In the Company of Legends

by Joan Kramer

  “It’s over,” he said. “They all left about twenty minutes ago. Johnny’s on his way home and I assume you’re the Joan that David went to pick up at the airport.”

  This was before cell phones, so I had no means of contacting him. My only choice was to take another taxi to the hotel and wait there.

  DH I couldn’t find Joan at LAX, which made me wonder if she was still too sick to travel. So I drove back to the hotel and discovered that she had already checked in.

  Her first question was: “How did you get through the narration so quickly? There were over a hundred different pieces to record.”

  “He was so fast I couldn’t believe it,” I said. “When I told him we had eight hours booked, he said, ‘You’ve got to be joking!’ He did the entire script in just over ninety minutes. He’s so used to live television, he just knows how to get it right the first time. There were very few sections I could ask him to do again. It was over so quickly it almost makes me nervous; I hope we didn’t miss anything.”

  David and Johnny.

  Culver City, CA, 1987. Authors’ collection.

  JK and DH We’d arranged for the next day’s shoot to be at MGM in Culver City, where Jimmy Stewart had spent most of his early career as a contract player. The lot had been bought by Lorimar, but most of it was exactly the same as when MGM owned it. The studio assigned Johnny one of the old star dressing rooms, and we asked him to be there at 8 am.

  We knew that he had once had a reputation for being temperamental and difficult. In his younger days he liked to drink and, by his own admission, liquor brought out his worst side. However, when we’d met him at his home and then on the day with Jimmy Stewart at Universal, he was always pleasant, at times funny, at others shy and quiet, but never difficult.

  This shoot at Lorimar would be different. He’d be alone with us—no Stewart this time—and it occurred to us that we might find a very different Johnny Carson, one not so easy to work with.

  JK I always believed that our associate producer/production manager, Cindy Mitchell, should some day be a florist. She loves flowers and knows exactly what to order so that they fit the personality of the recipient. She’d found a highly recommended Beverly Hills florist and ordered an arrangement for Johnny to be delivered to the studio at 7:30 am.

  “Make it big, beautiful, masculine, and one color.”

  The tall, all-white arrangement was exquisite; we put it in his dressing room.

  When Carson arrived on the lot a half-hour later, we all shook hands and Cindy took him to his dressing room. A few minutes later his makeup artist came out looking for me.

  “Johnny would like to see you,” he said.

  I thought, “Uh-oh. Something’s wrong. Maybe he’s changed his mind about the script. Here it comes—the other side of Johnny Carson.” I would have preferred not to go alone, but David was busy setting up with the crew, so I knew I had deal with this myself.

  The door was open and he was sitting in a chair studying his lines.

  “Good morning, Johnny. Is everything okay? Do you need anything?”

  “Oh,” he said, “I just wanted to thank you for the flowers. They’re beautiful. Would you mind if I took them home to Alex?” (Alexis Maas was then his fiancée, soon to be his wife.)

  “The flowers are yours. Of course you should take them home. I’m so happy you like them.”

  Then, knowing the crew wasn’t quite ready, I took out of my tote bag the envelope containing pictures from the shoot at Universal, gave him some to keep and asked if he’d autograph the others.

  He said, “Sure, but what kind of pen do you have?” I only had a black ballpoint.

  “That’ll damage the photos,” he said. “We need a felt tip. Leave them with me and I’ll send them back to you in New York.” I looked at him without saying anything, but he read my mind. “You don’t believe you’ll ever see them again, do you?”

  I said, “If I don’t give our staff signed pictures of you, I’ll get lynched.”

  He smiled. “I promise. In fact, I’ll send them by FedEx.” I had no choice but to leave the envelope with him—reluctantly.

  DH He was as professional and easy to work with as he’d been before. Of course, there were a few snags.

  Usually, when you film on a studio lot, it’s necessary to hire Teamsters to drive talent and equipment on and off the property. Most are union shops, and productions working there must play by the union rules. However, we were a small crew making a public television documentary, so the Lorimar studio manager had told us that we didn’t need to use Teamsters. We drove ourselves onto the lot; our crew drove themselves; and Johnny arrived in a limousine we’d provided.

  JK I’d just returned from the dressing room when I felt someone tapping me on the shoulder. I turned around to find a large, burly man with a deep frown on his face.

  “I’m the Teamsters’ rep here,” he said. “I just saw Johnny Carson get out of a car. Is he working with you? Why wasn’t he driven onto the lot by a Teamster?”

  Cindy had noticed what was happening and had already gone to find the studio manager. And I knew that if you’re going to choose a union to get in trouble with, you don’t choose the Teamsters. So I smiled my sweetest smile, put out my hand to shake his, and decided I had to try to keep talking until Cindy came back.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “We’re doing a documentary for PBS about Jimmy Stewart, and Johnny Carson agreed to host it; of course he’s only being paid scale. You see that man over there? He’s our director, and he has a wonderful expression: ‘My knees hurt from working in public television.’ You know how we’re always begging for money. By the way, how about a donut? And we have coffee to go with it.” The frown softened. He followed me to the craft services table and helped himself. Then, with barely a “goodbye,” he left to go and deal with some other production. By the time Cindy and the studio manager arrived on the scene, the Teamsters’ rep was nowhere in sight.

  DH One of the other problems was people traffic. We were shooting outside a soundstage where the television series, Dallas, was filming. People were constantly walking in and out of the stage door and, every time we were about to begin a take, someone would appear in the background of our shot.

  At one point, Linda Gray, who played Sue Ellen Ewing on the series, came out and was surprised to see Johnny.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Well, PBS doesn’t pay much. But two hundred bucks here, two hundred there. Every little bit helps.”

  Johnny with Linda Gray outside the Dallas soundstage.

  Culver City, CA, 1987. Authors’ collection.

  In the meantime, Cindy found the Dallas production manager and asked a favor. She explained that we only needed about twenty minutes to get our shot, and wondered if the Dallas cast and crew could take an early lunch break so that we could do what we had to and get out of their hair. To be perfectly honest, they were the ones in our hair, but we could hardly complain after we’d decided to shoot right in front of their stage. Besides, they were a big, expensive production and a steady client on the Lorimar lot; we were very small potatoes in comparison. But within a few minutes, they all disappeared. We got our shot and moved on. Somehow production managers understand each other.

  Soon we found ourselves with another issue. During several of our scenes, we were hearing church bells ringing in the distance. We’d wait for them to stop, but as soon as the camera was rolling, they’d start to ring again. At last, during a brief period of silence, we were able to shoot a take without interruption. However, Johnny blew his lines.

  “Sorry. Let’s do that again,” he said. “I can’t work without the bells.”

  JK At the end of the day, we took the floral arrangement from his dressing room and put it on the floor of the limousine. It was so tall that the flowers reached the roof of the inside of the car. He made it a point to show me that he had the envelope of photos I’d given him. We all said our “goodbye”s and “th
ank you”s, and he drove off to his home at Point Dume. The trip would take about forty-five minutes.

  Back at our hotel, Cindy called the florist.

  “I want to tell you what a wonderful job you did. Whenever I order flowers by phone, I never know what’s going to show up. But your arrangement was perfect. In fact, Mr. Carson liked it so much he took it home to his fiancée.”

  “Miss Mitchell, thank you so much for calling,” he said. “But Mr. Carson beat you to it. He just called us from his car.”

  I waited another half-hour and called Johnny at home.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked when he heard my voice. “Did you get everything you need? If not, I can come back.”

  “Everything is fine. I’m calling for another reason. You just taught me a life lesson.”

  “What did I teach you?”

  “Do you always call florists?” I asked him.

  “How do you know I called the florist?”

  “Because we just did to thank him, and he said you’d beaten us to it.”

  He said, “I’ve been calling florists for years. I know a lot of people call only when the flowers are lousy. I’ve always believed that they deserve to hear when the flowers are wonderful.”

  We flew back to New York the following day, Tuesday. I was still at home on Wednesday morning when FedEx delivered a manila envelope, addressed by hand with a black felt tip pen. Inside were the photos, each autographed by Johnny as promised. I still have the envelope. And the picture inscribed to me is framed and hanging on my wall.

  David and I had been worried about dealing with the “real” Johnny Carson. We needn’t have been. Throughout our association with him, he was a class act. On screen and off.

  Joan, Johnny, and David after the final shot at Lorimar.

  Culver City, CA, 1987. Authors’ collection.

  Johnny and Jimmy.

  Universal City, CA, 1986. Authors’ collection.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Stay in Touch”

  A few weeks before the PBS broadcast of James Stewart: A Wonderful Life, we flew to California to hold a special screening of the program for Jimmy, Gloria, Johnny and his fiancée, Alex Maas, who brought along her father. We also invited John Strauss, David Tebet, and Herman Citron.

  We rented a screening room and ordered a catered breakfast of fruit, muffins, coffee, etc. When everyone had arrived, we noticed that Johnny chose to sit in the back, away from the others, drinking cup after cup of coffee. Apart from us, he was the most nervous person in the room. Somehow it wasn’t unexpected; he was accustomed to getting immediate reactions from his live studio audiences, but here he’d had to wait six weeks after we shot his on-camera sequences and recorded his narration to see how it all turned out. Mainly, we think, he was concerned about whether he had served Jimmy Stewart well.

  He had his answer the moment the show ended. Of course, the people in the room were predisposed to like the program, but they seemed genuinely happy with it. Jimmy and Gloria thanked and congratulated Johnny, and Gloria confessed that she had been moved to tears several times. Jimmy told us how pleased he was and that we’d saved him from ever having to write his autobiography.

  “You’ve done it for me,” he said. We were most gratified by that remark since the issue of his writing a book had almost sunk the project before it had begun. Herman Citron was standing close enough to have heard that comment, but we weren’t paying attention to him at the moment.

  Hearing their positive reactions was a great relief. It’s nerve-wracking to show a finished program to those involved in it, and risky if it’s before the first broadcast. People could have all sorts of last-minute regrets: “Maybe I should have worn a different color.” “My hair doesn’t look quite right.” “Did I give my best reading of that line?” “Since the show hasn’t aired yet, can we re-shoot that scene?”

  Screening for a group lessens the risk, and there’s a built-in atmosphere of celebration. For us, it’s a moment of truth. During the months of production, we’ve had to walk a fine line, developing and nurturing relationships with the participants, while trying not to let those relationships affect our editorial decisions.

  Johnny stayed until the others had left and told us how proud he was to be part of the show. However, he asked us to check a line in his narration because he thought he’d given the wrong date for one of Stewart’s films. We did check it and called him later to assure him that the date was correct.

  JK The premiere of the program was scheduled for Friday, March 13th, 1987. Our publicist had distributed press materials to newspaper and magazine reviewers across the country, and had sent excerpts from the program to various television shows including, of course, The Tonight Show. I decided to call one of the producers there to confirm that he’d received the package. He said, “Oh, yes. We have it, but we never publicize shows that will appear on other networks.”

  So I called Johnny, and we had a very nice chat.

  On Tuesday, March 10th, James Stewart was a guest on The Tonight Show. When Johnny introduced him, he said that hosting the profile was the best time he’d had in all his years in television. They talked about Jimmy’s films, showed clips from the program, and Johnny made a point of repeating the title and its airdate. In all, he and Stewart did what amounted to a forty-minute promo. It was very rewarding for us, and I called Johnny the next morning to thank him. He said, “If I can, I’ll mention it again over the next few nights. My sister has already seen it and thought it was terrific. But of course, she’s my sister, so she had to say that!” (The PBS station in the city where his sister lived had decided to air the program several days before its nationwide broadcast.)

  The show received excellent reviews and became the highest-rated program in the Great Performances series to date. Jimmy wrote to us several times, expressing his appreciation and telling us that he was still receiving letters from people all over the country.

  A few months later, the program was nominated for an Emmy Award. When a subject’s name is part of the title of a documentary special, that person is an automatic nominee along with the producers. So we all received nomination certificates from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and, if the show had won—which it didn’t—Stewart, David, and I would each have received an Emmy statue. We’d wanted to enter Johnny separately for a nomination as host, but he asked us not to. He said, “I don’t think it’s appropriate. It’s Jimmy’s show.”

  DH When we were in LA to attend the Emmy ceremony, Jimmy and Gloria invited us to their home for a “good-luck drink” the evening before.

  Stewart said, “You managed to cover a lot of ground when we shot at Universal. How did you do all those different set-ups in just one day?”

  I replied, “We had a great crew. And the talent wasn’t bad either.”

  Gloria and I began talking about nature preservation, since she was deeply devoted to that cause and knew that I was the executive producer of the Nature series. The conversation included a discussion of reptiles, and I said I hoped to commission a program about snakes because so many people have a fear of them. Gloria said, “I think they are fascinating creatures and, as a matter of fact, I would have liked to have had a python as a pet.”

  Jimmy looked at her without any expression on his face, and then said to us, “Now, you know I’ve been married a good long time.” And with perfect timing, he slowly turned to her again. “What do you mean you would have liked to have had a python in this house? You never told me that.”

  “I never told you because I knew you wouldn’t want one,” she said. “But I think it would’ve been great.”

  “I’m still learning things about her I didn’t know,” he said to us. Then he turned back to Gloria. “I wonder what else you haven’t told me.”

  “Probably quite a lot,” she replied.

  He said, “We’ve had several unusual pets over the years, although never a snake. One of them came home with us after a trip to Africa with our
twins.”

  The girls were about twelve at the time and they’d fallen in love with a small bushbaby. They pleaded to keep it as a pet.

  Jimmy explained, “Well, you know there are rules about bringing live animals into the United States, and the girls didn’t want to wait until the bushbaby went through a quarantine process. So I snuck it onto the plane under my shirt and jacket. Since we were sitting in first class, I thought once we were in our seats, no one would notice. Well, during the flight, I fell asleep and when I woke up I realized the bushbaby wasn’t under my shirt. The lights in the cabin were off, so I got down on my hands and knees and crawled around, feeling under other people’s feet, trying not to wake anyone up, but desperate to find that animal. I finally did, stuffed it back under my shirt and we made it through Customs without any problems. It lived with us in this house for many years until it died.”

  Gloria listened quietly as he told the story. She then said, “Are you finished now?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “I want you to know that not one word, not a single word of that story is true,” she said to us. “Except that we did have a bushbaby. But it was sent home from Africa according to all the rules, was quarantined and tested, and then we picked it up and brought it home. Jimmy did not sneak that animal onto the plane.”

  “I certainly did. Don’t you remember me crawling around on all fours looking for it? Or maybe you were asleep.”

  We’re still not sure who was telling the truth. We do know that Stewart was quite capable of creating tall tales. And it may also have been part of his and Gloria’s normal banter for him to tell a fable so that she could challenge it.

  John Strauss and Jimmy Stewart.

  Universal City, CA, 1986. Authors’ collection.

  JK John Strauss called me about a week later.

  “Joan, you won’t believe what a day I’ve had with Jim. It would have made a great movie.”