Johnny Carson
Jan. 24th, 2005 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacNow there was an admirable entertainment celebrity for you. He knew what he wanted to do, he did it, he stuck to what he knew he was good at, he pleased many and offended few, and he didn't make a big fuss over himself.
I watched his show on occasion in the days when I was still watching television. (This would have been in the first decade of his 30-year run.) And I enjoyed it, especially the routine where he'd play the Question Game (not that Question Game, the other Question Game) in the persona of a psychic seer.
What interests me about Carson is how iconic he became in later years. When he retired, some 12 years ago now, it was much said that nobody could replace him. And nobody has. In the obituaries, people (not least Leno and Letterman themselves) are saying that Leno and Letterman may be fine fellows but they're no Johnny Carson.
But I remember before Carson was iconic. In the 60s and even the 70s, it was said that Carson might be a fine fellow but he was no Jack Paar or Steve Allen. And indeed he was not: he was a different, quieter kind of host, and it took longevity for it to seep in how well he did his style of it. In earlier days, though, I think it would have surprised people to learn how much Carson would be acclaimed on his retirement or his death.
On the other hand: what seems to have made Carson iconic was in part his ubiquity. All the obituaries are saying this too: for a rising entertainer, to appear and succeed on Carson meant you had made it, because everybody watched it. We have a more fragmented mass-media culture now, apparently. I've read people trying to explain how monstrously important Ed Sullivan was in his day, and Milton Berle and various radio stars like Jack Benny before him, and Carson may have been the last of that kind.
Which makes it more striking that Carson was ubiquitous from the beginning. Even in the 60s there was a whole genre of jokes based on the assumption that everybody watched his show in bed. Usually these milked the contrast with other things one might do in bed in the evening. I have one of these jokes right here. In 1964, when Carson had been on the Tonight Show less than two years, Allan Sherman (who reached the pinnacle of his fame as a Tonight Show guest host, which he was not good at) did a song about daily life in Peyton Place [now there's a name many people might not know today]. It contained the lines, "And if you wanna know just how their evenings go there / Nobody's ever seen the Johnny Carson Show there," and the image of people so busy canoodling that they couldn't even make time to watch Carson was supposed to be funny, and it was funny.
Also gone from us today: Rose Mary Woods, self-proclaimed author of Rose Mary's boo-boo. Some secretaries take the fall for their bosses. Woods took the stretch.
I watched his show on occasion in the days when I was still watching television. (This would have been in the first decade of his 30-year run.) And I enjoyed it, especially the routine where he'd play the Question Game (not that Question Game, the other Question Game) in the persona of a psychic seer.
What interests me about Carson is how iconic he became in later years. When he retired, some 12 years ago now, it was much said that nobody could replace him. And nobody has. In the obituaries, people (not least Leno and Letterman themselves) are saying that Leno and Letterman may be fine fellows but they're no Johnny Carson.
But I remember before Carson was iconic. In the 60s and even the 70s, it was said that Carson might be a fine fellow but he was no Jack Paar or Steve Allen. And indeed he was not: he was a different, quieter kind of host, and it took longevity for it to seep in how well he did his style of it. In earlier days, though, I think it would have surprised people to learn how much Carson would be acclaimed on his retirement or his death.
On the other hand: what seems to have made Carson iconic was in part his ubiquity. All the obituaries are saying this too: for a rising entertainer, to appear and succeed on Carson meant you had made it, because everybody watched it. We have a more fragmented mass-media culture now, apparently. I've read people trying to explain how monstrously important Ed Sullivan was in his day, and Milton Berle and various radio stars like Jack Benny before him, and Carson may have been the last of that kind.
Which makes it more striking that Carson was ubiquitous from the beginning. Even in the 60s there was a whole genre of jokes based on the assumption that everybody watched his show in bed. Usually these milked the contrast with other things one might do in bed in the evening. I have one of these jokes right here. In 1964, when Carson had been on the Tonight Show less than two years, Allan Sherman (who reached the pinnacle of his fame as a Tonight Show guest host, which he was not good at) did a song about daily life in Peyton Place [now there's a name many people might not know today]. It contained the lines, "And if you wanna know just how their evenings go there / Nobody's ever seen the Johnny Carson Show there," and the image of people so busy canoodling that they couldn't even make time to watch Carson was supposed to be funny, and it was funny.
Also gone from us today: Rose Mary Woods, self-proclaimed author of Rose Mary's boo-boo. Some secretaries take the fall for their bosses. Woods took the stretch.
