Johnny Carson

by Henry Bushkin

  The secret, subtle hand that facilitated the move belonged to Joanna. She saw the need for Carson to be surrounded by friends and allies. She not only encouraged me to make the move, she also quietly persuaded Johnny that he needed me to make the move. Once, when we were all sitting together, she subtly led the conversation to the subject of Sonny Werblin. “How did it happen that he owned half the business, and you were just a paid employee?” Her tone was full of sympathy and dismay, with not a hint of reproach.

  She had caught him in a reflective mood. “I was a dumb fuck back then,” Johnny said.

  “He used you,” I said.

  “Well, it won’t happen again.”

  “No,” I assured him. “I’ll make sure of that.”

  It was then that he suggested that I move to Los Angeles. He offered to help underwrite the move; what was even more surprising, he said that he would help me attract new clients. “I don’t expect to be somebody’s only client,” he said, “but I need to know that I’m number one. When Bruno and Shields signed Mike Douglas, I didn’t feel like I had their complete focus anymore. But I have confidence that I’ll have your personal attention, even if you have to have other clients.”

  “You will,” I assured him.

  The concern now was Judy Bushkin. It was not that she was against the move per se. It was just another leap into another great unknown. She had already made the adjustment from Nashville to Manhattan and was happy about how things were going. We no longer lived in an apartment in Forest Hills; we were now the Bushkins of Park Avenue, living in a beautiful apartment at Eighty-fourth and Park, a short stroll from Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Judy liked New York from the beginning, but lately she had begun to think of it as home. She was even planning to resume her studies at NYU once our son, Scott, was in preschool.

  The one thing that bothered her was the amount of time I was spending with Carson. When he first became my client, she was very understanding of the hours I devoted to him. Maybe she was as excited as I to have this rare and exciting creature in our lives and was willing to do her share of the sacrificing. Or maybe she felt some sympathy for this lonely, troubled man who had been magically entrusted to my care. But as time wore on, and my relationship with Carson apparently solidified, she begrudged my absences, particularly my many visits to California, and especially when she became pregnant with our second child, our daughter, Dana.

  One weekend we went to Connecticut, supposedly for a little peace and quiet together. It didn’t turn out to be a very happy few days, with Judy spending much of it in tears. “Why do you have to spend so much time with Johnny and that Arthur Kassel?” she demanded. “I spend half my time alone.”

  I didn’t have any answers. I saw her point entirely. By that time, even men had heard enough about Betty Friedan and the women’s movement to know that no matter how much we scoffed and sneered, there were certain inequalities men profited from that were hard to justify. But Johnny was a big client, and he was my ticket. I didn’t know how many times I could tell him I wasn’t available to have dinner with him at Danny’s Hideaway, but I was reluctant to find out. I was a young man, and I didn’t have the confidence to find out whether Johnny would keep me around just on the basis of my fine legal skills, or whether I had to be his Swiss Army knife of a companion, attorney, manager, agent, henchman, crony, tennis pal, and corkscrew all in one.

  During that bicoastal year, Joanna kept encouraging me to make a deal with Johnny that would justify a permanent move. “Just talk to him, Henry,” she told me. “He likes you. He thinks you do good work. Just make your case.” Eventually she persuaded me, and on the fateful day when I arrived at their home to discuss my terms for relocating, I was more nervous than I had ever been in my life. “Relax,” she told me as she led me to Johnny’s den. “It’s in the bag.”

  She was more correct than I would ever have believed. The two-page, handwritten document stated that he would no longer pay me by the hour but would pay me a monthly retainer of $10,000, which was sufficient to cover my personal and office nut. He also agreed to pay my moving expenses and to loan me the down payment I would need to purchase a home. He spent less time reading the terms than you just did.

  “Okay,” he said, “you have yourself a deal. Let’s go hit some balls.”

  With that deal done, my cousin Marty began looking for a place where Judy and I could live. He found us a Spanish-style house to lease on the 700 block of Linden Drive in Beverly Hills. “This place is just terrific!” Marty exulted over the phone to us back in New York. As he described its features, I grew more and more excited, even as I could feel Judy grow cooler. No reflection on Marty, but she was reluctant to move into a place she hadn’t seen. When I mentioned her feelings to Johnny, he drove over and checked the house out for me—he lived just five minutes away. “It’s perfect!” he shouted over the phone, in a reprise of Marty’s call. “You’d be crazy not to take it.”

  “We’d be crazy to pay $2,000 a month on a place sight unseen,” Judy said, but she was beginning to feel ground down. “I suppose if Johnny says do it, you’ll do it,” she said. “Nipper hears his master’s voice.”

  Once again, it was Joanna who stepped into the breach. She was so welcoming to Judy, so gracious and inviting, that whatever reluctance Judy may have had about Los Angeles was replaced by an eagerness to keep building a friendship with Joanna. Several years older and worldlier, Joanna schooled Judy, treated her like a sister, introduced her around, and made her see what possibilities were in store. I know that as much as she genuinely liked Judy, and she did, Joanna was making this effort for Johnny. If Judy was happy, then I would be happy, and then I could focus on making Johnny happy.

  Judy finally decided she could cope with all this change under one condition: that we bring our nanny with us. That was fine with me. The Linden Drive house was owned by Aaron Ruben, the producer of such TV hits as The Andy Griffith Show and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. Compared to my New York apartment, this was a palace. It was a Spanish-style hacienda with four bedrooms, a pool, and guesthouse. Al and Mary Bushkin loved it, as did Judy’s parents, Max and Ruth Beck, and, of course, we did too. Life was good there. Our daughter, Dana, was born while we were living in that home. Johnny and Joanna sent mounds of flowers and baby gifts galore. We considered asking Johnny to be the godfather, but as Judy correctly pointed out, he had no ability to relate to kids, not even his own, so we asked Arthur Kassel instead.

  We lived there a year until the lease was up. We loved the house and offered Ruben $200,000 to buy it, but he declined. Judy began looking, and after a long search, settled on a Paul Williams colonial on Whittier Drive, north of Sunset. It had been the home of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, which in and of itself gave it a special cachet but it was pretty wonderful in its own right. It sat on a double lot with a separate guesthouse and pool house. I blanched at the $270,000 price tag, but Judy loved it, and Johnny and Joanna fed her enthusiasm. “Go for it!” Johnny said. “I’ll cover the down payment, you go get the mortgage, but don’t miss out on this one. It’s beautiful.”

  Between the purchase price and a few repairs and alterations, the house cost us literally every penny we had. There was no money left for furnishings. For a while, three adults, a five-year-old, and a newborn lived among the pieces that had previously filled an apartment. We added a couple of lawn chairs, but when we dreamed of having a spacious house, we didn’t think in terms of being able to play handball in it.

  Fortunately, the composers and music publishers Buzz Cason and Bobby Russell came along. In six years they had built a catalogue that included such hits as “Honey,” “Little Green Apples,” and “The Joker Went Wild,” and now they wanted to cash in. They hired me to negotiate a sale to the Lawrence Welk Publishing Group. When the deal went through, I received a $75,000 fee, much of which Judy used to create the home of her dreams. Marty Trugman’s wife, Ellin, was the decorator and did a tremendous job. My parents were thrilled when they saw
it. “Can you believe it?” my father kept asking. “Paul Newman’s house!”

  Some months after the sale—and, thankfully, after the redecoration had been completed—I looked out my front window and saw, sitting in the driver’s seat of a Porsche parked at the end of my sidewalk, the home’s former owner, Paul Newman. I went out and said hello. It turns out he and his wife were each running errands and decided to reconnoiter at their old home when they were finished. “Well, come on in and have a beer,” I said, and he accepted. He was delighted to see what we had done to the house. When I went upstairs to tell Judy that Paul Newman was in the living room, she was in shock. “Come down and say hello,” I encouraged, but she was too nervous, and as a result missed not only Newman but also Joanne Woodward when she later showed up.

  Meanwhile the Carsons now owned a splendid mid-century modern on two acres on St. Cloud Road in the tony part of lower Bel Air. Mervyn LeRoy, the producer of The Wizard of Oz and other great films, had owned it and as much as Johnny wanted it, he was reluctant to take out a mortgage. “See if you can figure out how I can pay for it in cash,” he told me. It turned out to be pretty easy. NBC owed him millions from his 1967 deferred compensation agreement. With several calls, they agreed to provide the funds for the house, and Johnny and Joanna moved in. Sonny and Cher were on one side of them, and Jerry Lewis on the other. Ron and Nancy Reagan were on the next block.

  Joanna Carson was a woman with great taste and style, and for perhaps the first time in her life, she had enough money to get the best of everything. She redecorated the house to reflect not just her persona but also the stature of her husband, and the results were stunning. Joanna made sure to include features specific to Johnny’s wants and needs. The grand living room was equipped with 35mm projectors (thanks to Mr. LeRoy), and ten or twelve guests could come over to have dinner and enjoy the latest movie in grand style. The first film I remember seeing there was a Jack Lemmon film, Save the Tiger, which Johnny insisted I see over my pleas that I needed to study for the California Bar exam that I was taking the next morning. (I guess he had confidence that I would pass; as usual, he was right.) As would befit one of the best-dressed men in Hollywood, Joanna provided Johnny with a dressing room that was as big as the master bedroom, where he could house the vast wardrobe that had been crafted by tailors in Chicago who were flown in three times a year for fittings. Carson’s favorite tailor in town was Barry “Dino” Certo, who probably made fifty outfits a year for Johnny at his shop on Brighton Way in Beverly Hills. Joanna took as much pride in Johnny’s appearance as he did.

  Joanna also tried to make their home a place where Johnny’s family would feel welcome. They were important to him, and so they were important to her, and her Italian sensibility told her that if you make the proper formal gestures of respect and affection, then not only will they be returned, but eventually they will also become heartfelt. In the house, there was a sumptuous set of rooms called the Princess Grace Suite because Mervyn LeRoy had built the suite as a separate addition exclusively for Princess Grace to use when she visited. Joanna thoughtfully decided that the suite should be redone and reserved for Johnny’s parents to use on their visits. They would refer to it as the Ruth and Homer Suite. Other than his folks, no one would be invited to stay in that posh set of rooms.

  On Ruth and Homer’s earlier visits to Los Angeles, Johnny had always put them up at the Bel Air Hotel or the Beverly Hills Hotel. Now, with a new home, and with a new wife who was really working to establish a bond with Ruth and Homer, a hotel was out of the question.

  As the day of their first visit to the new home approached, Johnny grew increasingly tense. I had yet to meet his folks, but Johnny warned me how difficult his mother could be, how begrudging of compliments and how withholding of affection she was. “Everybody likes Dad,” he said, “but he lets her walk all over him. Every once in a while he lets out a peep, and it’s like the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia—she just rolls in the tanks.” I was going to get my first taste of her the next day at lunch.

  The next morning Carson called to cancel the engagement. “Joanna was bending over backward to make Mom feel welcome,” Johnny reported. “She took her on a tour of the house, explaining all the features. Mom said nothing. Silent. Like a fish. And I could see this was making Joanna anxious. Finally I said, ‘Well, Mom, how do you like the job Joanna did? It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ And Mom said, ‘Well, John, the wall covering reminds me of your aunt Maude’s dining room in Norfolk.’ And that was it!”

  I burst out laughing, and in a second, he did too.

  On all their subsequent visits, infrequent as they were, his parents stayed at a hotel.

  This was hardly a unique incident. As far as I could tell, Ruth Carson was a person who was impossible to impress and impossible to please. She seemed to take no pride or pleasure in her son’s accomplishments. The next day, Johnny took his parents to a party thrown by Kirk Douglas and his wife, Anne, where all the Hollywood elite were present. I had seen how hard it was for Johnny to socialize in crowds; it must have exhausted him to suffer all that backslapping and small talk while entertaining his parents. When they got back home, Carson asked, “Well, Mom, how did you like the party?”

  “Well, son,” she said, “I guess parties are the same all over the country.”

  When Johnny repeated her line to me the next day, he started to laugh again. “Yeah, all parties are the same. I’ve been to the volunteer fire department’s potluck supper in Norfolk, Nebraska. Fucking Kirk Douglas has got nothing on that. Chasen’s would kill to know the secret of June Olafsen’s macaroni and cheese casserole. Can you imagine? Joanna was crying after Mother’s remarks.”

  “How long are they staying?” I asked.

  “I just chartered a plane for them. I’m sending them up to my sister’s place. Catherine’s much better at dealing with them.”

  Once I saw how hard it was for Ruth to give a compliment, I wondered if this was connected to how hard it was for Johnny to accept one.

  A few years later, Johnny sent his parents around the world on a cruise to mark one of their wedding anniversaries. It was a forty-seven-day trip, with all accommodations entirely first class. Johnny even gave them an American Express card to cover anything they wanted to buy. “Dad,” he said, “use the card for everything you buy on the trip. It’s all on me.” A lot of us fantasize about being able to give our parents a gift as wonderful as that.

  Johnny never heard from them during the trip. Every few days he would bring up the fact that they had not called. “Can you believe it? Not a goddamn word. I send them on a fucking trip of a lifetime and they don’t call.” This continued on for the month and a half that they were gone.

  Johnny knew exactly when they would be arriving back in Scottsdale. Days passed, and he still hadn’t heard from them. Furious at their lack of fundamental courtesy, he finally called them. His dad answered. “How was the trip?” Johnny asked.

  “Hold on, son,” his father responded blandly. “I’ll get your mother on the line.”

  “All she said when she picked up the phone,” Johnny reported later, “was ‘Well, son, we are so happy to be home.’ That was it! No talk about the sights they saw, no comments on the food or rooms, no comments even about the weather! And certainly no thanks!” As before, Johnny laughed at his mother’s rudeness, but he didn’t really find it funny.

  Another time, Johnny sent his mother a mink coat for her birthday. This time Mom called to say she was sending it back. “It’s too fancy for Nebraska,” she explained, adding that better than a fur coat would be spending the winter in a warmer climate. That led to Johnny buying his folks a home in Scottsdale, Arizona. It would be nice to say that this made Ruth happy, but nothing did. The best that can be said is that she and Homer moved there, and that she didn’t complain.

  Once Judy and I settled in, I began focusing on work. I eventually closed my practice in New York, but Arnold Kopelson joined me in Los Angeles, and we partnered with m
y cousin Richard Trugman in forming a firm. Arnold and I had grown very close; he was more than my partner, he was now my best friend. I did nothing of significance without seeking his advice. Judy and I were also fond of his wife, Joy, who not long after moving to Los Angeles was diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer.

  One terrible night shortly after the Kopelsons moved into a home near us on Whittier Drive, Joy was rushed to the hospital. Judy and I hurried to the Kopelsons’ house to care for their children, and there we learned that Joy had passed away. She was a lovely woman who died far too young, and her family and friends were devastated.

  Fortunately, Anne, Arnold’s assistant of many years, was able to step into the void and give ongoing comfort to the children. In time, Arnold and Anne fell in love and married. Eventually they became partners in the film business as well.

  A big part of every day continued to be devoted to my number one client. His show taped at five-thirty in the afternoon and he didn’t go to the office until around two p.m. He had lots of time to kill, and I made sure to swing by and spend at least an hour with him every day. Sometimes that meant sunning ourselves by his kidney-shaped pool, but more often it meant hitting the courts at the Bel-Air Country Club, at least until his home court was built. Later I often met Johnny at the studio after the program. He and his producers critiqued every show immediately after completion. There were days when everything was perfect, and there were days that nothing worked. The skit sucked, the comedian flopped, and the sound went bad for ZZ Top. Fred de Cordova was the master of blowing smoke up Carson’s ass. Bobby Quinn and Peter Lassally were far more accurate in their observations. But Johnny always knew if the show worked. He always knew.

  I never said anything, and that’s why people tolerated my presence. I never tried to use my relationship with Johnny to undermine anyone at the program or force a role for myself in a place I didn’t belong. People knew that I had only one interest and that was Johnny’s well-being, and for that reason, I was treated warmly, like a friend of the family.