Johnny Carson: The Rolling Stone Interview
The same could not be said for Carson’s marriages. His first had produced three sons–Chris, Ricky and Cory–but little lasting happiness. As his star ascended, a yearlong separation from Jody sank into eventual divorce in 1963. In August of that year, Johnny was remarried to Joanne Copeland, 30, a vivacious, dark-haired actress that he had met briefly years earlier. A former airline stewardess, she was currently appearing on a daytime TV program called Video Village. The couple separated seven years later, and was divorced in June 1972. That August, Carson made the surprise announcement during the tenth anniversary party for The Tonight Show that he had secretly wed divorced ex-model Joanna Holland that afternoon. The celebration took place in Los Angeles, and the New York-based Tonight Show, after having made regular “trips” to the West Coast during the latter part of the decade, soon after relocated permanently in California.
The ever-faithful Ed McMahon left his wife of 27 years and four children to follow the show to L.A., and in short order his marriage was dissolved. He has since remarried. Professionally, the years since have been relatively peaceful and prosperous ones (insiders estimate that Carson now banks as much as $4 million per annum for his services), although there have been occasional storms, such as Johnny’s ire at being preempted by night football games; or his suit against a toilet manufacturer to prevent the production of a portable “Here’s Johnny!” commode; or his lingering threats to leave The Tonight Show, first expressed in 1967 after NBC allegedly violated his contract by showing reruns of the program during an AFTRA strike.
Carson himself has become a kingpin of our popular culture, and The Tonight Show is a kinetic icon for adults of all ages. His conversational comedic style, which he acknowledges as having been shaped by such early heroes as Jack Benny, Bob Hope and George Burns, has become the very paradigm of nonchalant patter for every aspiring young stand-up or sit-down wit. As a fashion plate, he has easily eclipsed such seminal Tinsel Town trendsetters as Fred Astaire, Adolphe Menjou and Cesar Romero with his smart, ungarish taste in sportswear. When he adopted the turtleneck sweater as a respectable alternative to a shirt and tie, millions of American men responded in kind. His Johnny Carson Apparel, Inc., formed in 1970 in conjunction with the Hart, Schaffner & Marx Company, continues to thrive. Likewise, since wife Joanna convinced him to stop tinting his hair and let the silver shine through, the look has been universally embraced as the hallmark of seasoned suavity.
But behind his affecting raiment and distinguished visage, the private Johnny Carson retains the same intensely reticent disposition he has carried all his life. So when his puckish off-camera side does surface, it sometimes catches even his oldest associates completely off guard.
“I’m always impressed with how funny he can be off-camera,” admits veteran Tonight Show writer Pat McCormick. “One time I went into the Polo Lounge [in the Beverly Hills Hotel] with him, and the guy at the door insisted that he wear a tie before he could enter. So he went off to his room and put on a tie, but took off his shoes and socks. I was amazed. And there was no rule in the place about shoes and socks, so he just walked in, sat down and put his bare feet up on the table. The guy at the door was stunned. It was a hilarious night.”
A few practical jokes notwithstanding, Carson is a man profoundly uncomfortable with his own emotions, and unable to express his pain, insecurity and deep caring without considerable difficulty. A frequent giver of generous, thoughtful gifts, his magnanimity is one manifestation of his submerged sensitivity, but sometimes such distanced overtures to others simply do not suffice.
They were changing the sign on the Shubert Theater across the street and we spent most of the time looking out the window at that and commenting about it,” says Ed McMahon, recalling the day in 1957 when Carson interviewed him for the announcer’s job on Who Do You Trust? “We spent five minutes together, and then he said, ‘Well, thanks a lot, Ed, for coming up. I appreciate it.’
“I walked out and I was convinced I had blown the job. I figured he didn’t like me; I’m not the type he wants. A couple of weeks later a guy calls me on the phone and says, ‘When you start Monday… ‘ And I said, ‘What?’ Everybody assumed I knew I had been hired!”
“Johnny has a very strong shyness,” McMahon explains. “I think he would love to have hired me without meeting me, because that meant getting out of his shy character and into being Johnny Carson, and that’s something that he has to turn on.”
Usually, Carson hides behind a precise, dispassionate regimen, and expects others to understand.
“When you never hear anything from him, you’re doing a great job,” says McMahon, “because he doesn’t constantly send you laudatory phrases or gestures. It’s just assumed you’re doing a good job, or you wouldn’t be there. And we have the kind of friendship where we don’t have to keep saying to each other, ‘I’m your friend.’
“On the show he likes efficiency. It’s all done in a pattern. I mean, I psych myself up at a quarter after five every night and I walk into his office to see him. Everything is geared so that he and I will see each other and chat for five to seven minutes each day beforehand. And we’ll just kind of ramble–we never talk about the show; I never hear the monologue–until I leave him at twenty-three after five to go down and do a five-minute warmup with the audience. And I usually leave his office laughing.
“He has great difficulty in getting his emotions of love and warmth out,” McMahon confides. ‘I’ll tell you a story I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone before, that explains a lot about the man and our relationship.
“One night after the show about 10 years ago, he was so nervous he was chain-smoking cigarettes, and he said, ‘C’mon, I want to talk with you,’ which was very unusual. It was the last night of our performance in Hollywood, back when we were based in New York and used to come out a few times a year. So I said to myself, ‘What the hell is this?’
“He said, ‘Let’s go outside.’ So we went outside the studio to a quiet room. And then we went into another room, and he lit another cigarette. And he said, ‘I have something I want to tell you.’ I thought, ‘Jeeze, this is it. I’m getting the ax. He couldn’t bring himself to tell me before.’ “
And finally he says, ‘I just want to tell you that I know what you’re doing; I know what you’re doing. I know you’re helping me out there. I know what a supportive person you are. I know that you are…’
“He was trying to pay me a compliment but he was having the greatest agony in doing it. I couldn’t handle it. I was in tears, and I left the room and I started running down the hallway at NBC. He came out after me and over my shoulder I could hear him yelling, and I looked and saw that he was crying too. And his final words to me were: ‘You see, goddamnit! You can’t take a compliment any better than I can!‘”
It is sunny but cool on the November morning that I arrive at Carson’s Bel Air mansion. Before admitting me, a beefy guard at the front gate punches the button on the outdoor intercom and confirms my appointment. The expansive compound consists of a large, modern art-filled ranch house and a smaller two-story building that contains Johnny’s private study and gym, the two adjacent structures flanked by a kidney-shaped swimming pool, tennis courts and lush, manicured grounds. Barefooted and dressed in tennis whites, Johnny greets me at the front door of his study with an iron grip of my hand and then sits me down inside on a long couch amid his many mementos, among them a prominently displayed photo of himself with Hubert Humphrey.
“It’s about time we spoke in person,” he says with a businesslike smile, alluding to the months of phone conversations that preceded our meeting. Up close, his strong, flinty features are lined and accented with a salt-and-pepper stubble. The eyes are blue-green and piercing, and his frame is trim, muscular and agile. Obviously tense, he drums his fingers, taps his feet and rises from his chair opposite me at measured intervals to pace in a tight circle and light another Pall Mall–but his steely eyes remain fixed on mine with nary a dart or a flutter. During our initial head-to-head exchange (and a followup session a week later at The Pierre in Manhattan), his manner is affable but resolute. Clearly, he sees our talk essentially as a task, but one to which he is determined to lend a cordial, relaxed air. (After the first interview he is markedly becalmed and gregarious, as if a burden has been lifted from him.)
That night, I stand on the sidelines in Studio I on NBC’s sprawling Burbank lot as bespectacled executive producer Freddie de Cordova warms up the audience for a Wednesday installment of The Tonight Show that features guests E Lee Bailey and Andy Williams. De Cordova baits the anxious crowd, toying with their dismay at the prospect of an absentee Carson, and then proclaims, to elated cheers, that Johnny will indeed be hosting tonight: “…and we’re just as surprised as you are!”
Big Ed McMahon hurries out to detail the ground rules of audience participation, consisting mainly of repeated pleas for wild applause for whatever may ensue. A gaudily attired Doc Severinsen cranks up the brassy theme song as McMahon barks his intro, and then Ed intones the prayerlike “Heeeerrrrrrre’s JOHNNY!“
The white-suited star strolls out through the parted curtains that hang between his tiny desk and the bandstand, flashing a winning grin and clicking into his time-honored repertoire of nervous ticks: the craning of the neck, the smoothing of the tie, etc.
Carson’s in high spirits and his monologue flows out briskly to an enthusiastic reception; he winks to the cameramen and jokes easily with the tiered throng before him. It’s another round of The Tonight Show, the sight all too familiar, yet still strangely fascinating, and every mechanism in this curious little universe is in its place and operating like clockwork.
Johnny utters his last opening quip with habitual panache, and the wholesome, fresh-faced audience settles back as if in church for a live dose of the safe, comfortable ritual. He signals to the band and winds up his golf swing as the booming music segues into a commercial break, but tonight Johnny draws out the gesture just a few seconds longer than usual, carefully watching his monitor for the station break as he delivers a loud, robust “Ahhhhhhhhhhh–shit!”
