Johnny Carson
The incomparable “king of late-night television” was born John William Carson on October 23, 1925, in Corning, Iowa, to Ruth and Homer Lee Carson, who worked for the Iowa Service Company. He was eight years old when his parents moved with their three children—Johnny, his older sister, Catherine, and his younger brother, Richard—to Norfolk, Nebraska, where Homer took a job with the Iowa-Nebraska Light and Power Company. Johnny’s entertainment career began in Norfolk when, at the age of fourteen, he began performing magic as “The Great Carsini” at local venues. After receiving V-12 officer training at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, he joined the navy on June 8, 1943. He was commissioned as an ensign and served on the USS
Pennsylvania, stationed in the Pacific, after which he became a communications officer, decoding encrypted messages.
He returned to Nebraska when his navy days ended and attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. He graduated in 1949
with a B.A. in radio and speech and a minor in physics. In 1950, he went to work for radio and television station WOW in Omaha as a writer and host of a morning show called The Squirrel’s Nest. From there he headed to Los Angeles for a staff announcing job at KNXT-TV, where he hosted Carson’s Cellar, a sketch-comedy show, from 1951 until 1953. In that year Johnny’s sense of humor caught the eye of a regular viewer, comedian Red Skelton, who recruited him to join his weekly television variety series The Red Skelton Show as a writer. His absence from on-camera performing was short-lived. One night, minutes before airtime, Red Skelton collided with a breakaway door and was knocked unconscious. Johnny went onstage in his place and, on a moment’s notice, delivered Skelton’s monologue to a live national audience.
From the writers’ room of The Red Skelton Show he headed back in front of the camera again, first as host of a game show called
Earn Your Vacation in 1954 and then with his own variety hour, The Johnny Carson Show, in the 1955–56 season. Next came two concurrent game shows—he hosted Who Do You Trust?, where he met and worked with his future right-hand man, Ed McMahon, from 1957 until 1962, and during those same years he was a panelist on the classic To Tell the Truth.
In 1962 Jack Paar left his five-year run on NBC’s The Tonight Show, citing the fact that the pressure of putting on an hour of television five nights a week had become more than he could handle. On October 1, 1962, Johnny Carson made his debut as host of The Tonight Show, with Ed McMahon by his side. From that night until his retirement on May 22, 1992, he ruled late-night TV, won six Emmy awards, and wove his way into the fabric of the American culture. Across the country, everywhere from college campuses to retirement homes, the question, “Did you see the monologue last night?” might have been answered, “No,” but it was never answered, “What monologue?” On his first night he interviewed the legendary Groucho Marx. On his last night he was serenaded by superstar Bette Midler, in a historically classic television event. In between he interviewed everyone from politicians to musicians, dramatic actors, and comedians, securing some careers and compromising others, all the while keeping his own political views to himself—he believed his job was to be an entertainer, not a commentator. He could say more with one look into the camera than most television personalities can say in a long-winded paragraph, and no one appreciated talent more than he did.
No one was more frank and sometimes chagrined than Johnny about his multiple marriages, some of which ended very expensively. The first of his wives, and the mother of his three sons, was Joan Wolcott. Theirs was apparently a mutually unhappy marriage that lasted from 1949 until 1963. Next came Joanne Copeland, whom he married shortly after his “quickie” divorce from Joan Wolcott in 1963 and divorced in 1972, for which she received cash and artwork worth about half a million dollars and an annual $100,000 in alimony for the rest of her life. Wife number three was former model Joanna Holland. She and Johnny were married on September 30, 1972, just over a month after his divorce from Joanne Copeland was finalized. Joanna Holland filed for divorce from Johnny on March 8, 1983, and, thanks to California’s community property laws, walked away from the marriage with $20 million in cash and property. Last but not least came Alexis Maas, who was thirty-five when she married sixty-one-year-old Johnny Carson on June 20, 1987. They never divorced.
Without a doubt the greatest tragedy of his life was the death of his son Richard, who was killed on June 21, 1991, at the age of thirty-nine, when his car plunged down a steep embankment off of Highway 1 near San Luis Obispo, California. Johnny devoted the final segment of his first Tonight Show following the accident to a touching, deeply personal tribute to his son.
Johnny’s retirement as host of The Tonight Show in 1992 wasn’t necessarily intended to be his permanent retirement from show business. He strongly hinted at first that he might return to television if a new project excited or inspired him enough. But except for a handful of appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman and a 1993 NBC tribute to Bob Hope, his retirement turned out to be a permanent one after all. The notoriously private, semireclusive king of late-night spent the last years of his life quietly enjoying his home in Malibu. He was sleeping there on March 19, 1999, when he was awakened by severe chest pains. He was rushed to Santa Monica Hospital and underwent emergency quadruple-bypass surgery, from which he recovered.
But on January 23, 2005, at 6:50 a.m., Johnny Carson died of respiratory arrest at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after struggling for years with emphysema. He was seventy-nine. Out of respect for the wishes of his family, his body was cremated, and no public service was held.
From Francine
Johnny emerged from the tunnel into the waiting arms of his parents, an aunt, and his son Richard. As ecstatic as he was to be free of his perpetually struggling body, he found it almost jarring to be in an atmosphere of such peaceful, sacred bliss. He’s commented many times that he never realized how depressed he was throughout his most recent lifetime until he came Home and rediscovered happiness. His depression came from the difficult series of conflicts he charted for himself for what he quickly announced will be his last incarnation, compounded by the mutually challenging themes of Controller and Loner. He became legendary for being an unparalleled host to a wide variety of people, but off-camera there were very few people whose company he enjoyed or with whom he felt comfortable—in fact, left to his own devices he much preferred socializing as little as possible.
He enjoyed the power he came to wield over countless careers, but it made him even more guarded and untrusting, knowing he was often “liked” for the doors he could open. He was fiercely loyal, but quick to sever a relationship over a perceived slight.
He loved being loved but was, in his words, “a disaster” when it came to intimacy. Because of all those conflicts that he watched himself act out at the Scanning Machine and the depression he’d struggled with for so long, he devoted many months, in your time, to Orientation before he was ready to resume and fully appreciate his life on the Other Side.
His chosen passion here is astronomy, which he teaches and researches. He also enjoys sailing, tennis, and singing, at which he always wished he were more gifted on earth. Here at Home he has a beautiful baritone voice and loves performing with Rock Hudson, who was also a frustrated singer on earth, but who excels at it in his life here. He lives alone in a house he says is a precise duplicate of his house in Malibu.
One of his great regrets from his last incarnation was his “completely unfair, utterly inexcusable” temporary estrangement from his son Richard, for which he takes full responsibility, and he’s deeply grateful for the friendship they now enjoy.
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