." Plied his magic tricks in early performing days of the 1950s in places like the Seven Seas lounge in Omaha, Nebraska.

In 1949, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in radio and speech (with a minor in physics) from The University of Nebraska. He was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity.

Johnny Carson, the legendary "King of Late Night TV" who dominated the medium's nether hours for three decades, was born in Corning, Iowa, but moved with his family to nearby Norfolk, Nebraska when he was eight years old. It was in Norfolk, where he lived until he was inducted into the US Navy in 1943, that he started his show business career. At age 14, Carson began appearing as the magician "The Great Carsoni" at local venues.

After brief stints on radio stations in Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska, his career was exclusively in television, starting with work at Nebraska TV stations in the late 1940s which preceded his 1951-53 skit program Carson's Cellar (1953) on Los Angeles station KNXT-TV.