Carson the Magnificent
In 2002, Bill Zehme conducted the first interview with Johnny Carson since his retirement from The Tonight Show a decade earlier. After Carson’s death in January of 2005, Zehme began work on this biography. He did not complete it before his own death in 2023. He had amassed a massive amount of research including dozens of interviews with Carson’s colleagues and friends. Zehme had finished three-quarters of the biography before his illness and death. Mike Thomas, a close friend and fellow journalist, picked up the project with full access to Zehme’s research and notes and completed Zehme’s project. Thomas makes it clear that this is Zehme’s book, not his.
Bill Zehme, like so many of his contemporaries, became a fan of Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show while in high school and college. He watched the show religiously and usually alone in his room. To say he was a Carson acolyte may understate his obsession with the man who kept America awake at night for the 30 years between 1962 and 1992. During those years one question recurred across America and remained unanswered: “What is Johnny really like?” Anyone who had any contact with Johnny Carson would be asked that question as soon as the connection was known. It seemed that no one had an answer, at least for public consumption.
This is the third book dealing with Johnny Carson published this year, joining multiple others that began to appear within two years of Carson’s stardom on The Tonight Show. Memoirs of colleagues, such as Ed McMahon, have added to the Carson library. Carson the Magnificent will emerge as the standard.
Zehme makes no effort to hide his feelings about Carson’s talents and the power of The Tonight Show over its 30-year dominance of late-night television. Although Carson was preceded by Jack Paar, Zehme argues that Carson was the one who invented late-night television in its current form. The formula was clear and simple; with the monologue, the host at the desk, and the parade of guests all held together by the personality and sharp wit of Johnny. No one has done it better, or even as well, since.
The show was live, albeit with a several hour delay before national broadcast at 11:30 p.m. in the Eastern and Pacific time zones and 10:30 p.m. in the Midwest and Mountain zones. As such, the nightly monologue had to be current in its topics and humor. It was often political in content, but not partisan, and Carson’s delivery came with facial and body punctuation that was part of his comic genius. Sketch comedy was an important element in the show with Carson playing a stable of characters including Carnac the Magnificent, Aunt Blabby, and Art Fern the host of the Tea Time Movie. Certain tag lines were standard in the skits, and some entered the American colloquial language. (When you come to the fork in the road, take it.)
Zehme captures not only the content of The Tonight Show but also the flavor with a writing style that is uniquely his own. He jumps time and space seamlessly and creates an immediacy with his prose. If you were a fan of Carson and The Tonight Show, Zehme will take you back to the pure pleasure of those 90-minute entertainments at the end of the day.
Much more is offered than a recreation of this time and place. Zehme digs deeply into the public and private lives of Johnny Carson and presents them unvarnished. Carson’s personal distance from those close to him, including immediate family, are examined and explained. Carson’s relationship with his parents receives attention. His drinking was problematic, and his attitude toward women, including his four wives, are given some attention.
Zehme also examines the early career of the quiet young man from Nebraska. From an early age, Johnny was attracted by magic. He enjoyed the craft, and it was a means of interaction with those around him. He loved the attention it brought to him.
Carson had some early failures in television, but two things beyond talent propelled him upward. One was a chance to fill in for Red Skelton when an accident prevented Skelton from appearing on his own show. The other was his hosting, with sidekick Ed McMahon, on an afternoon quiz show called Who Do You Trust? on ABC. For 30 minutes five days a week, Carson held forth in a manner not unlike Groucho Marx on You Bet Your Life. It was here that Carson’s full range of talent and wit came into view. By the end of his four-year contract, he seemed the natural choice to replace the retiring Jack Paar.
There is much to this entertaining and informative biography, including the analysis of this particular time and place in American life, as well as the history of television. It should also be said that Mike Thomas’ contribution in finishing and polishing the narrative and seeing it into print deserves whatever accolades come to Carson the Magnificent.