Johnny Carson
The Tonight Show
Beginning when I was 13 or 14 -- when weekend bedtime had long ceased to be an
issue -- I would watch The Tonight Show as often as I could. In the
summer, virtually every night. It didn't matter who was on. Some of these
people seemed to exist only on Johnny's show and in someplace called Las Vegas:
Shecky Greene, Buddy Hackett, Don Rickles. Truman Capote seemed to be from
Mars. I couldn't believe he was a famous novelist. And there were the
juxtapositions: Rodney Dangerfield sitting next to James Mason. ("How are
you doing?" Rodney deadpanned to the British actor after one explosive
series of riffs.) For a long time, the show came from New York and was 90
minutes long (105 if you lived near an NBC affiliate that broadcast a 15-minute
11 o'clock newscast). I fell for the whole urbane party setup -- the carpeted
riser, the couch, the twinkling night sky backdrop. It was bizarrely adult, as
exotic as New York itself. Was Johnny my favorite "character"? Did I want to
be him? No. I wanted to be on his show. It was the world.
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