AARP Hearing Center
11 Surprising Things We Learned About Johnny Carson From His New Biography
‘Carson the Magnificent’ examines the often troubled personal life of the legendary ‘Tonight Show’ host
Simon & Schuster; Archive Photos/Getty Images
Johnny Carson used his affable personality and keen gift for comedy to become no less than the King of Late-Night Television and a cultural icon as host of The Tonight Show for nearly three decades, from 1962 to 1992. But as the new biography Carson the Magnificent by the late Bill Zehme (Nov. 5) details, the private Carson, who died of emphysema in 2005 at age 79, was inscrutable — relatively shy — and had some very troubled personal relationships.
Zehme, a lifelong Carson fan and longtime celebrity journalist, nonetheless spent years working to uncover the man behind the myth. He’d only written three-quarters of the biography before passing away from cancer last year at 64, however, so Mike Thomas, a former entertainment journalist for the Chicago Sun Times, completed the book.
More Ways to Benefit
- Related Benefit 1
- Related Benefit 2
- Related Benefit 3
- Related Benefit 4
- Related Benefit 5
Thomas explains in the prologue why Zehme (and, probably, many other fans) revered Carson: The host offered his audiences the assurance that “tomorrow will come and we can laugh about what just happened today, and we can get up in the morning, and it’ll be alright, here we go again.”
It would, truly, be hard to overstate the influence of the Nebraska-bred celebrity. As the New York Times wrote in his obituary, “[Carson] became the biggest, most popular star American television has known…. At his height, between 10 million and 15 million Americans slept better weeknights because of him.”
But who was this cultural icon, offscreen?
Here are 11 things we learned about Carson from his new biography:
Johnny Carson’s parents, Homer (1899 - 1983) and Ruth (1901 - 1985). Carson said he struggled throughout his life to please Ruth.
Frank Edwards/Fotos International/Getty Images
1. He had a complicated relationship with his mother
Ruth Carson was a tough, domineering woman with a sarcastic, biting sense of humor and a short fuse. (She reportedly once broke a whole set of dishes against the kitchen wall.) Even after Johnny’s success, she largely withheld her praise, and he spent his life trying to please her: in 1980 when he received the coveted Governors Award from the Television Academy for his body of work, he called to tell her. Her lukewarm response: “I guess they know what they’re doing.” When his mother died, according to Carson acquaintance Burt Reynolds, Carson declared, “The wicked witch is dead!”
As a young man, Johnny Carson billed himself as "The Great Carsoni" while doing magic shows, a form of entertainment that he was obsessed with.
Norfolk Daily News/AP Photo
2. Magic was his early love and primary interest
Almost pathologically shy all his life (parties made him intensely uncomfortable), Carson told the Los Angeles Times in 1986, “I think my reading a book at 12 called Hoffmann’s Book of Magic probably changed the course of my life.” From then on, the Great Carsoni, as the teen called himself, was obsessed, performing every chance he got and practicing on his family. Although he was nearly as reclusive as Howard Hughes when he was off the air during his Tonight Show years, Carson summoned the leading magicians to his house in Malibu to perform and show him the latest developments in the art.
During World War II, Johnny Carson served as a Navy communications officer.
Alamy
3. He learned the necessity of laughter the hard way
Enlisted in the Navy during WWII, he became a communications officer who decoded encrypted messages. At one point, he was assigned to go down into a hole in the stern of a bombed ship to supervise the recovery of 20 corpses. “Jesus, that was an awful experience,” he recounted to Time magazine in an unpublished interview. “They’d been down there 18 days by that time, and I want to tell you, that was a terrible job.” Wrote author Zehme, “He profoundly came to understand the greater importance of inciting laughter as essential misdirection away from daily human fatigue and lonesome misery.”
Johnny Carson dancing with Florence Henderson. The talk show host had several other talents away from the hosting desk, including dancing and archery.
Ron Tom/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images
4. Carson had surprising other talents
He was wickedly good with a bow and arrow. In 1959, he went on I’ve Got a Secret and shot an apple perched on the head of its trembling host, Garry Moore. He was also not bad at dancing the hula.
5. The host was a victim of death threats and at least one extortion attempt
“He got death threats in the mail weekly,” former Tonight Show co-head writer Andrew Nicholls says. “And he still went through the curtain.” In the ‘70s, another Tonight Show writer walked into Carson’s office “to find him bare-chested, an F.B.I. agent fitting him with a wire” after Carson dropped off what the criminal thought was $250,000 in an extortion sting. Police nabbed the perp.
Johhny Carson and his first wife, Jody, with their sons Christopher, left, Richard and Cory at their home in Encino, California, in the mid-1950s.
Archive Photos/Getty Images
6. He was a lousy husband and father
Married four times, Carson always put the show before family. “He was too busy for us,” said his first wife, Jody, the mother of his three sons. Cory, the youngest of the three, noted, “Work was easy for him, family was not. Imagine witnessing the little guests that would frequent the show and having my dad absolutely enthralled with their every word. What did they have that we didn’t?” Years later, the famous host admitted, “If I had given as much to marriage as I gave to The Tonight Show, I’d probably have a hell of a marriage.”
Johnny Carson with his third wife, Joanna. The talk show host was married four times.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
7. Drinking made him mean, and his wives bore the brunt
Throughout his marriages, Carson, who was known to pound the wall with his fist after something went wrong on the air, took out his frustrations on his wives in “legendary rows,” Zehme writes. He often drank to blackout, and that, coupled with his nasty temper, made for frightening times in public (he tipped over a table in Las Vegas) and physical bruises in private. Said third wife, Joanna, “Anything could set him off. I remember my son ran out of the bedroom and said, ‘Did he hurt you, Mom? Did he hurt you?’”
As Carson put it to Mike Wallace in 1979, “I found out I just did not drink well. And when I did drink — rather than a lot of people who become fun-loving, gregarious, and love everybody — I would go just the opposite. And it would happen like that!” he added, smacking his hands together.
8. His personal pain was enormous
In an unusual moment of candor, he told Playboy magazine in 1967 that his divorce from Jody, his college sweetheart, was “the lowest I’ve ever felt, the worst personal experience of my life.” She didn’t feel the same; she said he totally dominated her (“He selected my clothes. I was a captive”), and prayed he would fall to his death while he was hanging outside of the house washing windows.
“I have never had a more intimate relationship with anyone than I have had with you,” he wrote in a letter to her as the marriage was crumbling. “Perhaps my own capacity for happiness is lacking. I feel so insecure at times that I lash out and make those closest to me miserable.”
A possibly worse moment came in 1991 when his middle son, Rick, the one most like him, died in a car accident. Carson spoke emotionally of it on the air, but did not attend Rick’s memorial service, fearing his presence would turn it “into a circus.”
9. He got the jitters
Though he practiced detached coolness on TV, privately, “the outward relaxed appearance often does not match the inner feelings,” he wrote in a survey for Esquire magazine in 1962. “Sometimes after a program someone will comment on how relaxed I seemed to be…when in truth, I felt like I was coming unglued.” To stave off anxiety, he drummed with his pencil, wore lucky cuff links, and bounced before he went on stage.
Johnny Carson bids goodbye in May 1992 after nearly 30 years as host of "The Tonight Show."
Alice S. Hall/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images
10. He blindsided NBC about his retirement
Carson was so secretive about his planned exit from The Tonight Show that when he made the announcement to an assemblage of NBC brass at Carnegie Hall in 1991, they hadn’t seen it coming. It “drove NBC crazy,” Bill Carter, then the TV reporter for the New York Times said. “They had no press release, they didn’t know what to do.”
"Tonight Show" announcer Ed McMahon, left, and Johnny Carson on set in the mid-1970s.
NBCUniversal via Getty Images
11. Carson said he would have done it all again — The Tonight Show part, anyway
In his moving, celebratory last night as host, the show played a montage of highlights from his legendary run, to which he replied, “If I could magically somehow make that tape you just saw run backward, I’d like to do the whole thing all over again.” Zehme adds, “In that moment, at least, he may well have meant it.”
AARP Membership
Join AARP for only $15 per year with automatic renewal. Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of benefits, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP The Magazine.
You Might Also Like
Stephen King Delivers a Thrilling Mystery
The master of the macabre has done it again in his latest novel
John Grisham's 'Framed' HIghlights Injustice
"Framed" details 10 shocking cases of wrongful convictions
10 Reasons Long-Term Marriages End in Divorce
It's not just celebrities who are splitting up after decades together