Johnny Carson

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Actor:

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (2 episodes, 1974-1981)

"The Kraft Music Hall" (1 episode, 1970)

"The Bob Hope Show" (2 episodes, 1966-1969)

"Get Smart" (2 episodes, 1965-1968)

"The Danny Thomas Hour" Narrator (1 episode, 1967)

"Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre" (1 episode, 1966)

"NBC Children's Theatre" Narrator (1 episode, 1966)

Looking for Love (1964)

"The United States Steel Hour" (2 episodes, 1960)

"The Steve Allen Plymouth Show" (1 episode, 1959)

"The Polly Bergen Show" (1 episode, 1958)

"Playhouse 90" (1 episode, 1957)

"Red Skelton Revue" (1 episode, 1954)

Writer:

Late Show with David Letterman (1 episode, 2005)

"Mr. President" (1 episode, 1987)

Johnny Goes Home (1982) (TV) (written by)

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962) TV series

The Red Skelton Hour (1951) TV series

Appearances:

"Unsung" (1 episode, 2009)

Stan Kann: The Happiest Man in the World (2005)

Live and Swingin': The Ultimate Rat Pack Collection (2003)

Wild Desk Ride (2001) (uncredited)

Late Show with David Letterman (3 episodes, 1993-1994)

The Johnny Carson Collection, His Favorite Moments from 'The Tonight Show': 1962-1992 (1994)

The Kennedy Center Honors: A Celebration of the Performing Arts (1993) (TV)

Bob Hope: The First 90 Years (1993) (TV)

The Simpsons (1 episode, 1993)

The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom (1993) (TV)

Jack Benny: Comedy in Bloom (1992) (TV)

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1,911 episodes, 1962-1992)

"Showbiz Today" (1 episode, 1992)

Cheers (1 episode, 1992)

A Tribute to the Boys: Laurel and Hardy (1992) (TV)

Johnny Carson's 29th Anniversary (1991) (TV)

Late Night with David Letterman (3 episodes, 1985-1991)

"Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon" (1 episode, 1990)

Newhart (1 episode, 1989)

Night Court (1 episode, 1988)

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 25th Anniversary Special (1987) (TV)

It's Howdy Doody Time (1987) (TV)

"The New Hollywood Squares" (1 episode)

All-Star Tribute to General Jimmy Doolittle (1986) (TV)

NBC 60th Anniversary Celebration (1986) (TV)

George Burns' 90th Birthday Party: A Very Special Special (1986) (TV)

The American Film Institute Salute to Billy Wilder (1986) (TV)

The Garry Shandling Show: 25th Anniversary Special (1986) (TV)

Johnny Carson Presents the Tonight Show Comedians (1984) (TV)

Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 22nd Anniversary (1984) (TV)

The 56th Annual Academy Awards 1984 (TV)

Johnny Carson's 21st Anniversary (1983) (TV)

George Burns Celebrates 80 Years in Show Business (1983) (TV)

Sheena Easton... Act One (1983) (TV)

Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 20th Anniversary (1982) (TV)

The 54th Annual Academy Awards 1982 (TV)

Johnny Goes Home (1982) (TV)

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 19th Anniversary Special (1981) (TV)

The 53rd Annual Academy Awards 1981 (TV)

A Love Letter to Jack Benny (1981) (TV)

All-Star Inaugural Gala (1981) (TV)

Bob Hope for President (1980) (TV)

Johnny Carson's 18th Anniversary Special (1980) (TV)

The 52nd Annual Academy Awards 1980 (TV)

Lucy Moves to NBC (1980) (TV)

Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 17th Anniversary Special (1979) (TV)

The 51st Annual Academy Awards 1979 (TV)

"Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" (1 episode, 1978)

Happy Birthday, Bob (1978) (TV)

A Tribute to Mr. Television Milton Berle (1978) (TV)

Life Goes to War: Hollywood and the Home Front (1977)

Mary Tyler Moore (1 episode, 1977)

The George Burns Special (1976) (TV)

CBS Salutes Lucy: The First 25 Years (1976) (TV)

NBC: The First Fifty Years - A Closer Look (1976) (TV)

Joys (1976) (TV) (uncredited)

The American Film Institute Salute to Orson Welles (1975) (TV)

The 28th Annual Tony Awards 1974 (TV)

Jack Benny's Second Farewell Special (1974) (TV)

"The Dean Martin Comedy Hour" (2 episodes, 1971-1973)

"Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" (10 episodes, 1968-1973)

Jack Benny's First Farewell Special (1973) (TV)

Don Rickles: Alive and Kicking (1972) (TV)

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 10th Anniversary (1972) (TV)

Cancel My Reservation (1972) (uncredited)

The 24th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards 1972 (TV)

Johnny Carson Presents the Sun City Scandals '72 (1972) (TV)

"Great Performances" (1 episode)

The 23rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards 1971 (TV)

"The David Frost Show" (3 episodes, 1970-1971)

Pure Goldie (1971) (TV)

"The Kraft Music Hall" (2 episodes, 1970-1971)

Johnny Carson Presents the Sun City Scandals '70 (1970) (TV)

The Red Skelton Show (2 episodes, 1956-1970)

"The Bob Hope Show" (Cameo) (1 episode, 1970)

"The Joan Rivers Show" (1969) TV series (1969)

"Here's Lucy" (1 episode, 1969)

The Johnny Carson Special (1969) (TV)

"Concentration" (1 episode, 1969)

The Brass Are Comin' (1969) (TV)

"The Dick Cavett Show" (1 episode, 1968)

"The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show" (1 episode, 1968)

Carnival Nights (1968) (TV)

"The Bob Braun Show" (1967) TV series (1967-1984)

"The Match Game" (1 episode, 1967)

"The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show" (1 episode, 1966)

Danny Thomas Meets the Comics (1965) (TV)

The Bob Hope Comedy Special (1965) (TV)

The 16th Annual Emmy Awards 1964 (TV)

"The Jack Benny Program" (2 episodes, 1955-1963)

What's My Line? (9 episodes, 1956-1963)

The Ed Sullivan Show (6 episodes, 1955-1962)

"To Tell the Truth" (37 episodes, 1960-1962)

The All-Star Comedy Hour (1962) (TV)

"Password All-Stars" (1 episode, 1962)

"The Garry Moore Show" (5 episodes, 1959-1962)

"I've Got a Secret" (3 episodes, 1959-1961)

"The Steve Allen Plymouth Show" (4 episodes, 1958-1960)

"The Arthur Murray Party" (1 episode, 1960)

The Arthur Murray Special for Bob Hope (1960) (TV)

The Dinah Shore Chevy Show (1 episode, 1960)

"The Chevy Showroom Starring Andy Williams" (1 episode, 1959)

"Spectacular" (1 episode, 1959)

"The Jack Paar Tonight Show" (1 episode, 1958)

"Who Do You Trust?" (1956) TV series (1957-1962)

"The Johnny Carson Show" (6 episodes, 1955-1956)

"The Robert Q. Lewis Show" (1 episode, 1955)

"Earn Your Vacation" (1954) TV series (1954)

"The Morning Show" (1954) TV series (1954)

"Carson's Cellar" (1953) TV series

American Comedy Awards

1992 Lifetime Achievement Award in Comedy

1987 Won American Comedy Award Funniest Male Performer in a TV Series (Leading Role) Network, Cable or Syndication for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962)

BMI Film & TV Awards

2005 Won Classic Contribution Award for: "The Tonight Show" (1962). Shared with: Paul Anka Kevin Eubanks

Emmy Awards

1992 Won Emmy Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Program (Series) for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962) For episode with guests Robin Williams and Bette Midler

1991 Nominated Emmy Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Program for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962) for: episode "28th Anniversary Show"

1987 Nominated Emmy Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Program for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962)

1986 Nominated Emmy Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Program for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962)

1985 Nominated Emmy Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Program for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962)

1984 Nominated Emmy Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Program for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962)

1983 Nominated Emmy Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Program for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962)

1981 Nominated Emmy Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Program for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962)

1980 Won Governor's Award

1980 Nominated Emmy Outstanding Program Achievement - Special Class for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962)

1979 Won Emmy Outstanding Program Achievement - Special Class for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962)

1978 Won Emmy Special Classification of Outstanding Program Achievement for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962)

1977 Won Emmy Special Classification of Outstanding Program Achievement for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962)

1976 Won Emmy Special Classification of Outstanding Program and Individual Achievement for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962)

1972 Nominated Emmy Outstanding Variety Series - Talk for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962)

1971 Nominated Emmy Outstanding Variety Series - Talk for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962)

Golden Globes

1976 Nominated Golden Globe Best TV Actor - Musical/Comedy for: "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962)

Hasty Pudding Theatricals, USA

1977 - Man of the Year

Peabody Awards

1986 Won Personal Award

People's Choice Awards

1987 Won People's Choice Award Favorite Talk Show Host

Television Critics Association Awards

1992 - Career Achievement Award

Walk of Fame

Star on the Walk of Fame Television At 1751 Vine Street.

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He seemed to be around forever and, at times, his material seemed to be about two hundred years old.

CARSON, as colonial comic Shecky Revere: I didn't know I was a Minute Man until my honeymoon... (rim shot) Give me jokes or give me death...George Washington couldn't be here tonight, he's too busy posing for the dollar. (rim shot) It was so cold at Valley Forge, he threw his teeth on the fire.

But, for nearly thirty years, millions of Americans went to bed with him every night. And it seemed impossible, rude even, not to refer to him by his first name: "Heeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!"

John William Carson was born in 1925, in the very heart of the Midwest heartland, in the small Iowa town of Corning - "No jokes, please," he used to say. His father, a manager for a power company, brought the family to Norfolk, Nebraska. "I just can't say I ever wanted to be an entertainer; I already was one, sort of - around the house, at school, doing magic tricks and doing the Popeye imitations," he told Rolling Stone in 1979. "People thought I was funny; so I kind of took entertaining for granted." His professional debut came at the age of fourteen when, as The Great Carsoni, he did magic tricks for the Norfolk Rotary Club, wearing a black cape sewn by his mother. He earned three dollars for the gig. He became obsessed with the funnymen whose voices came out of the Philco cathedral radio in the living room. "[I learned joke construction] by observing, by listening, and watching somebody else's work. As a matter of fact, in college I did a thesis on comedy. I taped excerpts from the various radio shows and then tried to break them down and explain what kind of construction they were using."

In 1949, Carson got his first job at fifty dollars a week for doing anything and everything for a local radio station, and when WOW became the first TV station in a five-state area, he was there on the ground floor, learning whatever there was to know about the infant medium of television. Carson - who had no stage, vaudeville, or film background - became the first comedian to create his identity on television at the same time television was trying to create its own. "I've worked ever since I was a kid with a two-bit kit of magic tricks trying to improve my skills at entertaining whatever public I had - and to make myself ready for whenever the breaks came," he said.

That break came in 1954 when Carson, who had oved to Los Angeles and was writing for Red Skelton's show, filled in for him one night on live television after Skelton had injured himself in rehearsal that afternoon, CBS was so impressed it gave him his own variety show. It lasted all of thirty-nine weeks. He bounced back in New York as the irreverent host of an afternoon game show called Who Do You Trust? on ABC, which ran from 1957 to 1962. All through the 1950s, Carson was perfecting his signature style, borrowing bits and pieces from the comedians he adored. He assimilated Edgar Buchanan's slow burn, Groucho's cantilevered eyebrow, Stan Laurel's guileless shrug, Oliver Hardy's take "after the bucket of paint had fallen onto his head and he removed it," as Dick Cavett said. His great idol was Jack Benny and he incorporated Benny's greatest skill. "In certain instances, I am a reaction comedian," Carson said. "Very often you get more out of it by your reactions to things than doing jokes. If you get some nutty dame out there, you can get more out of it by just doing exasperated reactions or takes."

Eventually, Carson absorbed all of those influences into his own style. Where previous generations of comedians might change their names, their faces, their backgrounds to become more American, more acceptable,Carson did the opposite - he folded the styles of various ethnic comedians into his own laid-back Midwestern charm. Mel Brooks called him Supergentile, and Bob Newhart elaborated, "Mel is correct in a certain way. There's a certain quality about being from the Midwest that you don't put on airs and, and you don't act like something you're not, because they're gonna see through it. Yes, John was Supergentile, but maybe he was also Supermidwesterner." For Carson, it was that affability - however it might be characterized - that gave him his superpowers:

First of all, the most important thing to me in comedy - the greatest thing a performer can have if he is going to be successful, is an empathy with the audience. They have to like him. And if they like the performer, then you've got eighty percent of it made - it's amazing what you can get away with and what they will accept from you.

His hard work and essential likability paid off, and in 1962, he was offered one of the prime jobs on television: taking over NBC's late-night Tonight Show from its mercurial host, Jack Paar. Paar was contentious, emotional, and politically engaged. He also presided over the most difficult job in television at the time - a nightly live talk show, broadcast for an hour and forty-five minutes, the longest slot on the air. It was too difficult even for the ambitious Carson - he initially turned it down. But after cleverly insisting on a series of interim hosts to provide a "palate cleanser.
Carson debuted in Rockefeller Center's Studio 6-B with The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on October 1, 1962. Carson had figured a way to make it work. He told himself he wouldn't be a Jack Paar imitation. "I had done nearly everything you could do in the industry," he said. "It all just boiled down to being my natural self and seeing what happened."

What happened was the most successful show of any kind in television history; within three years, it was being watched by twice as many people as had watched Paar, and at its height,it was watched by 10 to 15 million people a night. (He created a seismic shift in the broadcasting industry by moving his program to studios in Burbank, California, in 1972) Whether Carson was a comedian hosting a talk show or a talk show host doing comedy was an irrelevant distinction - he was the best at both. The show gave him a forum to indulge his favorite indoor sport. "He loved nothing better than to laugh," recalled Carl Reiner. "His soul was happy. He really loved comedians. When he heard something funny, it was good for the comedian and good for him."

Almost immediately after taking over the reins of The Tonight Show, Carson brought on more and more comedians. Other television shows, such as The Ed Sullivan Show showcased comedians, but Carson's talk show venue could offer comedians something they couldn't get anywhere else; a chance for America to discover who they really were, and frequently the comedians discovered who they were themselves.

Carson's enthusiasm for comedians and performing ended when his show came down at one in the morning (later on, it came down at twelve-thirty); he protected his privacy fiercely. "From the time I was a little kid, I was always shy," said Carson. "Performing was when I was outgoing," Friends and intimates claimed to see a more outgoing side of Carson when the studio lights were turned off, but Dick Cavett's perceptions appear to be accurate:

After the show once, three tourists who maybe got out the wrong exit, found themselves face-to-face with Johnny, and they'd say, "Oh, Johnny, I got to tell you a story about - "I would see him just die. That kind of thing was hard for him. And I've always felt sorry for the social pain that he went through. Johnny was the most socially uncomfortable man I think I ever met.

Carson would grow particularly testy when reporters asked about his four marriages, or worse, about his annual salary, which was, at one point, over $5 million, the largest in television history. "I was raised in the Midwest, where it was considered impolite to ask somebody how much they made," he told Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes. In a moment of candor, Carson admitted, "I'm getting well paid off it, but it's the toughest job on television." And the toughest part of the toughest job was Carson's favorite.

"The monologue truly is the pride and joy of his appearance on the show," said his longtime producer, Fred de Cordova. On every broadcast afternoon, Carson would be presented with six different full-length monologues crafted by his writers; he himself would pick out the best fifteen or twenty gags, often adding his own to create a seven-minute commentary that one critic called "the voice of Middle America." "For thirty years, Johnny's show was the town square of America. It was a familiar place we could all gather. And we came to know and trust and like him," said George Carlin

Underwent emergency quadruple bypass surgery at Santa Monica Hospital in California after suffering a severe heart attack. [19 March 1999]

Served in the U.S. Navy, 1943-1946.

"Give me jokes or give me death"

If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.

He ordained the culture. The whole world came to his doorstep. He didn't need comedians to be funny, he just needed information. - David Steinberg

I started to watch him when I was eleven or twelve and fell in love with it, I don't think I missed a Tonight Show through those years, high school, college, I had to get my Johnny Carson fix on a nightly basis. He was an imp, he said so himself, Peck's Bad Boy, the guy who was standing on the corner watching the parade go by and making sly comments on it. - Bill Maher

He loved nothing better than to laugh - Carl Reiner

What made Johnny Carson a great host was he was a great listener. He listened and he went where you were going. He didn't have twelve questions in front of him, and you said, "And so I killed my mother-in-law," and he'd go, "You have a new dog, don't you?" He went with you. He was also the best straight man in the world. He knew just when to come in and say, "How fat was she?" And you just wanted to go, "God bless you." - Joan Rivers