{"id":2379582,"date":"2024-12-13T02:26:02","date_gmt":"2024-12-13T07:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/does-anybody-know-johnny-carson-washington-examiner\/"},"modified":"2024-12-13T02:30:08","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T07:30:08","slug":"does-anybody-know-johnny-carson-washington-examiner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/does-anybody-know-johnny-carson-washington-examiner\/","title":{"rendered":"Does anybody know Johnny Carson? &#8211; Washington Examiner"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fdoes-anybody-know-johnny-carson-washington-examiner%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2379582&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The article \u2062titled &#8220;Does \u2063anybody know \u2062Johnny Carson?&#8221; explores the life and legacy\u200d of legendary television \u200dhost Johnny Carson. It highlights his immense impact on American\u2062 television from 1962 to 1992, where he \u200cwas a comforting presence for\u200b millions of viewers, akin to a &#8220;bedtime\u2063 story,&#8221; as described by fellow \u2064host Arsenio Hall. Carson is characterized as a man of paradoxes; while he was incredibly visible and influential, he remained a deeply enigmatic figure, often compared to a &#8220;public \u200cutility&#8221; by \u2063David Letterman and described by others as a &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/matt-walsh-and-tucker-carlson-go-viral-compare-masks-to-security-blankets\/\" title=\"Matt Walsh And Tucker Carlson Go Viral, Compare Masks To Security Blankets\">security blanket<\/a>&#8221; or an &#8220;invisible talk host.&#8221; The article also references Bill Zehme\u2019s biography, *Carson the Majestic*, which \u2064delves into Carson\u2019s notable comedic timing and \u200dthe pivotal role he played in shaping the careers of\u200c many performers. Ultimately,\u200b the piece reflects on the tensions between Carson&#8217;s\u200b public\u2062 persona and the private\u2062 man, suggesting that despite his\u2062 monumental fame, little is truly known about the real\u2064 Johnny Carson.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><\/p>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><span class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-button\"><i class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-icon td-icon-mobile\"><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><span class=\"tdb-header-search-button-mob dropdown-toggle\" data-toggle=\"dropdown\"><i class=\"tdb-mobile-search-icon td-icon-search\"><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><span class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-button\"><i class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-icon td-icon-mobile\"><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<div class=\"tdb-drop-down-search\" aria-labelledby=\"td-header-search-button\">\n<div class=\"tdb-drop-down-search-inner\">\n<form method=\"get\" class=\"tdb-search-form\" action=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/\"><\/form>\n<div class=\"tdb-aj-search\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/#\" role=\"button\" aria-label=\"Search\" class=\"tdb-head-search-btn dropdown-toggle\" data-toggle=\"dropdown\"><i class=\"tdb-search-icon td-icon-search\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<h1 class=\"tdb-title-text\">Does anybody know Johnny Carson?<\/h1>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-title-line\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/david-letterman\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">David Letterman<\/a> compared <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/1227677\/johnny-carson-estate-approves-plans-for-movie\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Johnny Carson<\/a> to a &ldquo;public utility.&rdquo; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/1322211\/legendary-cbs-anchor-walter-cronkite-dies-at-92\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Walter Cronkite<\/a> anointed him the &ldquo;most durable performer in the whole history of television.&rdquo; An &ldquo;OK&rdquo; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/capitol-police-head-claims-fbi-never-warned-cops-about-january-6-war-threat\/\" title=\"Capitol Police Head Claims FBI Never Warned Cops About January 6 \u2018War\u2019 Threat\">hand signal<\/a> from behind Carson&rsquo;s desk (&ldquo;a gesture from God,&rdquo; according to Richard Belzer) could make or break a comic&rsquo;s career. I&rsquo;ve been told by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/comedy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">comedy<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/podcasts\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">podcasts<\/a> that Carson had great timing, like a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/opinion\/3021127\/heres-the-straight-skinny-on-traditional-jazz\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">jazz drummer<\/a>, which was part of his &ldquo;central circuitry&rdquo; and &ldquo;calibrated instrument of stage precision,&rdquo; as Bill Zehme puts it in his new biography of the great TV host, <em>Carson the Magnificent<\/em>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-paywall\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-full is-resized\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Carson the Magnificent; By Bill Zehme and Mike Thomas; Simon &amp; Schuster; 336 pp., $30.00<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Johnny Carson was omnipresent on<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/tv\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\"> American television<\/a> for three decades (1962 to 1992), flickering in the dark as people went to bed, tucking 15 million-17 million of them in at night, including Arsenio Hall, who compared his soothing ubiquity to a &ldquo;bedtime story.&rdquo; Nonetheless, this most televised of men is an enigma. &ldquo;You get the impression that you are addressing an elaborately wired security system,&rdquo; said Kenneth Tynan, who profiled Carson in 1978. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s great by omission,&rdquo; said Art Stark, Carson&rsquo;s producer from 1962 to 1967, his &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/tim-allen-surprised-by-what-he-finds-as-he-reads-through-the-bible-for-the-first-time-not-at-all-what-i-was-expecting\/\" title=\"Tim Allen Surprised by What He Finds as He Reads Through the Bible for the First Time: &#039;Not at All What I Was Expecting&#039;\">television dad<\/a>.&rdquo; Zehme describes him as somehow being both a &ldquo;security blanket&rdquo; and &ldquo;a flawlessly designed winking performance hologram,&rdquo; the upgraded version of what Orson Welles described as an &ldquo;invisible talk host&rdquo; who was paradoxically as ubiquitous as Mickey Mouse.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The drama in <em>Carson the Magnificent<\/em> is, then, that nobody really knew Johnny Carson, the biggest TV star in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/history\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">history<\/a>. We know the caricature. We know the Dana Carvey impersonation: the comical rasp and exaggerated hand movements. We know the Simpsons cartoon of a late-night host in a single-breasted suit with his hands in his pockets, teetering like a tipsy orchestra director waiting for his cue:&nbsp;&ldquo;Heeeeeeere&rsquo;s Johnny!&rdquo; We don&rsquo;t know him, but we also don&rsquo;t know anyone like him: the cool TV dad (not to be confused with the square and scripted &ldquo;sitcom dad&rdquo;) who told bedtime stories that crackled with one-liners he&rsquo;d deliver with what Zehme describes as a &ldquo;scotch-and-soda wit.&rdquo; The drama is charged by our desire to see the legend metamorphized into a man.<\/p>\n<p>If there was someone who almost did know Carson, it was Bill Zehme. His new <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\">book blends tightly knotted myth-making<\/a> that untangles itself temporally, shifting wildly between <em>Tonight Show&nbsp;<\/em>transcripts, vignettes, long parentheticals, hundreds of interviews, clipped magazine articles, and Zehme&rsquo;s personal interactions with Carson &mdash; the &ldquo;ultimate Interior Man,&rdquo; he wrote in an email sent to former <em>Tonight Show<\/em> writer Michael Barrie, describing Carson as &ldquo;the inscrutable national monument on constant full view.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>But here&rsquo;s a plot twist: Zehme, who wrote for <em>Esquire<\/em> and <em>Rolling Stone<\/em>, elevating &ldquo;celebrity profiles to an art form,&rdquo; according to the <em>Washington Post<\/em>, died of cancer on March 26, 2023. He never finished the book, whose genesis can be found in the last major interview Johnny Carson ever gave: &ldquo;The Man Who Retired&rdquo; by Zehme for <em>Esquire<\/em> (June 2002), where Zehme described Carson&rsquo;s final <em>Tonight Show<\/em> appearance in messianic terms: &ldquo;He left the air and climbed into the clouds.&rdquo; Zehme spent the next two decades chipping away at the national monument, getting closer to what he described as the flesh and blood of the &ldquo;great American Sphinx.&rdquo; He got close.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Johnny Carson at home on July 5, 1956, in Los Angeles. (Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>When Zehme died, his research assistant and friend (Mike Thomas) finished the book. With a more restrained and straightforward style, Thomas completed <em>Carson the Magnificent<\/em>, which is complete in terms of capturing what Zehme called the &ldquo;Carsonian Essence&rdquo;: a magic trick drawn out over 90 minutes of &ldquo;carefully coordinated ubiquity&rdquo; that produced an &ldquo;orchestrated happy calm&rdquo; that was always restrained, reminding people its composer was from the Midwest, like Zehme.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I&rsquo;m not old enough to know what the &ldquo;Carsonian Essence&rdquo; was like when it suffused the airwaves and the TV dens of America, but I imagine it made people feel like they had a third parent, partially because Carson never punctured the illusion of balmy patriarch.&nbsp;Preserving that illusion is probably Carson&rsquo;s greatest contribution to American culture. (Reminding America that &ldquo;there will be a tomorrow&rdquo; is how Carson described his &ldquo;job&rdquo; to <em>Tonight Show<\/em> regular Tony Randall.) It also made him a cipher. Zehme&rsquo;s book gets us close, but still it keeps Johnny in the annals of myth. And frankly, it&rsquo;s better that way. We don&rsquo;t need to know Johnny Carson. He&rsquo;s gone. And so is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/princess-bride-star-tells-cruz-he-has-contempt-for-him-cruz-fires-back-photo-that-star-signed-to-him\/\" title=\"\u2018Princess Bride\u2019 Star Tells Cruz He Has \u2018Contempt\u2019 For Him. Cruz Fires Back Photo That Star Signed To Him.\">late-night television<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Art Tavana is an award-winning journalist and author of <\/em>Goodbye, Guns N&rsquo; Roses<em> and a former columnist at <\/em>L.A. Weekly<em> and <\/em>Playboy<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who remembers Johnny Carson? David Letterman likened him to a &#8220;public utility,&#8221; while Walter Cronkite called him the &#8220;most durable performer in television history.&#8221; An &#8220;OK&#8221; sign from behind Carson&#8217;s desk could significantly impact a comedian&#8217;s career, as Richard Belzer noted<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3362,"featured_media":2379583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/CB.CarsonMagnificent.JohnnyCarson.121824.webp","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[46704,46703,46702,42648,32076],"class_list":["post-2379582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-comedy-legends","tag-entertainment-history","tag-johnny-carson","tag-late-night-tv","tag-washington-examiner"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/CB.CarsonMagnificent.JohnnyCarson.121824.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3362"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2379582"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2379586,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379582\/revisions\/2379586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2379583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2379582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2379582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2379582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}