January 26, 2005
King of LateNight
Well, hasn't it been a long time since I've updated this thing? I promise in 2005 to be more a to attentive. Sad to say it took Johnny Carson’s death to get me motivated.
In all my years in television I never had the chance to meet him. I think few did, especially the comedians on the show who did their five minutes and weren't invited to sit on the couch. Garry Shandling was not one of those. He had Carson in stitches. So much so that the great man invited him to guest host his show.
Around that time, I was hosting a thing called "People Now" out of Los Angeles. It was a celebrity oriented talk show. Garry, who was my friend, came on often. The day after he did "The Tonight Show" he called to ask what I thought. "You did great," I told him. He replied, "You know, I really need you to give me some pointers." "What?" I said, "You're asking me for pointers, you just did "The Tonight Show" on NBC and I'm doing some crummy cable thing.”
Well, we all know how Garry's career went and it was Johnny who gave him his break. More than likely, it was doing "The Tonight Show" that gave Garry the idea for "Larry Sanders."
Although I never met Carson, I did attend a luncheon in his honor. He and his beautiful wife Alex came to the affair at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. It was in the mid 1990's. Carson stood around long enough for us press people to get a shot of him. It was at this event that NBC introduced their new late night star Conan O'Brien.
Speaking of NBC, Johnny pretty much owned that network during his reign. At one point "Tonight" was the highest grossing show on their schedule. Needless to say in the 1960's when he decided to side with the union, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and walk off the job to support fellow members, NBC freaked out.
The year Johnny announced he was leaving the show, I ran into Ed McMahon at the annual television get together called NATPE, (National Association of Television Programming Executives). I asked him what he was going to do after the show ended. He told me he was going to walk around with a sign "Will work for beer."
I'll be in Los Vegas this week for NATPE 2005 and may borrow his sign.