Carson the Magnificent by Bill Zehme

Author:Bill Zehme
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2024-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

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On September 7, 1962, Carson hosted his final episode of Who Do You Trust? It was McMahon’s last show, too, before the two of them reconvened to make late-night merriment at NBC. “And as our golden curtain descends, the stage crew will start drinking,” Carson cracked as the episode wrapped. They’d stopped a bit early, so he could thank his support staff, most by role and a few by name—interviewers, stage crew, pages, control room guys, carpenters, grips, electricians, the folks in master control, producer Art Stark, director David Lowe, announcer McMahon. And, of course, his studio audience and the viewers at home. “It’s no secret,” Carson told them, “and I’m sure ABC won’t mind if I mention it—what can they do to me if I do, fire me today? But I go over to The Tonight Show at NBC starting October the first, as the host of that show, and Ed goes with me as the announcer of the show.” The audience applauds and Carson continues: “I want to thank all of you very, very much for sending in your very nice cards of congratulations and letters saying how much you’ve enjoyed this show, and wishing me well on that one.” He reminds them, too, that Who Do You Trust? will stay on the air with Woody Woodbury as host. Someone (unidentified) yelled something from offstage, and Carson responded, “You big nut. Cut that out!” Then: “Thank you, John Gart [the house organist]. Thank you, everybody. Bye-bye.” As Gart played a funerial-sounding tune, McMahon handed Carson a hanky, Carson blew everyone a kiss, and walked offstage.

Once his quiz show indentured servitude had at last ceased, and there were but three weeks before Tonight became his, he called for a sun-soaked think-tank convocation in Fort Lauderdale (a favorite Carsonian runaway spot through the whole of the New York residency). The principal brain trust players he enlisted: producer Perry Cross, brother Dick, manager Bruno, even Big Ed. “Basically, it was to get to know each other,” Cross says. “And frankly, I had a feeling I was auditioning for the job, because they didn’t know me.” Another key member of these Floridian spitballers was legendary comedy writer Herb Sargent, who earlier had helped steer material for Steve Allen’s Tonight Show and later more or less invented “Weekend Update” for Saturday Night Live. “When Johnny [was hired to take] over Tonight, he called me,” Sargent recalls. “I’d worked on the show and he didn’t know anyone else who had. I think that’s some kind of clue to part of him. Usually a guy like that has been around so long—he’d had his own show, after all—a guy like that has a lot of people he can call on. Obviously Johnny didn’t. He hadn’t made too many friends. Not enemies, either. What I mean is that he’s very businesslike—he’s all business. You run into so many comedians who cry and pout. Johnny has no use for small talk. I don’t, either. That may be why he called me in the beginning.

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