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Johnny
Carson:
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| January 27, 2005 |
Many
years ago, I roared when Johnny Carson
named his favorite Mexican restaurant in New York: The Groaning Gringo. I
laughed again during one of his uglier divorces, when his estranged wife had
obtained a court order forbidding him to speak of her on TV; 
he
slyly got around the injunction by announcing, “I have a
new hero: Henry VIII.”
Though Carson had a stable of
highly-paid gag writers, I don’t think I can recall hearing him deliver
five other really funny lines in his 30 years on the air. Steve Allen and Jack
Paar, his predecessors on The Tonight Show, were both
wittier and more interesting. So is his successor, Jay Leno. I once saw Leno
give a live performance in a steamy, packed auditorium in Kansas City,
Missouri; he kept us all laughing hard for two full hours. Today, David
Letterman and Conan O’Brien have also raised the standard for
midnight comedy.
But the best of all late-night
hosts, for my money, was Carson’s one-time competitor, Dick Cavett.
His liberalism irritated me, but his quick wit and literacy more than made up
for it. His humor also had a warmth that Carson’s lacked.
Carson’s death at 79 has
brought forth a flood of fawning eulogies so excessive as to suggest that
Americans have lost their critical faculties. Great comedian? I stopped
bothering with his opening monologue after hearing his umpteenth joke about
Dolly Parton’s chest, though Ed McMahon’s reliable guffaw was
supposed to certify the mirth. Dolly’s joke about herself was far
better than anything Carson ever said about her: “Do you realize how
much it costs to look this cheap?”
Carson did have a knack for
drawing his guests out and letting them do their stuff. He was particularly
encouraging to young comedians, many of whom have said they owe their
stardom to the big break he gave them. He could be the perfect straight
man, not only for humans but for animals. He was at his best when a joke
flopped and he scolded the studio audience with mock indignation. But to
speak of his “cultural authority” and “unifying
voice,” as one writer did this week, is to find profundity where there
was none. (The same writer likened Carson to Walter Cronkite —
“credible, tolerant, pluralistic, authoritative.” Golly!)
![[Breaker quote: Sorry, he just wasn't funny.]](2005breakers/050127.gif)
Carson
himself might be embarrassed by the posthumous praise
he’s receiving. His cultural canonization began in 1977, with an
interminable puff piece in The New Yorker by the brilliant
English drama critic Kenneth Tynan. Tynan tried to explain Carson’s
American popularity to readers abroad who’d never heard of him;
universally known in this country, he could vacation in Europe without being
recognized.
Rereading that article now, I still
find Tynan’s enthusiasm for Carson unfathomable. A famous wit
himself, he was able to quote hardly a single funny line from Carson, let alone
any interesting insight about comedy. The ostensibly flattering profile
revealed a timid, icy man who happened to be one of the most powerful
figures in television. Tynan marveled more at his Nielsen ratings and
staggering income than at his talent. But the piece made it acceptable for
intellectuals to like Johnny Carson.
Whatever slight talent Carson had,
it was certainly durable. In a notoriously fickle world of show business, he
established his niche and maintained it for three decades. By moving his show
from New York to California, he single-handedly shifted television’s
center of gravity from the East Coast to the West.
It’s startling to recall that
when he inherited the show from Paar, his salary was only $100,000 a year.
A few years later he was making millions. He’d hesitated to take
NBC’s first offer; filling Paar’s shoes seemed a big challenge at
the time, and Carson already had a very popular daytime game show. The
network had to do a lot of coaxing to persuade him. In his later years, he
rejected all offers to do movies or even brief TV appearances.
By the time of his tearful
retirement, he’d become tiresome. You watched Carson because you
had nothing better to do at that hour and, as of 1979, weren’t up to
Ted Koppel. Koppel thrived on the current controversies Carson had always
avoided. But it was Carson who, right to the end, got the ratings.
That’s entertainment, of sorts.
Joseph Sobran
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