It is June 30th and on this date in 1955 a new television show premiered on CBS primetime.
The traditional variety show that was hosted by a relatively unknown television personality didn't
do terribly well in the ratings, and lasted less than a year. But the short-lived Johnny
Carson Show would set the stage for a much longer late night run that became a...well,
a source of joy, and a cultural touchstone for millions of Americans, including me.
The road that would lead to an iconic television program actually began with an accident.
The Richmond Indiana Palladium Item reported on August 19th 1954,
“Comic Red Skelton suffered a brain concussion and a severe neck sprain during a rehearsal for
his television show only a half hour before the program was due to go on air.” While the summer
of 1954 was not the height of its popularity, the weekly Red Skelton Show was highly regarded,
eventually running for 20 years and winning three Emmy Awards. The United Press reported the next
day that Skelton was doing a stunt that called him to charge at a jail door with a piece of
balsa wood made up to look like a cement block on his head. The actor rammed the breakaway door but
missed the queue and it didn't break. Skeleton told the United Press, “I dude it too hard.”
While Skelton wanted to go on with the show the UP reported that CBS decided it would go on without
him, with comedian Jack Carson replacing the injured actor with less than 30 minutes notice.
The rushed fill-in Jack Carson, was 28 year old John William Carson, a World War II Navy veteran.
Paul Corkery's 1987 unauthorized biography of Carson notes that, “While an ensign,
Carson showed an insomniac James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy a card trick.” “The
experience,” Corkery writes, “showed Carson that he could entertain and amuse someone as cranky and
sophisticated as Forrestal.” “So,” Corkery writes in early 1946 “when he was honorably discharged
from the Navy he left thinking that maybe there was a future for him in show business.”
Carson went to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln on the GI Bill, majored in speech
and drama, and graduated in three years. Carson worked largely in radio and by 1954 had a job in
New York as a writer for the Red Skelton Show. “When Skeleton was injured,” Corkery writes,
“in desperation the show's producers called Carson at his home and told him in the legend
honored show business fashion, that he would have to substitute for the stricken star.”
Carson started the show with a monologue which opened, “Personally, the way I feel right now,
I think Red's doctor should be doing the show.” “He was,” Corkery writes, “a smash.”
The Indianapolis Star wrote on August 25th, “Johnny received quite a few good press notices
after his impromptu, but skillful handling of Skeleton's hour.” “The event,” was the Star notes,
“ironic as Skeleton had written a guest column on August 5th before the accident in which he said,
the wonderful thing about it is that a new comedian can be made with just one telecast.”
The comment was prophetic not merely because Skelton's accident would give Carson such an
opportunity, but because of the sheer number of comedians who would eventually find fame
because of appearances on Carson's own shows. It was Carson's appearance that would lead to
the 1955 Johnny Carson Show, premiering June 30th and airing Thursday nights at 10 pm Eastern. The
regular newspaper column by Eve Star called Inside TV emphasized his relative obscurity at the time.
“The Carson Show will introduce to a national audience a particular deadpan belonging to a
youngest comedian who is bound to revive the old parlor game that is the secret dread of
every wit in the business. Who does he remind you of?” Corkery writes that he had gone from
being an anonymous voice on KNX Radio to being a smash substitute for a TV star,
to being a nationally known personality overnight. The Johnny Carson Show didn't last a year, just
39 episodes. There are several reasons that the show never found its footing but Corkery argues
that the problem was that Carson didn't control the show himself, writing “Every CBS exec with a
working voice box had a different idea of what to do, and each of them had a say in the program.”
A 1978 profile on the New Yorker Magazine described the show as “A half hour program
that goes through seven directors, eight writers, and 39 weeks of worsening health before expiring
in the spring of 1956.” But that's not to say that the show didn't leave its mark. A february 1956
edition of the Munster Indiana Times wrote that “The pie throwers and the slapstick comics seem
to be dying out on TV. They're being replaced by a new type of stand-up gagster who appears in a dark
suit and looks like your own brother, take Johnny Carson for example.” While talking about how the
show was changing comedy, the article headline was Slapstick Bowing to Satirists, “On Carson's
show tongue in cheek is king and most of the noise comes from the band.” the article quips. It notes
that “he appears opposite the Lux Video Drama Hour, a veteran TV show with its regular viewers,
and it's his job to try to wean fans away from the drama.” While the article says that Johnny
started last summer with his network comedy show and is slowly working his way up the ratings,
Carson admitted we're gaining slowly but added, “frankly I prefer it this way, at least I won't
have so far to fall.” It was apparently an honest assessment, the show ended the last day of March
1956. The entertainment column The Open Mic simply stated, “The sponsor has canceled.”
but Carson was by then no longer just “Mr who does he remind you of” he was given a daytime show
called the Johnny Carson show that ran through the summer and in September 1957 took over as host of
a revamped version of the weekday game show Do You Trust Your Wife that had originally been hosted by
Edgar Bergen. Later retitled Who Do You Trust, the show kept Carson both busy and in the limelight
as well as pairing him with a sidekick named Ed McMahon. A January 1960 edition of the Hackensack
New Jersey Record quoted Carson, “The only future I've got is that I have to do Who Do You Trust
every day at 2:30. I love doing the show and it's been very good to me.” But the entertainment world
had not forgotten his prime time variety show. In a bold prediction The Record continued, “Carson
is one of the first names you hear when someone wants to cook up a late night show a la Parr.”
They were referencing the Jack Paar Show originally named The Tonight Show with Jack Parr;
Parr had reinvigorated NBC's Tonight Show franchise. The Museum of Broadcast Communications
Encyclopedia of Television wrote that Paar became the most successful presence in late night,
expanding his affiliate base from the 46 stations with which he started out to 170.
Paar was popular but volatile, evidenced by a controversy in February of 1960 when he
walked off the show for five weeks over an argument with censors over a joke.
Paar was so essential to the show that the network kept his name on the show, despite his walking out
in the middle of an episode, until finally coaxing him to return. Carson had no interest in taking on
the King of Late Night telling The Record, “I wish they'd leave me alone. One of the main troubles
with this industry is that as soon as somebody is successful everybody looks for carbon copies.
Jack Paar is a personality not a format. You can't imitate personality.” The article concludes
that Carson refused in 1960 and offered to take over a late night show opposite Paar.
“I'm not interested.” he told The Record and all that seemed to have come from a crystal ball,
or maybe the Amazing Carnac. Carson would of course be tapped to take over a late night
show a la Paar but he would not have to take one opposite him. In March 1962, Paar again
walked away from his late night show, this time for good, citing exhaustion over the workload.
Carson was tapped to replace him, although he couldn't take over the show until his Who Do You
Trust contract expired in October. The Louisville Kentucky Courier General in August of 1962 wrote
“Carson is unlike Jack Paar, as tonight is unlike today.” As much as Who Do You Trust
had kept him in people's living rooms, it was his original Primetime show that defined his new job.
“As a rising star in the 1950s the future host of The Tonight Show presided over this variety
show which featured a little singing and a lot of comedy.” writes TV Guide.
“Although it lasted less than a year, Carson must have been doing something right because
six years later he began his three-decade reign as the king of late night TV.”
Carson is perhaps most different from Paar in that he was not as unpredictable. The St Louis
Post-Dispatcher wrote that Paar’s strongest appeal was in the suspense of his unpredictability.
“Maybe nothing exciting was going to happen on Tonight but you couldn't be sure. Johnny Carson
is a contained man. His mind and wit are quick and he's equal to the spontaneous situation,
but there's a stone wall of reserve about him that no television audience will ever penetrate.”
But the formula worked. The Encyclopedia of the Great Plains notes “But audiences found
comfort in Carson's blandness. Three months after taking over for Paar, Carson was reaching 500,000
more homes than Paar had.” The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson increased its market
share year after year, competitors came and went but Carson remained King of the
Night for the next three decades achieving a dominance unprecedented in broadcast history.
Carson also offered a far more reserved political hand. The online Encyclopedia of the Great Plains
notes that, “Carson was far more tranquil than Paar and the first critical evaluations were
not in his favor. He realized however, that a decade in fear of thermonuclear annihilation
had left American television audiences ready for an escape from neurosis.” History News Network of
the Colombian College of Arts and Sciences of the George Washington University notes,
“Forget socio-economic backgrounds. Democrat or Republican, one continuity in the country for
over 30 years, Monday through Friday coming on NBC after the local news was Johnny Carson.” Catholic
bishop Robert Barron noted the importance of Carson's careful attitude towards politics on his
website Word on Fire. “Carson could entertain the entire country, liberal and conservative alike.
He would from time to time take light jabs at both sides in the political wars but he never clearly
identified with either party.” The point is that the tribalism on display in late night comics
represents a severe declension in the cultural situation when Johnny Carson reigned supreme.
If we can laugh together, and together admit when a joke is lame, then we can
perhaps reason together, compromise, and listen to one another with respect. And it's just that
sort of conversation that is necessary for the proper functioning of a society such as ours.”
Despite his careful positions he nonetheless affected national politics and powerful ways.
Kelly Chidester, curator of an exhibit on Carson at the Fullerton Museum Center told
the Los Angeles Times, “The show wasn't always just entertainment, it was a barometer on the
State of the Union. He dealt with serious issues, water pollution, civil rights, women's liberation,
he commented on the news; people would tune in and see the popular culture of that day.” His impact
on politics was so powerful that a study published in the Journal of Social Science Research last
August determined that his monologue had a significant effect on Richard Nixon's approval
rating between 1972 and 1974. Dannielle Mauk of the Fullerton Museum told the Los Angeles Times
``It's impossible to overestimate the influence of Johnny Carson on the entertainment industry, for
that matter, on the day-to-day lives of millions of Americans who watched The Tonight Show.”
History News Network writes that “From October 1962 when Groucho Marx introduced Johnny Carson
as the host of The Tonight Show until his last show in May of 1992, the late night
talk show host and comedian had a major impact on American culture, and not just television.”
“When he played Twister on air with actress Eva Gabor in 1966,” the website of the History Channel
explains, “sidekick Ed McMahon worked the spinner and guffawed from his couch as Carson and Gabor,
wearing a low-cut gown, got down on all fours and contorted in strange positions.
The stars were enough, the audience was in stitches, sales of the game skyrocketed.”
In 1973 when a member of Congress worried that a shortage of wood pulp might result
in a toilet paper shortage Carson joked in his monologue, “There's an acute shortage of
toilet paper in the good old United States, we gotta quit writing on it.” CBS recalled in 2020,
“The false alarm sent Carson's audience of almost 20 million running.” Filmmaker Robert
Gersten told CBS, “People all over the country stormed supermarkets, grabbed as much toilet
paper as they possibly could. Newspapers noted a shortage across the country driving Carson to
make a clarification a month later.’ “For all my life in entertainment, I don't want to be
remembered as the man who created a false toilet paper scare. Apparently there is no shortage.”
His impact was truly astounding. History News Network explains “Carson was not a simple
celebrity, not simply a transient personality saturated throughout the media one day and
gone just as suddenly. No, Johnny Carson was a social and cultural centerpiece of society for
multiple generations of Americans for more than 30 years. In the future, just as historians have
gleaned specifics of daily life in the past from personal letters, journals and library archives,
one will be able to have a fair gauge of much of the general United States between
the early 1960s and the early 1990s by viewing tapes of The Tonight Show.”
The New York Times said of him in 2005, “During those three decades he became the biggest,
most popular star American television has known. Virtually every American with
a television set saw and heard a Carson monologue at some point in those years.
At his height, between 10 million and 15 million Americans slept better weeknights because of him.”
He literally transformed the entertainment industry. United Press reported in 2005,
“Even his decision to move the Tonight Show from New York to Burbank California in 1972 helped move
the TV entertainment business center of gravity from the East coast to the West.” In his time the
highest salary performer in television history, the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains notes that,
“He was so important to NBC that when he mentioned that he might retire from The Tonight Show in the
summer of 1979, stock prices of NBC parent company RCA dropped precipitously.” And he
impacted careers in politics, in writing, and of course in comedy. History News Network notes,
“A master of the monologue, Johnny Carson was solely responsible for launching so many careers,
far too many careers to even begin to mention.” In a 1992 edition of the Los Angeles Times,
movie star Burt Reynolds credited appearances on Carson for much of his success, including getting
him his role in the Deliverance. Comedian David Brenner told The Times, “In 18 months as a comic
I'd only made eight thousand dollars. That all changed in less than 24 hours. By the end of the
business day after I did Carson I had ten thousand dollars in jobs.” The entertainment website,
The Things explained, “Today The Tonight Show primarily attracts guests to already big stars,
but back in the old days when it was hosted by Johnny Carson, it was a comment for budding stars
and unknowns to make their television debut on the show. The key to a successful run on The Tonight
Show back then was one rule, make Johnny laugh. If you make Johnny Carson laugh and if he invited you
over to the couch, you were pretty much guaranteed to become the next big star.” Last year The Things
gave a partial list of comedians who got their start that way. Andy Kaufman, George Carlin,
Louis Anderson, Jim Carrey, Bill Maher, Eddie Murphy, Ellen DeGeneres, Roseanne Barr,
Jay Leno, Drew Carey, Jerry Seinfeld. Another late night legend David Letterman told the
United press in 2005, “He gave me a shot in his show and in doing so he gave me a career.
All late night talk show hosts who came after Carson,” Letterman said, “were just pretenders.”
It isn't as if Carson, who's often been described as mercurial, didn't have his personal foibles,
or that there were no controversies around him. This isn't a biography of Johnny Carson,
it's a note on the impact that this one television show had in 30 years of late night dominance.
And it's not as if Johnny Carson is forgotten history, there's a whole YouTube channel where
you can watch full episodes of the show that's dedicated to bringing him to a modern audience,
and purportedly there is a television biopic series based on his career in the works.
But the magazine National Review noted in 2017, “A quarter century ago a case could
be made that Johnny Carson was better known than the President of the United States.
But for Millennials raised on a different set of late night hosts,
Johnny Carson is yet another figure in American history they aren't taught about.”
Okay so once again this is nostalgia, yeah I watched an awful lot of Carson. I was watching
live on May 22nd 1992 when he signed off. It brought a tear to my eye when he said “I am one of
the lucky people in the world. I found something I always wanted to do and I have enjoyed every
minute of it. I can only tell you that it's been an honor and a privilege to come into your homes
all these years, and entertain you.” I cried again on January 23rd 2005 when I heard news
of his passing at the age of 79. I cried because I remembered all the times and he made me laugh.
I hope you enjoyed watching this episode of the History Guy, and if you did please feel free to
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