Mike Weinblatt greeted me affably, but there was an undercurrent of tension. I could tell he harbored apprehensions about my visit, and we rushed through only the minimal requirement of polite chitchat before I felt obliged to get down to business.
“Mike, Johnny has had a long run with NBC. Far longer than anyone else has presided over The Tonight Show. And he’s spent the entire time at the top.”
At that point Mike might have been expecting a demand for a big increase in pay for the best-paid man in television. But then I dropped the bombshell. “Johnny wants out. I’m here to give you a full half year’s notice. He intends to make his exit the same day and the same month he started, October 1.”
Mike was stunned. Whatever he had guessed, even if he had guessed right, to actually hear the message was devastating. Finally he responded. “I can imagine there’s a burnout factor. But there ought to be a way we can make adjustments Johnny can live with. He can’t really want to leave now. He’s still at the top of his game.”
“He didn’t come to this decision lightly, as you can imagine, Mike. But he’s been thinking about it for a long time. The decision is as final as it can be. He feels that this is the right time to go. You know as well as I do, Mike, that Johnny could do anything he wants. Go fishing for a year or take a place in London for a year. But six months is what you’ve got to work with.”
“This raises a lot of issues, Henry. It impacts our business from several angles. And six months is not a lot of notice for a deal like this. Look, Fred’s in the office. I should let him know what’s at issue here before you leave.” Mike stood up and headed down the hall to alert Silverman. Minutes later—and not at all to my surprise—Fred Silverman burst into Weinblatt’s office.
Fred Silverman was no smoothie. There was a time when network executives were men in starched white collars and Brooks Brothers suits who were cool and professional and drank martinis and never seemed ill at ease. Today network executives are guys with tans and tennis sweaters who are cool and friendly and who drink green tea and do yoga and never seem ill at ease. But Fred Silverman always seemed on the edge. Silverman was overweight, rumpled, damp, with dark circles under his eyes, and his success seemed to be driven by neither personal nor boardroom finesse. He got where he was by knowing better than anyone what viewers wanted to see. But lately his gift had deserted him, and he seemed like a man who had no idea where to find it.
“HelloHenrygoodtoseeyou,” he rattled. “Mike says you’re carrying an important message from the coast that I ought to hear directly from you.”
I knew better than to squander any time on pleasantries. “Johnny’s calling it quits, Fred. He’s had a helluva run and he wants to sign off smilin’. I’m here to give you six months’ notice. His last day will be the same date as his first day on the show, October 1.”
“Henry, we all want our guy to be happy, but you must think me nuts to let this fucking guy go. But you’re an attorney. You know it doesn’t work like that. We’ve got a contract. And it’s got two more years to run. If Johnny wants to go, he can go in ’81.”
Apparently they had enough of an inkling of the message I carried to do some homework, but it wasn’t quite enough. “I’m afraid not, Fred. We’ve had a law in California for thirty-five years that says you can’t keep somebody under a personal contract for more than seven years. Johnny’s is well over that now. He’s been working for NBC since 1962. It’s now seventeen years and counting. Any way I look at it, Fred, Johnny can walk today.”
“That’s not true, Henry. You know as well as I do that in seventeen years there have been more than eight different agreements. Carson’s signed at least three different contracts with us over the last several years. Don’t expect us to roll over because of some technicality. If we have to tell our sponsors Johnny is leaving, we’ll stand to lose $50 million a year. We’ll go after Carson for that, Henry. We’ll sue his ass for $100 million.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really. Even for Johnny Carson, $100 million is real money.”
“You’re going to sue the most beloved entertainer in America for $100 million? Even if you win that one, Fred, you lose. And you’re not going to win. Ask your lawyers.” For the record, at this time the state of the law in this area was uncertain.
There was no point in swatting this topic back and forth; we certainly weren’t going to resolve anything, and somebody might say something regrettable. Smiling affably and touching my forehead in a good-bye salute, I departed.
“Mike, sorry I had to bring you bad news. Fred, I’ll send Johnny your regards.” There would be plenty of opportunities to argue the legalities later.
Riding down John Rockefeller’s elevator. I thought about what lay ahead. It’s a lawyer’s job to always appear confident of his case. I believed we had the law on our side. And we had a lot of other leverage on our side. But you never know how a judge is going to decide. They really might nail us for that $100 million.
I called Johnny from my room in the Waldorf Towers.
“How’d they take it?” asked Johnny.
“Like being drop-kicked in the balls.”
“They’ll calm down in a few days.”
“I don’t think so, Johnny. Silverman says this is going to cost him $100 million in advertising. He’ll probably make Weinblatt be the one to tell the affiliates.”
“So what are we lookin’ at?”
“Silverman says he’s going to sue you for the $100 million. But that would be terrible publicity. I think they’ll just sue to enforce the contract.”
“You said it wasn’t enforceable.”
“It’s not, but we’ll have to have a judge agree. The core issue that will decide everything isn’t the $100 million they’re talking about. It’s the contract. California law says they can’t hold you past seven years. If we show that we’re past the seven years, you will be a free agent.”
Flying back to LA, I reviewed our situation. Johnny was tired and frustrated, but what I really didn’t know was how much of those feelings was due to the accumulation of the normal day-to-day bullshit that everybody experiences in any walk of life, and how much was due to the situation at NBC—the network’s low ratings, the tension that affects everybody when the network is suffering, and, in particular, the special aggravation that results from encounters with the boss during difficult times. I don’t know if Fred Silverman was a genius, but I do know that Johnny and Fred got off on the wrong foot and never quite managed to get in step.
There was bound to be some friction: Fred was hired to shake NBC up, and it was perhaps inevitable that the network’s reigning success story was going to get shaken up a little in the process. In one interview, Silverman made the mistake of pointing out the obvious: “You don’t have to be a mind reader,” as he said, “to see that the network as a whole performed better when Johnny was hosting his show.” It shouldn’t have been a problem for Fred to express his wish that Johnny would help out more by taking less time off, but saying it in public imputed that NBC’s problems were Johnny’s fault and were therefore within his power to rectify. Silverman also pushed Johnny to invite more NBC stars to appear on The Tonight Show, even stars of flops, in hopes of promoting the programs. It was an absurd idea; McLean Stevenson could have taken up permanent residence under Johnny’s desk and it wouldn’t have drawn an audience to Hello, Larry. It only would have hurt The Tonight Show, which I’m sure even Silverman would have admitted. A lot of this was nonsense that would have been smoothed over if Dave Tebet was still around, but he retired in 1978, and now there was nobody in New York that Johnny could turn to when he was feeling aggrieved.
Carson was also not particularly impressed with Fred’s programming ability. Despite Silverman’s stunning record of success, Carson felt that he possessed very peculiar judgment. The year before, Silverman invited us to a meeting and announced that he’d had a brainstorm. He was going to create a new program in the time slot right after Carson, and to host it, he w
as going to bring back to NBC none other than Steve Allen.
Johnny thought this was one of the more boneheaded programming ideas he’d ever heard. For one thing, The Tomorrow Show, starring Tom Snyder, was getting pretty good ratings and doing some interesting stuff; there didn’t seem to be an aching need to replace him. More important, Johnny didn’t think it made much sense to bring back Steve Allen. “You’re going to bring back the first host of The Tonight Show and put him on behind me? In what, The Second Tonight Show? The Good Old Tonight Show? The More of the Tonight Show?”
“Well, whom would you have on after you?” Silverman asked.
Johnny suggested the name of a bright comedian he admired—David Letterman. And, indeed, several years later, Letterman was given a show in the twelve-thirty a.m. time slot following a now hour-long Tonight Show. By then Silverman was long gone.
There is no denying the tremendous success that Fred Silverman had at CBS and ABC, but he was a piece of work, and most of the stories people told about him seemed to evoke his eccentric diligence. Typical was the tale once told by an NBC executive who was a regular visitor to Silverman’s magnificent Central Park West apartment. The visitor discovered that Fred kept a high-powered telescope on the terrace. Was he an astronomer? Or a Peeping Tom?
The truth was either more or less lurid, depending on how you look at it. Fred liked to look through the telescope into the apartments of other people who lived along Central Park to see what they were watching during prime time. He didn’t like waiting to see the results of the overnight ratings. He did his own survey, window by window. Perhaps this was the secret behind his golden gut.
There were no public announcements of Johnny’s decision, but reports of his intentions inevitably leaked out. By April the entertainment world was filled with discussion and speculation. By then everyone knew that NBC’s fortunes had not been revived by Silverman’s bold gamble and that the network’s earnings, apart from The Tonight Show, had fallen precipitously. This only increased the already hefty percentage of NBC’s revenue that was delivered by Carson.
For Silverman, the problem was becoming very personal. Hired to be a miracle worker, the only miracles he had accomplished were to make money and viewers disappear. If he were to lose Johnny on top of that, it was a very good bet that he’d lose his job, too, along with much of his reputation. With so much at stake in the case, he couldn’t let Carson walk.
In a dramatic testament to the seriousness with which he took this issue, Silverman reached beyond NBC’s in-house lawyers and hired one of the biggest guns in Hollywood, Milton “Mickey” Rudin, to serve as outside counsel. Famous as Frank Sinatra’s longtime attorney and legendary for the loyalty he engendered from clients, Mickey had represented many of the very biggest names in the business: Elizabeth Taylor, Lucille Ball, George Burns, Liza Minnelli, Norman Lear, as well as such clients as the Aga Khan and Warner Bros. Studios. Rudin was not only brilliant, but he was also a people person who knew how to ingratiate himself in a way that propelled his career. A man who by instinct and experience understood the psychology of Hollywood, he was an astute attorney. And like nearly everyone else in town, I knew, liked, and respected Mickey.
All of which meant that my competitive juices were now on high boil. We never expected NBC to resist us so strongly, but once they did, we had only one choice. Together, my partners, including John Gaims and Ralph Jonas, and I determined that our only alternative was to fight back every step of the way. The stakes for Johnny—and for me—couldn’t have been higher: would Carson be forced to continue working for NBC—with, admittedly, an enormous salary—or would he win his freedom?
I had an idea that I cleared with Johnny and then proposed to Rudin. Rather than subject NBC and ourselves to the enormous circus of civil litigation in a public trial, I offered the alternative of private litigation.
This option would allow the two sides to hire a retired California superior court judge and argue the case before him in private proceedings in a secluded place like a law office or living room. There would be no reporters, no television, and no insanity. For Carson, an enormously private person as everyone involved in this process knew, the benefits of this proposal were evident, but they were no less so for NBC, which would suffer a public relations disaster and incur a loss of goodwill by suing one of America’s favorite stars. They had every reason to take the private trial option.
There was only one downside. Under the rules of this private litigation, the ruling of the judge would be binding and final. It was agreed that there would be no appeal. Although this represented one gigantic roll of the dice for both sides, the immense advantages to keeping our contentions private made the decision easy. Rudin and NBC accepted our proposal almost immediately, and together we selected the retired jurist, William Hogoboom, to preside over our private court.
What was in the offing had the makings of an epic trial, one where the fates and fortunes of one very famous star and one iconic corporation would be at stake. And it would take place in a hatbox, with the audience of a stenographer.
7
1979–1980: Free Agency
ONCE WORD GOT out that Carson had given notice, he was “in play.” It didn’t matter that Johnny was saying that he was tired and looking forward to a good, long rest. Nobody believed him, and suddenly, all over town, projects that had seemed moribund were leaping to life, dead meat turned into Sleeping Beauties, invigorated by the kiss of Carson’s possibility. Most interested of all, of course, were ABC and CBS, the two networks that for nearly seventeen years had lived in awe and envy of The Tonight Show money machine. At various times I was accused of staging this move. Not true. When Johnny told me his plans, he was deadly serious.
Meanwhile, whatever Carson was planning to do with his upcoming leisure time, he had filled his 1979 calendar with a whirlwind of work—hosting the Oscars, playing dates in heartland cities in the South and Midwest, performing ten weekends a year at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and taking his customary vacation to watch the Wimbledon Championships in London, followed by a sojourn in the South of France. Throughout all of these events, we were together.
Somewhere in the midst of these events (by the way, we were also attempting to buy a bank in California, buy the Aladdin Hotel in Vegas, and prepare for the crucial trial before Judge Hogoboom), Johnny received a call from Edgar Rosenberg.
As anyone who has ever seen Joan Rivers on a talk show knows, Edgar was her husband, whom she enjoyed portraying as reserved, if not distant. However he behaved with Joan, he was an affable, friendly sort with the rest of humanity. For a while in the sixties, he specialized in producing films that were underwritten with funds from the United Nations. These films dealt with very important themes and had large international all-star casts. (For example, Poppies Are Also Flowers, about the international drug trade, starred Senta Berger, Stephen Boyd, Yul Brynner, Angie Dickinson, Georges Géret, Hugh Griffith, Jack Hawkins, Trini López, Marcello Mastroianni, Gilbert Roland, Harold Sakata, and Omar Sharif—performers representing at least nine nationalities.) He now served as the manager of Joan’s mushrooming career.
Joan was a favorite of Johnny’s. Not only was she his discovery and therefore part of a very special few that included Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and others who got career-making breaks on the stage of The Tonight Show, but he also liked her humor, that weird mix of nastiness and neediness that could nonetheless be so endearing. Joan was his number one substitute host while he was on vacation, and she would enjoy a special status until their famous falling-out after she accepted an offer from Fox to mount her own talk show opposite Carson. Until then, he trusted her on confidential matters that required her profound discretion.
This high regard extended to Edgar, a gentlemanly Englishman who seemed to derive much of his persona from the cool hipster personality Peter Sellers projected when he wasn’t projecting the personality of one of his dozens of characters. But he also had this odd fondness for intrigue, s
ecrets, dramas, and surprises that really tickled Johnny. Edgar was one of those people who enjoyed being in the know and would try to gin things up to be in the know. He amused Johnny, who thought he was a real character.
“Henry,” said Johnny, “Inspector Clouseau just called. Says it’s important.”
“If Edgar’s involved, it must be.”
“God, he loves this secret agent bullshit. Anyway, I told him that he should call you. Be nice to him. The son of a bitch means well.”
“Did he tell you what it was about?” I asked.
“No, he was in full James Bond mode. Everything is top secret. He’s probably worried about wiretaps.”
I phoned Edgar, who, in a hushed voice, said, “I’m acting today in my capacity as an emissary of the alphabet people, who want to discuss a possible post-Peacock throne.” Edgar’s code was transparent, and he accentuated every key syllable so much that you could practically feel him nudging you through the telephone receiver. Johnny, of course, was forbidden to talk with NBC’s competitors while the contract was in effect. I hoped no one was bugging this conversation; I couldn’t possibly testify with a straight face that I didn’t know what Edgar’s gibberish meant. ABC, Edgar revealed, would not only make Johnny much wealthier but they also promised to treat him with more respect than NBC did, and they would give Johnny opportunities to produce programs he was interested in.
Well, I thought, here was a subject that was worth the subterfuge. ABC began flirting with Johnny as soon as he agreed to host the Oscars, as though saying, “You may have been NBC’s top talent for seventeen years, but in one night with us, we’re going to show you what it feels like to be a star.” All their promotion featured Johnny, the little gold man, and the ABC logo, as though this was their dream come true. Now they were going a step further, showing that they at least had the imagination to think of offering something Johnny might possibly want. After all, being a star in Hollywood was a fabulous thing, but the real money and power went to those who owned the companies that produced the programs. The average American could rattle off the names of people who starred on Charlie’s Angels, Dynasty, Fantasy Island, Hart to Hart—the Farrah Fawcetts, the Joan Collinses, the Ricardo Montalbáns, and the Robert Wagners—but it was Aaron Spelling who called the shots and raked in the dough and lived like the sultan of Brunei. (Or to put it another way, Merv Griffin, who was a rival of Carson’s but never his peer, was so much richer than Johnny because he owned the game shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune.)
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