Articles
There’s Johnny!
Clips from classic early episodes of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson – long feared lost – have turned up in a military storage unit. The 16mm film reel...
Ed McMahon
Best known as the longtime sidekick to Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, Ed McMahon died June 23 at 86. For younger viewers, memories of McMahon may be as much...
Why We Loved Merv Griffin
If you were a young stand-up comedian looking to launch a career in the 1960s and '70s, your ultimate goal was to land a guest spot on Johnny Carson's Tonight...
10 Questions for Gore Vidal
Novelist, essayist, polemicist, all-purpose gadfly and now lion in winter, Gore Vidal has just published a second volume of memoirs, Point to Point Navigation,...
The Great Telecommunicator: JOHNNY CARSON (1925-2005)
America began its life by throwing off a king and has been crowning them ever since. We have a King of Pop, a King of All Media, a King of Beers. That Johnny...
How I Captured Johnny
One of the most unusual images of Johnny Carson appeared on the cover of the May 19, 1967 issue of TIME. Carson had just received a million-dollar contract to...
Tonight on Letterman: H-E-E-E-E-E-E-R-E's JOHNNY!
Former late-night titan JOHNNY CARSON, 79, left, retired from his paying gig at NBC's Tonight Show in 1992, but he's now spinning jokes for free. Carson, who...
And What a Reign It Was
Darrell Vickers and Andrew Nicholls, head writers for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, are sitting in a cluttered room at the end of a long, nondescript...
TELEVISION: STUPID NETWORK TRICKS
IN RETROSPECT, IT SEEMS A STRANGE cultural aberration. Or maybe a temporary virus. For a couple of years there, David Letterman was the toast of television...
Passing The Late-Night Crown
Late night comedy: On the day Jay Leno has been announced as host of NBC's The Tonight Show beginning next May, Johnny Carson confides to his audience, "I want...
Video: Heeeeere's Johnny!
Frrrrrrom Hollywood, New York and Nebraska, a scandalmongering biography, King of the Night (Morrow; $19.95) by Laurence Leamer, who invites you to join Johnny...
David Letterman: New Dave Dawning
Workmen are still wandering through the halls, rats are being chased in the basement, and bulletproof glass is being installed in David Letterman's office. Not...
Video: The Magician of 3,328 Midnights
Celebrating 20 years of "Heere 's Johnny " From a Norfolk, Neb., high school yearbook, 1943: "To one of the finest comedians that has hit school. If you...
Jay Leno: Midnight's Mayor
The blue-gray ergonomic chair, with a tilt-swivel mechanism and pneumatic adjustment, vinyl arms and a star pedestal base, retails for $500. It's a fine chair...
The Bad Boys of Summer
They're baa-ack. After a vacation for NBC's Olympic fortnight, Jay Leno returns to The Tonight Show to find his competition with late-night rival Arsenio Hall...
The Wooing of David Letterman
"WHAT ARE YOUR HOURS?" Steve Martin wanted to know. Appearing as a guest on Late Night with David Letterman last week, Martin surveyed the studio with approving...
Television: Family Feud
Carson and NBC go to court Not since Fred Allen and Jack Benny went at each other on the radio has broadcasting seen such a feud. But whereas Allen and Benny...
Business: Aladdin's Rub
Stocks for best of friends The two most valued words at NBC are "Heeere's Johnny!" No wonder, since Johnny Carson's Tonight show brings the network $90 million...
People: Dec. 29, 1986
Marriage and alimony jokes have all but become fixtures of his Tonight show monologue, but no kidding, folks, Johnny Carson, 61, is serious about getting married...
The Help-the-Homeless Trophy
JOHNNY CARSON He donated $55,000 to a zoo near his hometown of Norfolk, Neb. Why? Reuben, 7, the installation's only chimp, has outgrown his temporary quarters,...
