Johnny Carson

by Henry Bushkin

  I had met Arthur through Dan Paulson, a childhood friend. Dan had partnered with Arthur to make police training films, and they came to me for legal advice. I was amused by this guy Arthur, a born raconteur who lived and breathed NYPD. He wore Nino Cerruti suits and monogrammed shirts garnished with solid-gold revolver-shaped cuff links, and raced around the city in a long black Cadillac that sported four antennae, just like official cop cars. In normal conversation he would describe people as mutts and mopes and perps and skells, and he once said a police officer subdued a suspect by giving him a wood shampoo. I thought he was a riot, and we hit it off from the start.

  Arthur still lived with his parents in Brooklyn, and our apartment quickly became his second home. Judy didn’t seem to mind. She was a flower of the South, and I think she was beguiled by this authentically Runyonesque character in her kitchen. A genuine man about town, Arthur knew everybody who might be anybody, or at least said he did. (Later, after he moved to Los Angeles, he would marry Tichi Wilkerson, who owned the Hollywood Reporter, which gave him great clout in the film industry, and he partnered with Sylvester Stallone in opening the Beverly Hills Gun Club.) No doubt Arthur parlayed his connection to Carson and the other celebrities he glommed on to to gain entrée to the politicos and city officials who would buy his products and services. That was his method; although he was a very good friend to me and many others, Arthur primarily looked out for number one, which is why I was slightly skeptical when he called me one afternoon with an offer that seemed a little too good to be true.

  “How would you like to meet Carson?”

  “Carson who?”

  “Johnny, you jerk.”

  “Like on The Tonight Show?”

  “The same.”

  “Look, Arthur, I’m up to my neck in contracts. I’m not much interested in padding the audience at some taping.”

  “No, my friend, nothing like that. How would you like to go up to his offices at NBC and talk to the guy?”

  Actually I thought maybe Arthur was playing some kind of joke, but that really wasn’t his style. “Why would anyone like Johnny Carson want to meet me?”

  “You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?” Arthur then explained that Mr. Carson and his wife were going through a rough patch in their marriage. “I told Johnny that you were just the man who could help.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Carson could have every high-priced matrimonial attorney in Manhattan standing in his office at the snap of a finger. He’ll take one look at me and throw us both out.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Arthur said. “Carson doesn’t trust lawyers—not any he’s met, anyway. I convinced him that you’re a straight shooter and the two of you should talk.”

  Skeptical but excited, I agreed to a meeting with Arthur and Johnny the next day. I couldn’t wait to tell my bosses.

  It was almost comic to see the surprise on their faces. “Why you?” Kushnick asked, stating the obvious question. But my bosses had both been in entertainment long enough to know what a funny business it was. Every year people emerged from nowhere to become major stars, and they brought all sorts of peculiar ideas with them. “Enjoy yourself,” Howard Beldock advised in his gravelly voice. “Just don’t be too disappointed if nothing happens.”

  Sleep did not come easy that night. Try as I might, I could not imagine how I was supposed to fit into the star-studded world of Johnny Carson. This was a man I had been watching since high school, when I’d come home and flip on his ABC game show Who Do You Trust?, the show that first brought him national prominence. And I was a regular viewer of The Tonight Show, which Carson had been hosting now for the past seven years, during which he had surpassed the popularity of his illustrious predecessors Steve Allen and Jack Paar. Most everyone I knew tuned in nearly every night. We could all imitate Ed McMahon saying “Heeeeeeeeeere’s Johnnnnnyyy” and “Hey-yo!” and we could all perform our own a cappella versions of the Paul Anka–composed Tonight Show theme. Everyone could quote lines from Carson’s monologue and from Carnac the Magnificent and his other bits, and you’d hear them snapped out at water coolers, cocktail parties, and barbershops for weeks after Johnny first uttered them. Carson was the guy so many of us wanted to be: confident, suave, full of fun, and fast with a quip. Plus, he was cool. He looked cool; he dressed cool; he was likely the first handsome comedian of the television age. The medium’s pioneers, performers like Milton Berle and Sid Caesar and the other comedians our parents liked, traced their roots to vaudeville, where they had to mug and vamp to get the attention of the patrons in the back row. They carried that style into their TV work. Carson was part of the next generation; he grasped that he owned the camera the way Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra had grasped that they owned the microphone. That understanding made him more natural, more relaxed, cooler. He didn’t have to fight for attention because the camera found him. He didn’t have to bug out his eyes and gape to get a laugh; all he had to do was arch an eyebrow. At forty-five, he was reaching the pinnacle of his craft, and under his administration, The Tonight Show had ceased being an interesting lagniappe tossed in at the end of the broadcast day. It had become an essential part of the culture.

  Between the moment I hung up the phone with Arthur and the time I walked into Johnny’s offices at NBC, I spent as much time as I could researching the man and his career. He was born in Iowa in 1925 but raised in Nebraska by his mother, Ruth, and father, Homer (called Kit), a power-company manager. He served in the navy, went to the University of Nebraska, broke first into radio and then into television in Omaha, and then went to LA, where, in a typical up-and-down television career, he apparently took a shot at every opportunity that came down the pike. He wasn’t NBC’s first choice to succeed Jack Paar, but after rejections from Bob Newhart, Jackie Gleason, and Joey Bishop, Carson got the gig and debuted on The Tonight Show in October 1962, with guests Groucho Marx, Tony Bennett, Rudy Vallee, Mel Brooks, and Joan Crawford.

  He caught a break and made the most of it. Television was a more earnest medium then; Carson set himself apart with his easy command. He just never seemed ruffled, and, in fact, he would invite the worst of circumstances, leaving a few stinkers in his Carnac routines so that he could glower at a groaning audience and say, “May a love-starved fruit fly molest your sister’s nectarines.” One writer had once noted that Johnny could spot a flaw in his delivery before uttering the first syllable; another said that he possessed the fastest, most exquisite audience reaction meter of any comedian alive.

  The next evening, after the late-afternoon taping of The Tonight Show, Arthur and I entered the art deco lobby of NBC headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. I was nervous and excited. Would I make the right impression? Would he see me as just another stumbling boob with a briefcase? What awed me as much as anything was going into the building. Headquarters of the Rockefeller family, home to NBC News, source of significant cultural and public affairs programs, the splendid art deco skyscraper was a symbol of power, wealth, and pride. All my life I’d passed by it without ever going inside, even though my office was less than ten blocks away. Like a Londoner passing Buckingham Palace or a Roman walking by the Vatican, I felt Rockefeller Center was something that would always be within my sight but never within my grasp—until today.

  Carson’s secretary, a cute redhead in a short black dress, escorted us into Johnny’s private office. It was impressive. Wide windows presented a panoramic view of the Midtown skyline; with dusk falling, the lights in the office buildings twinkled against the pink and orange smears of the sky. I couldn’t tell you how the room was decorated, other than to say it was sleek and modern and looked like it might have served as a set for photographs in Esquire or New York magazine. The men I worked for had nice offices, but theirs were places where money was earned; here it was taken for granted. Before I sat down, I noticed a needlepoint pillow on the sofa, something that seemed stylistically out of place. Then I read its embroidered message: ASSUMPTION IS THE MOTHER OF ALL FUCKUPS. Funny—bu
t was I in on the joke or the butt of it?

  Carson came in and immediately got down to business. There wasn’t even any small talk with Arthur. A man who I thought embodied the genial, witty host acted like the guy at the B. Altman’s department store where I interviewed for a summer job in high school, indifferent to me and impatient to be done. It seemed like something was distracting him, maybe even making him tense. When he asked questions, he did little more than read my résumé back to me. “You went to Vanderbilt Law School? You’re a member of the New York Bar?” It was as if I were the last guest on the program as time was running out and he was throwing me questions until the music came up. I was becoming seriously confused and not a little impatient at what was shaping up to be a big letdown. “Just don’t be too disappointed if nothing happens,” I could hear Howard Beldock saying. Finally he asked a question that surprised me completely. “You play tennis, right?”

  “Yes. I played on my team in college. Why?”

  “I play tennis. It’s my sport.” He added that he’d recently joined the Vanderbilt Tennis Club, whose members played on two courts directly above Grand Central Terminal. It was a very expensive club, named for the old tycoon who founded the railroad and endowed my school. “If you work for me, I’ll expect you to join me occasionally.”

  “I’d look forward to it.”

  That was it. Interview over.

  Outside in the hallway, I commented to Arthur, “Strange interview. I probably blew it.”

  “No, no, my friend. He liked you.”

  “How do you figure that? He barely showed a flicker of interest.”

  “Trust me,” Arthur said. “He’s going to call you again. And soon. Maybe tomorrow.”

  Although the interview didn’t seem to amount to anything, just the fact that I had actually met Carson earned me some instant celebrity with my family and friends, and I went through rounds of phone calls with my uncles and cousins and in-laws in Tennessee. What was he like? What did he say? Did he have a fancy office? Was he funny? I evaded most of their questions or embroidered answers. I had barely met the man. With my wife, though, I was candid. When she asked how it went, I said, “It was stupid. He didn’t seem very interested in me.” Still, I couldn’t let go of the idea that Arthur seemed so sure that Johnny would call.

  The next day was probably one of the least productive of my life. I spent the entire time at my desk, acting like a thirteen-year-old girl. I told myself he would never call and then tried to will the phone to ring. I chased my thoughts in circles, at first convincing myself that he hadn’t liked me and that there was no chance that he would call, and then persuading myself that Arthur thought he liked me and that maybe he would. When five o’clock rolled around, I gave up and snapped shut my briefcase. I would do my worrying at home.

  And just like that he called. Him personally—no secretary. “Can you meet me this evening?” he asked. He gave me an address on East Forty-ninth Street, which I recognized as the United Nations Plaza, the premier cooperative apartment complex in Manhattan. Senator Robert Kennedy had lived there, as well as various CEOs and the celebrated author Truman Capote. First I had gone to Rockefeller Center, now UN Plaza. This just kept getting better.

  When I arrived at Carson’s apartment, I was met at the door by his next-door neighbor, who just happened to be Sonny Werblin. Now, had I not just met Johnny Carson, meeting Sonny Werblin would easily have been the biggest event of my week, month, year, whatever. Sonny Werblin alone would have got the uncles and cousins calling (though probably not the in-laws in Nashville). Sonny was one of the leading sports impresarios of his era, the former president of the New York Jets who just a couple of years before had daringly signed the brash superstar quarterback and league-of-his-own sex symbol Joe Willie Namath and brought home a Super Bowl trophy in a game that was a historic upset. Bald and pudgy, wearing glasses with clear plastic frames, Werblin had once been one of Lew Wasserman’s top agents at MCA, and he still favored the MCA agent’s uniform of a black suit and starched white shirt; I felt my self-image rise just by shaking his hand. Werblin, as I would shortly learn, was Johnny’s manager.

  Carson lived in lavish style. His apartment, a two-story duplex on the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth floors, took up five thousand square feet of extremely scarce and expensive floor space. The living room was beautifully decorated in dark wood paneling accented with shades of deep brown; it was a little overwhelming for my taste, but I couldn’t help but be impressed with the wealth on display. Scattered throughout the apartment were heavy cut-glass ashtrays from Steuben and Cartier, along with sterling-silver boxes full of Pall Mall cigarettes, which accounted for the heavy cloud of blue tobacco smoke floating over the room. Johnny and Sonny and I made some small talk about Sonny’s horses—this made me think that maybe we were waiting for someone else to arrive—while Johnny’s houseman, George Smith, a cordial African American, busied himself serving drinks and emptying ashtrays.

  Suddenly Sonny got down to business. After stressing the confidentiality of our get-together, he offered what he obviously considered a telling observation: “Jack Benny was the unhappiest man I have ever known. And Benny is Carson’s idol.” Of course I knew who Jack Benny was but knew nothing about his private life, so I kept my mouth shut and summoned all the sangfroid I could muster.

  Sonny continued with astonishing bluntness. “Johnny is the second-unhappiest person I’ve ever known. I’m telling you this for a reason. Right here in front of Mr. Carson. Watch your step. Johnny’s mood can go from up to down in milliseconds. The situation about to be discussed would be dangerous if word gets out. Keep a tight lip.” This pronouncement did not appear to embarrass the star, but it sure had me flushing red. I waited for an opening to respond.

  Johnny, meanwhile, seemed impatient, as if he had somewhere else to be. He lit one cigarette after another, exhaling smoke that drifted up to merge with the floating haze. He looked at me as though he found my presence a distraction, and I became increasingly uncomfortable. Both men were drinking. Sonny nursed a Scotch while Johnny sipped red wine. I neither drank nor smoked, which added to my growing discomfort. Finally, out of desperation to fit in, I asked Johnny for a cigarette. He smiled, and I felt an immediate vibe, a relaxation. Just like that, I had passed some invisible test and was now more accepted. “I started smoking in 1939,” Johnny said without emotion, the first remark he’d made since I’d arrived that was directed at me.

  “Yes?” I didn’t mean for it to sound like a question, but it did.

  “I have no plans to quit smoking. I can’t quit. What’s more, I don’t want to quit, and I don’t want people around me telling me I should quit.” I hadn’t had the slightest inclination to say anything to him about smoking, but I wasn’t about to argue. Then, happy to have made that point, he changed the subject. “Henry,” he said, finally arriving at the purpose of our meeting, “I have reason to believe my wife is cheating on me. I also have an idea who the son of a bitch is that she’s shacking up with.” No wonder he had been restless—he’d been sitting on a bombshell!

  Joanne—née Joanne Copeland—was Johnny’s second wife. His first wife, Jody, was his college sweetheart. It was, as I was to learn, a fairly typical first marriage between young people. It produced three sons—Chris, Ricky, and Cory—but it did not withstand the demands or the sexual temptations of Johnny’s increasingly successful career. During his years hosting the quiz show Who Do You Trust?, the Carsons had a beautiful home in leafy Harrison, New York, but Johnny was seldom there, spending long hours at work before moving the party to Danny’s Hideaway or some other club until closing time, when, more often than not, he and a young lady adjourned to somewhere more intimate. Their divorce became final in 1963, and within months he married Joanne, a cute, vivacious former stewardess who had briefly worked as the hostess on a TV game show called Video Village. Now, seven years later, Johnny had substantial evidence that Joanne had secretly leased an apartment within blocks of their UN Plaza h
ome, which she used for clandestine rendezvous with her lover.

  “Well, I’ll be happy to file for divorce, if you want . . .”

  “No, I don’t want you to file for divorce,” he interrupted. “I want you to go with Arthur and me and some other guys when we break into the apartment to find evidence to prove the bitch is cheating on me.”