He is gone, yes, but he is also still right here, flashing the mischievous wide white enamel, eyes twinkling in bright steely blue. Also, he can do without lettuce on the turkey burger. At lunch, he sips red wine and spins golden tales and imparts biting commentary and pays with a C-note. He is the Garbo of Comedy, the Salinger of Television, and, I will attest, one hell of a rollicking lunch. He has told me this, and many other things, privately and generously and always hilariously. Granted, in that first year or so afterward, there were a handful of televised glimpses- a brief presentation at the American Teachers Awards followed by a fleeting, obligatory walk-on to pay birthday tribute to nonagenarian Bob Hope (truly, the final monologue he ever delivered) followed by the Kennedy Center Honors (he wore his new gleaming medal in the balcony, enthroned beside the Clintons, and was shown reacting, inaudibly, to platitudes issued from the stage below) and then there were a pair of sly wordless cameos on Letterman's Late Show (and one voiced cameo on The Simpsons), beyond which there would be nothing more, since there will be nothing more. And he didn't just simply leave: He vanished completely he evaporated into cathode snow he took the powder of all powders. Like sun and moon and oxygen, he was always there, reliable and dependable, for thirty years. Like no one else in a lifetime, his was the last face flickering onto the brain before so many billions of slumbers. He persists, as such, in the subconscious, his own and also the collective one that is ours. But I will be back there-it was two-thirds of my adult life, remember-and people at the show will be as real and fresh and current as ever in the dream, and all of a sudden, I'm having to go on and I'm not prepared. It's now been ten years since I've been done with the job.
It's show time and I'm going on-and I've got nothing to say! Jesus! I wake up in a sweat. I've checked with other people, and it occurs to them frequently. "It's a performer's nightmare, apparently. "I still, believe it or not, have dreams in which I am late for The Tonight Show," he will say. There are nights, he will tell you, that he finds himself back where he was, back where we had him, before we could not have him anymore.
#Johnny carson guests who made it hard to look away full
I saw the fall schedule, and there's nothing to worry about."Īndy Hunsaker has a head full of sitcom gags and nerd-genre lore, and can be followed you're into that sort of thing.Originally published in the June 2002 issue "A lot of people have said General Electric is not interested in being in the entertainment business. "It's coming to an end next year," Carson replied, before quipping "I've always wanted to be a shepherd."Ĭarson also made a fantastic and brutal joke at the expense of NBC's then-owners, who Letterman famously mocked with regularity. Letterman told Carson that he carried the NBC network for years, and Carson demurred. That evening, he made this surprise appearance on Late Night with David Letterman and off-handedly made the same announcement to the public at large. On May 23, 1991, Johnny Carson confirmed rumors that had been swirling at the time and announced at an NBC network affiliate managers meeting that he would be retiring from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson at age 65 the following year, ending his 30-year run as the host that defined late-night television for generations.
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