Johnny Carson

by Henry Bushkin

  The audience laughed, but their eyes then drifted to Joanna, who seemed oblivious. Slyly smiling, she had eyes only for her man.

  Was this the high point of their relationship? It might have been. The generosity of her feelings was entirely clear, and he reciprocated not just with warmth but also with evident gratitude. In their years together, Johnny had grown: he became more confident, more assured. Part of that was his maturation, as a man and as a talent. But during their relationship, Johnny became more polished. She exposed him to fine wine, and he became a connoisseur. She taught him about art, and he became an astute collector. She arranged a trip to London and the Riviera, and he returned to those locations eleven straight years. It was as though part of him played up to Joanna. I’m not sure that before he met Joanna that Johnny would have even gone to Harvard or that he would have handled himself with such éclat.

  And yet they always fought. Two years after they married, they had a three-month separation. For a while the relationship survived its upsets. When critical moments came, Johnny expressed his remorse and then demonstrated it with an appropriate gift, like a diamond bracelet, or a Picasso. But there came a point when that wasn’t enough. There came to be too many moments when Ruth Carson’s chilly influence abruptly took over his disposition, when he would be indifferent to Joanna’s efforts and immune to her exertions and resentful of her emotional needs, and Joanna was simply too intelligent to suffer that behavior. And yet Johnny wouldn’t have ended it if things had only maintained this low level of aggravation. Johnny needed a cause for war—his own casus belli. In the case of Joanne, it was her infidelity. In the case of Joanna, it was her desire to attain independent status through her charity work and then by starting a fashion consultancy. The rule that he applied to agents and managers and lawyers also applied to wives: he had to be number one, without a meaningful number two.

  When we went to Harvard, Kenneth Tynan, the British journalist, critic, playwright, and producer, accompanied us. Known best today for Oh! Calcutta!, an all-nude review that became one of the longest-running shows in Broadway history (for a long time, it was number one), Tynan was a daunting intellectual with a wicked wit. He was present because he was writing a profile of Carson for The New Yorker, and never was there a better match of author and subject. Tynan and Carson had much in common, including excessive smoking, drinking, and an appreciation of Joanna, which Tynan, with his references to her “flashing eyes and quill-shaped Renaissance nose,” did not attempt to disguise. There were differences: though both were witty, Tynan was more malevolently so; though both had numerous amorous adventures, Tynan was more open about it. He may have been the one man on earth Johnny Carson envied, if only because Tynan, a man who was famous but who did not have a household face, was free to do anything, anytime, anywhere he wanted.

  Tynan’s profile of Carson appeared in the February 20, 1978, issue of The New Yorker. Smart and insightful, the article made me think about Johnny in ways I hadn’t before. Having been present during much of Ken’s reporting and having been interviewed for the piece, I found it fascinating to see what Tynan selected and emphasized and left out. But one short line stood out among all the rest. “When you’re at home,” Tynan asked Johnny, “whom do you entertain?”

  “Henry Bushkin,” Johnny said, “my lawyer, who’s probably my best friend.”

  This answer left me profoundly touched and somewhat astonished. We were certainly friends, but although we socialized together frequently and although our wives were close, never did I think of him as my best friend. I was always working when I was around Johnny, thinking of what he needed. Guys whom I could just relax and hang out with—that’s who I’d call my best friends.

  It had simply never occurred to me that he thought of me as his best friend.

  6

  1979: NBC—See Ya

  AS I LEARNED outside of the Mancinis’ house, Johnny Carson had, at some point in the beginning of 1979, during his sixteenth year captaining The Tonight Show, decided to bail on the most coveted spot in television, abandoning with it a compensation package in the neighborhood of $10 million a year. He’d had enough. He wanted out.

  We did not explore this subject when he first revealed his decision to me at the foot of the Mancinis’ driveway. Instead, as he and Joanna drove off, I picked my jaw up off the asphalt and headed home. First thing in the morning, though, even before we began our tennis match, I pressed him for an explanation.

  “I’m done,” he said. “I’m tired. Seventeen years is enough. I’m fifty-four years old. I don’t feel fifty-four, but that’s not the point. Can you imagine me doing this when I’m in my sixties? That would be absurd!”

  I was shocked. This was entirely unexpected, entirely out of character. “Johnny, you can’t quit like this. You have a contract that they won’t let you out of. They will never let you walk.”

  “Make it clear to them that I’m not leaving so I can work somewhere else.”

  “Be that as it may, your show is the most profitable show on the network. They’ll come after you for all the money they’ll lose in advertising revenue.”

  “That’ll never happen. They wouldn’t do that. Tell them I’ll do a few specials. Maybe after some time off I’ll do a weekly prime-time show.”

  “Fred Silverman has got a million problems at the network. You’re the only thing he can count on. He’ll go nuts.”

  “I don’t care. It’s not his ass in front of the camera every night, and it’s not yours, either. Nobody can force me to work.”

  That was the end of the debate about the future direction of Johnny Carson’s career. From that point on, the only question under discussion was not whether to proceed, but how.

  We agreed that we would give NBC six months’ notice. Johnny’s last night as host would fall on Monday, October 1, 1979, seventeen years to the day, and on the very same day of the week, that Groucho Marx stepped in front of the camera and introduced Johnny to the late-night audience, inaugurating his lengthy reign. “I’m telling you, the network will go fucking nuts when I tell them you’re quitting. They have no one to replace you.”

  “Oh, bullshit, they’ll figure it out. What was that line Charles de Gaulle said? ‘The graveyards are full of indispensable men.’” Johnny had absolutely no fear about the consequences of his decision. But I did. That’s one of the reasons we worked well together.

  The fact is Johnny had a lot more experience fighting with NBC, which was probably the source of his confidence. Almost from the beginning of his tenure, he butted heads with the network about salary, the length of the show, and the ridiculously tiny dressing rooms at 30 Rock. The arguments came to a head in May 1967, when the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists went out on strike. The issues in the dispute mostly had to do with newsreaders and studio announcers and nothing really to do with Carson or The Tonight Show, but AFTRA was Johnny’s union, and so he got on a plane and flew to Florida. The network countered by running repeats of The Tonight Show, not only without Johnny’s permission, but also without paying him. Johnny was irate.

  “What is the price that should be paid for a rerun when it’s used while your union is on strike?” he asked in a press conference. He then sent a letter to NBC canceling his contract.

  The network wasn’t worried. By their reckoning, The Tonight Show was a profitable and popular program without Johnny Carson before, and it could be profitable and popular without him again. They put out the line that Carson’s stand was all a smoke screen for his real demand, which was more money, and they began bringing in guest hosts like Bob Newhart and Jimmy Dean (not the actor, the sausage pitchman). ABC took a look at the subs and figured that a Tonight Show without Carson was a wounded wildebeest that could be plucked from the herd. They started a late-night talk show starring Joey Bishop.

  The Tonight Show audience, having grown to appreciate the work of the master, tuned out the substitute hosts, whose obvious unJohnnyness opened the possibility that NBC’s
domination of late night could be shaken. Moreover, the executives knew that they would be making the mistake of their careers if they let Carson leave NBC at the top of his career. Soon the network sued for peace. Arnold Grant then came in and negotiated the clever contract that gave Johnny a big raise but still left him broke. The network also agreed to give the show, which in some markets began at eleven-fifteen and at eleven-thirty in most others, a uniform starting time across the country, with Johnny’s monologue front and center in the program, right where he liked it.

  The man who paid the price for the network’s stupidity was the veteran producer of The Tonight Show, Art Stark. Johnny valued Art’s experience when he began as host, but Carson had long outgrown the unimaginative producer, and for some time had wanted to replace him. Johnny made it clear to the network that he wanted someone new, and the network didn’t care. As Johnny later told me, he called Art over to the UN Plaza apartment.

  “Art, I want a new producer on the show, someone who isn’t currently affiliated with the program.”

  “All right, John,” said Stark. “When do you want me to leave?”

  “Right now,” Johnny replied.

  “Well then, fuck you,” Stark said, slamming the door on his way out. Like it would make a difference.

  When Johnny came back, Time magazine marked the occasion by putting him on its cover. “His viewers are mostly urban and at least high school educated, young enough to stay up late with ease, or successful enough not to have to show up too early for work. Jimmy Stewart watches; so do Bobby Kennedy, Ed Sullivan, Nebraska Governor Norbert Tiemann, Robert Merrill, and Nelson Rockefeller.” Time then reported that CBS had tried to buy Carson away, a story that Carson dismissed without quite denying it. “I would feel as out of place on another network as Lurleen Wallace giving a halftime pep talk to the Harlem Globetrotters.”

  Now, more than a decade later, it was even more inconceivable to think of Johnny on another network. I was still amazed that he was ready to leave it. Knowing what he was thinking, I watched him more closely, studying him for signs of fatigue, impatience, and irritation. I saw none. But by this point, Johnny had hosted The Tonight Show twice as long as his two predecessors put together. Who knew what he had been feeling inside? Who knew what Joanna had been whispering?

  Frankly, I felt bad about having to deliver Johnny’s news to the executives at NBC. He’d had a terrific run at the network, but from their point of view, the night was still young and the party was just getting started. Carson was an unrivaled asset who earned the network immense profits. During the first six months after taking over The Tonight Show in 1962, Carson’s audience averaged 7,458,000; in 1978, the nightly audience averaged 17,300,000. Shows usually hit a peak after a couple of years and then start losing viewers; Carson had more than doubled the audience. In 1978 alone, Carson’s show was earning the Peacock between $50 and $60 million in revenues, which constituted an enormous percentage of all of NBC’s earnings. Moreover, his status continued to be unassailable. There had never been credible competition from any quarter, and there was none on the horizon. NBC knew perfectly well how to cancel programs; killing off favored old warhorses that had gone gimpy was what these executives lived for. But Johnny’s intentions baffled them. Who the hell quits in his prime?

  But that wasn’t all that was in NBC’s head. Replacing Carson at any point after 1967 would have been a big challenge for them, and lightning almost never strikes twice. The best they could have hoped for was an announcer who held most of Carson’s audience; the worst couldn’t even be measured because NBC was not a strong, healthy network in 1978: it was alarmingly weak. The Tonight Show was the cornerstone of its strategy to win the ratings wars, which were up for grabs for almost the first time since the popularization of television. It would also be a sturdy lifeboat that was keeping the well-paid suits in NBC’s executive offices from sinking into oblivion. When NBC looked at its game plan, Johnny was both the offense and the defense.

  Since the mid-fifties, CBS had always won the ratings wars, and with that primacy the right to charge a premium rate for advertising on its programs. NBC had always seemed content to be a prestigious number two, and ABC just seemed happy to be alive. But in the mid-seventies, up became down, white became black, and the entire universe was stood on its head: not only did CBS tumble out of the top spot, but it was replaced, not by the longtime runner-up, the gentlemanly NBC, but by the perpetual loser, ABC. Aggressively pursuing a younger demographic, ABC programmed such shows as Happy Days, Three’s Company, Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, Charlie’s Angels, and Starsky & Hutch, and finished first as a result.

  And NBC came in last, a humiliation that began to have immediate ramifications. Lower ratings meant less advertising income, for one thing. Lower ratings also meant that the top producers took their best programs to the other fellows first. Lower ratings also meant restless local affiliates. In Atlanta, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and San Diego, local stations with strong management and aggressive sales staffs and far-reaching signals dumped NBC and signed with ABC, leaving NBC with a weaker partner in each metropolis. The network still had strong assets, most significantly The Today Show in the morning and The Tonight Show at night. But ABC was actively gunning for The Today Show with Good Morning America, and Roone Arledge, the network’s brilliant, ambitious head of news and sports, sought to expand his domain as avidly as a shark.

  The man at NBC who was destined to receive the arrow Johnny had directed me to fire at the network was Mike Weinblatt, president of NBC Entertainment. Mike was a decent guy and a good executive who would one day make the bold move to cable and become one of the key figures in the development of CNN. I’m sure I must have ruined his day when I called him out of the blue and asked for an appointment. He had to have known something was up. His suspicions must have spiked somewhere into the stratosphere after he asked me if he could get a broad sketch of our contract renewal terms, and I told him it would be better if we spoke in person. I’m guessing that when Mike heard that, the very next action he took, unless he paused to down a shot of Scotch or Pepto-Bismol, was to share this conversation with his boss, Fred Silverman.

  After a couple of years of pathetically failing to emulate ABC’s young-audience strategy, NBC decided to stop trying to copy ABC’s success and went out and bought it. Fred Silverman—widely heralded as the genius behind the miraculous ABC transformation and credited with the triumphs CBS enjoyed in the early seventies with M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and All in the Family, nicknamed by admirers as the “Man with the Golden Gut”—was hired in 1978 to be president and CEO of NBC.

  And so far, he hadn’t made a damn bit of difference.

  Silverman had arrived at NBC like a tornado, ordering an astonishing forty pilots be made, and while he waited to see which, if any, would be worthy of prime time, he shocked the industry with a last-minute revision of almost his entire fall schedule, covering it with stunts and specials that would fill the air while his pilots gestated. He may as well have said, “Please watch this crap while we figure out what to do.”

  In January came part two of his stunner, called the “Slaughter on Sixth Avenue.” Facing a certain last-place finish in the ratings, Silverman decided to go for broke. He canceled all of his predecessor’s remaining programs and debuted his own slate. (Quipped Johnny in his monologue: “NBC now stands for Nine Bombs Canceled.”) Among Fred’s new shows were Brothers and Sisters, about three fraternity brothers meant to remind viewers of Animal House; Hello, Larry, starring McLean Stevenson, who had been purloined from CBS’s successful M*A*S*H; Mrs. Columbo, where the never-previously-seen wife of Lieutenant Columbo solves crimes; and Supertrain, a kind of Love Boat on wheels, in which a super-duper, atom-powered, New York–Los Angeles train (complete with swimming pool) carries a load of guest stars from coast to coast in what was the most expensive series ever produced.

  I arrived in New York about nine episodes into the new sl
ate’s run, at a point when it had become evident to everyone that they were all flops, although to be fair, we did not yet know that two of the shows, Hello, Larry and Supertrain, were such monumental flops that in the coming decades they would regularly have prominent slots on lists of the worst programs in terms of both quality and ratings in television history. What was also clear, however, was that until NBC managed to program some hits, The Tonight Show was still the network’s Rock of Gibraltar.

  My meeting in New York with Mike Weinblatt was scheduled for Saint Patrick’s Day. Every time I pass through the magnificent art deco portals at 30 Rockefeller Center I experience the sense of occasion that I felt when I first went there to see Johnny with Arthur Kassel; even if you go to work there every day, I don’t imagine it is ever quite just another day at the office. And on this day, there were 25,000 sons of Ireland parading by, with bagpipes.

  Knowing the message I carried, I felt something like a diplomat delivering a declaration of war to the state ministry of a powerful foe. Of course, they were not foes, at least not yet. They certainly weren’t going to be happy; in fact, as I ascended in the elevator to the floor occupied by NBC’s top brass, I prepared myself for a range of possible reactions not dissimilar to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Any or all of the first four were possible. I didn’t really expect the last.