Johnny Carson

by Henry Bushkin

  In another questionable deal, Werblin had set up a company called Raritan Enterprises to produce The Tonight Show. The main reason Werblin did this was to allow himself to serve as executive producer of the program and pay himself $6,000 a week for the very little work that he performed. This was a classic show business tactic that management types still use in Hollywood to get slices of various pies. Had he actually contributed anything to The Tonight Show, or had he used Raritan to produce other programs that would have put money in Johnny’s pocket, then no one would have begrudged Sonny his take. But this was a no-show, do-nothing position that would have delighted a mafioso, and Sonny’s cut amounted to a 20 percent commission on Carson’s then weekly salary of $30,000. Raritan also paid the rent on a suite of very posh offices that Werblin had rented at 641 Lexington Avenue, at Fifty-fourth Street. Shutting down that company would mean Johnny would be paying that rent since he guaranteed the lease. So far as I could see, enriching Werblin was Raritan’s sole function.

  One evening Judy and I were invited to dinner with Sonny and his wife, Leah. As Leah Ray, she had been a well-known vocalist in the Big Band era, performing with the Tommy Dorsey and Phil Harris orchestras and acting in a dozen films opposite Maurice Chevalier, Bob Hope, and other notables. They took us to Lüchow’s, the famous German restaurant on Fourteenth Street in Manhattan. Its old-world style and décor—one wall was lined with beer steins, another with animal heads—could only be described as early oompah. I was looking forward to hearing some inside sports gossip and some bawdy show biz tales, but that was not to be, because in no time, both Werblins were plastered. One was accustomed in those days to seeing drunk patrons in bars and tipsy diners in restaurants, far more so than today, but it was still shocking to see an older couple like the Werblins get absolutely blotto in the middle of a prestigious eatery. Judy was just speechless at the sight. On the plus side, the sauerbraten and dumplings were excellent.

  Crossing the Queensboro Bridge on the way home, Judy and I discussed Johnny’s predicament. “Look what’s going on,” I said. “His wife is cheating on him. His manager is screwing him, his agents are exploiting him, and his producer’s wife has been conspiring with Joanne to cuckold him. What a goddamn mess.”

  “He’s going to have to fire Rudy,” Judy said. “The divorce proceedings are going to get ugly and you might have to call Jeannie as a witness. Johnny can’t have Rudy being the producer under those circumstances.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “And he’s going to have to get rid of Sonny.” I guess I must have registered some shock at Judy’s cold-bloodedness, but she went on. “You don’t think so? You saw him tonight. Sonny can’t manage his own affairs. How’s he going to manage Calamity John’s?”

  “Calamity John. That’s pretty funny. But what am I going to say to him? I hardly know the man.”

  “Just be honest with him, Henry. It probably doesn’t matter—he runs through managers, agents, wives, and producers like tissues. You’ll probably be gone in a month yourself.”

  Judy knew me well enough to know that I was already thinking that the best thing—indeed, the only thing—for me to do was just lay out the situation in all of its unappealing detail. When I did, one day at his new apartment on East End Avenue after tennis, Johnny took it surprisingly well; maybe so many people had been blowing smoke up his ass for so long that the facts were a refreshing change.

  “That cocksucker!” said Carson. “How dare he! I signed whatever Sonny put in front of me. I guess I wasn’t paying attention, but he’s an asshole for doing that to me. But I was the schmuck. This should be a lesson to you, Henry. Don’t ever let me sign something like that again.”

  Sonny didn’t seem to mind getting the heave-ho. I worked out the details with his lawyer, Bob Shulman, who at least had the decency to act a bit embarrassed by his client’s avarice. Of course, it was easy for Werblin to go. We weren’t looking for blood or compensation, we just wanted to see him gone. Very well fixed, he hardly needed the income. And he might well have been relieved. At least there would be no more evenings disturbed by one angry Carson or the other banging on his door.

  Once Werblin was out, one of my first priorities was to undo the ties between him and Johnny. The clothing deal was rewritten. First I flew to Chicago and met with the CEO of Hart Schaffner & Marx. I told them that Werblin was out and that unless Johnny replaced Werblin in the deal, Carson would no longer wear their clothes on television. I’m not sure exactly how things were handled, but Werb-lin’s stock was transferred to Johnny, who would also be paid a $400,000 annual modeling fee for posing in the suits for advertisements. Raritan was shut down, and with Sonny’s departure, there was an immediate and substantial increase in the funds flowing straight to Johnny’s wallet. Carson was still stuck with the lease on the office space, but I found myself in a position to help Johnny with that in a more direct way.

  I had resolved to make a bold move and start my own firm. Beldock and Kushnick had been very good to me. As soon as Carson became my client, they made me a partner and raised my salary to $35,000 a year, a princely sum back then. But I thought I could do better. I knew that Johnny would pay me $6,000 a month and that I could attract other clients. Moreover, I had met two smart, energetic young attorneys who had invited me to open a firm with them. Jimmy Walsh represented Joe Namath and several other football players (the famous Noxzema shaving-cream ad with Namath was entirely Jimmy’s doing). Arnold Kopelson had considerable expertise in the financing of motion pictures by virtue of representing Chemical Bank. He went on to become the producer of such enormously successful films as The Fugitive, Twisted, and the Oscar-winning Platoon. Not only did I respect them as attorneys, but we were good friends and I felt more simpatico with them than I did with Howard and Jerry. I brought my secretary, Melissa Webster, from the old law firm, who was someone Carson liked very much. He never minded speaking with her, and she often assisted him in making arrangements that he didn’t want to discuss with his own secretary. For obvious reasons.

  Of course we needed offices, and the availability of the Raritan space was a godsend. Johnny was on the hook for six grand a month. Jimmy and Arnold and I agreed that we would each pay $1,000 a month to Raritan, saving Carson a bundle, and getting a pretty sweet deal ourselves. The beautiful offices were perfectly located and fully furnished. Judy loved the move, her parents loved it, and nobody loved it more than my mom and dad, who were very proud of their son, Johnny Carson’s lawyer. Johnny always kidded me about my parents, Mary and Al. When I took my dad to The Tonight Show studio, you’d think by the way he acted that he ran the network. Perhaps he was slightly uncomfortable with all the trappings of his son’s success, and at times he behaved insufferably. Yet Johnny always treated my parents warmly.

  Now that I was up to my ass in alligators, I needed some help. So as a parting gift to my friends at the firm of Beldock and Kushnick, I asked them to handle Johnny’s issue with the William Morris Agency. We all recognized that they were entitled to 10 percent of what Johnny was actually making on the contract that had been negotiated by Arnold Grant, and every week they got $300. Their position, that they were entitled to 10 percent of the deferred compensation, was just crazy. Their weekly bill for $9,700 that they insisted on sending was something Carson found galling and insulting, since they knew that they were asking for more than triple what Johnny was actually earning. Naturally this infuriated him.

  “William Morris can go fuck themselves. How dare they charge me for money I don’t have?”

  With my time absorbed by the divorce, I turned the matter over to Jerry Kushnick. Jerry solved the problem with one phone call. He got on the line with his good pal Norman Brokaw, an important figure at the William Morris office.

  “Here’s our offer,” he told Brokaw. “Drop the claim or no William Morris clients will ever be booked on The Tonight Show again.”

  It’s hard to say if Carson was prepared to carry out the threat. Pretty far, I would say
, although there comes a point when you are just spiting yourself. There certainly would have been times, for example, when NBC would have wanted stars of their shows who were Morris clients to be booked, and it would have been hard to explain a refusal to play ball. It didn’t matter; William Morris yielded easily, and in gratitude, Johnny gave Jerry and me his tickets to the Muhammad Ali–Joe Fraser fight in Madison Square Garden, the hottest tickets in town. But Johnny never forgave William Morris. In 1979, when Johnny was hosting the Oscars for the first time, one of the big films that year was a sci-fi release from Disney called The Black Hole. During the show, Johnny did his Carnac the Magnificent routine (wearing the cheesy nylon cape over his smart Certo tux). Holding an envelope to his forehead, he intoned, “And the answer is The Black Hole.” He then opened the envelope and read the question: “Where does your career go when you sign with William Morris?” The most prestigious audience in all of show business hooted its appreciation.

  In the weeks to come, my involvement in Johnny’s affairs kept growing. As I worked on the divorce, I fully expected to hear that he was looking for a new manager, or an agent, or even that he was considering a new lawyer. Instead, bit by bit, the items that had been in Werb-lin’s portfolio were handed off to me. Before too much time passed, I was acting as his attorney, agent, personal manager, business manager, public relations agent, messenger, enforcer, tennis partner, and drinking and dining companion. If Johnny needed something done, I was the one who did it. And instead of paying three advisors, he paid one.

  Then came the day when I was sitting in Johnny’s apartment and he asked me to join him while he interviewed a candidate for the job of executive producer of The Tonight Show (yes, Rudy had been fired). “Sure, I’d be happy to,” I said, but I was surprised. “But what do you expect me to add to the discussion? I don’t know anything about the production of The Tonight Show, or any other show for that matter. And this guy knows a ton.”

  “Henry, it’s time you got to know some of these things,” Carson said. “Look, I’ve been screwed so many times by other people, you’re the only one around I trust right now. Whatever you do, don’t bullshit me. Just lay it on the line. Okay? Just say what you think. Is he full of crap or can he really pump new energy into my show? I’d like your opinion.”

  “Okay,” I replied. “What should I be looking for?”

  “Most people in this business will do or say most anything to get a job,” Carson said. “Tell me if you think he’ll be able to challenge me.

  “Your role as my lawyer is going to involve a lot of different things. But the one thing I don’t need is any advice on how to run my show. Stay away from that. From time to time, I’ll need you to cover my ass when I do or say something stupid. Mostly make sure I don’t get fucked over again.”

  With his affairs in an obviously shambolic state, was he grasping at straws by having me sit in on such an important meeting?

  After the interview, he asked for my opinion. “Well,” I said, “since you want my honest opinion, here it is: I have no clue if he’s capable or not, except that he has an excellent background. He’s charming and as smooth as a baby’s ass. But he lived with his mother until he was fifty-three years old, and that seems a little fucked up to me.”

  Carson grinned. “I’d like to see him live with my mother for a week! If you think he’s fucked up now, wait till he’s spent time with her.” Even genial George Smith laughed at that.

  “But he sure seems to know every big name in the business,” I added, “unless he’s full of shit. But personally, I liked him a lot.”

  “Yeah, me too,” said Johnny. And with that, Johnny decided to hire Fred de Cordova, the man who would produce The Tonight Show for the next twenty-two years.

  During this period, somebody—Judy, probably—showed me a copy of an issue of Life magazine that was published just a few months before Johnny and I met. If I’d read it when it came out, it didn’t stick with me. Reading it after having met him, it struck me like a thunderbolt. In the piece, journalist Joan Barthel describes Johnny as a man “burdened by layers of shyness . . . of insecurity and suspicion built up over years of feeling deserted by agents, let down by associates, taken for granted by NBC, surrounded by yes men, and misled by bad advice. When a friend said to him recently ‘Sometimes you’ve got to trust people,’ Carson replied bleakly, ‘But who?’”

  It was shocking to realize that he’d been searching for an answer to that question for months and that the answer he found was me.

  4

  1972: Joanne and Joanna

  VERY SOON, I came to a significant and life-changing epiphany: representing Johnny Carson wouldn’t be like any of the typical strictly business attorney-client relationships I had seen during my early years of practice. When I worked for Beldock and Kushnick, I had seen many clients. Some of them needed more attention than others, and some were closer friends than others, but none of them absorbed the kind of time I was devoting to Carson. I was his lawyer, agent, manager, janitor, and more. Like the proverbial slowly boiled frog, a story often used as a metaphor for people who are unable to react to gradual changes, I suddenly found myself up to my neck in Carson’s professional and personal drama.

  From the start, I saw him nearly every day. Several times a week we played tennis at the Vanderbilt Club, usually between ten-thirty a.m. and noon. Located in the Grand Central Terminal Annex in what had once been CBS studios, the club had just undergone a posh makeover and was the popular new place where luminaries like Mayor Lindsay and Baseball Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg came to play. Hank and I became good pals, and later he sponsored me for membership in the posh Beverly Hills Tennis Club.

  It is no exaggeration to say that I acted on the assumption that playing tennis with Johnny was part of my job description. Had I stopped, he might have found a different partner, but I didn’t feel secure enough to risk it.

  These would be the first of hundreds of tennis matches that the two of us played, and anyone who has ever played a game against a boss will understand what I mean when I say we practiced more diplomacy in those games than Henry Kissinger did during his entire career. Johnny was not a particularly gifted player, but he was devoted to the sport, and he thought he was better than he was. I did my utmost to make any match closer than it really was, usually by calling many out balls in. It was an informal handicap system. The worse he played, the bigger the handicap, and therefore the more often I had to shout “Great shot!” in order to make him feel better on the court. Some days his game was too wild and there was nothing I could do, and on those days I knew I would be getting a call from Freddy de Cordova. “How bad did you beat him today, Henry?” the producer would gripe. “I hope you enjoyed it, because he’s taking it out on the rest of us. For Christ’s sake, Henry, would it kill you to let him win once in a while?” I sympathized with Fred and, in fact, I frequently threw games. But I would never, ever acknowledge to Freddy that this was anything I could control because he’d call me every day and campaign to have me throw every set. “Are you sure he wasn’t talking to his mother?” I would invariably respond. Even more than losing at tennis, a call from Ruth Carson could drive Johnny nuts.

  After we finished playing, I showered and went to my office, just fourteen short blocks away in Midtown, while Johnny went back to his place to shower and change for work. New York was perfectly set up for Johnny. He loved everything about the city, and his driver was always standing by. “New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most of it unsolved” was one of his most favorite lines.

  Three or four times a week, we got together again in the evening. We hit all the favored hangouts of the rich and celebrated: Patsy’s, Toots Shor’s (before it closed down), the 21 Club, and the Playboy Club. For a while we were joined by Arthur Kassel, who felt that his role in brokering this union entitled him to inclusion. But for Johnny, a little of Arthur went a long way, and I regularly had to explain to Arthur that Johnny and I would be discu
ssing matters covered by attorney-client privilege, and therefore he couldn’t join us. “Say no more,” Arthur would discreetly reply.

  Arthur would eventually get himself exiled permanently from Johnny’s circle through a singularly stupid act. One day Johnny was flying from New York to Los Angeles with his son Rick. Arthur wanted to sit with Johnny, but the flight was fully booked, so Arthur used his law enforcement juice to have Rick bumped to a later flight, and Arthur took his seat. Once Carson got wind of the lie, he cut Arthur out of his life. But Kassel and I maintained our friendship.

  Along with Arthur, others would often join us—Ed McMahon, Sonny Werblin for a while, Joe Mullen, and Johnny’s accountant, Warren Shine, were regulars, and we constantly ran into people from the network or other comedians who joined us. I particularly remember one amazing night when Johnny and I went to Le Club in the East Fifties, one of the first cosmopolitan dinner clubs in New York. We ran into George Plimpton—prolific journalist, editor of the Paris Review, elegant man about town. He and Carson settled into a dazzlingly witty repartee, which eventually led to Carson doing magic tricks, which Plimpton hilariously and unsuccessfully attempted to imitate. We then ended the evening at P. J. Clarke’s with Carson issuing a blanket invitation to Plimpton to appear on his program. Plimpton, in return, invited Johnny to one of his upcoming parties. Plimpton frequently accepted; I’m sure Johnny never did.

  Johnny’s favorite places to eat were the restaurants of Steak Row, the steakhouse-rich group of blocks between Lexington and Second Avenue in the East Forties. Carson loved them all—Christ Cella, Colombo’s, the Palm, Joe & Rose’s, Pietro’s, Scribe’s, the Pen & Pencil. But his very favorite had to be Danny’s Hideaway, which the inimitable Dante Charles Stradella—a dynamic personality packed in a five-foot-two, 130-pound body—had started in the fifties as a six-seat, one-room eatery with his Mamma Rosa cooking and him waiting tables and tending bar. A decade later the restaurant’s eleven dining rooms, the walls of which were covered with photos of celebrities, most of them posing with Danny, filled a four-story building and seated three hundred. Outside there was a sixty-foot awning that read Danny’s Hideaway and His Inferno; His Music Room; His Menu Room; His Key Room; His Nook.