It’s been noted that when a great entertainer or performer dies, ordinary people with no affiliation to those that have passed will grieve on occasion as if they knew the dead. In this case, most of us were damn close.

He was born in Nebraska, served in WWII, performed on radio and moved to California to pursue television work. When Jack Paar left “The Tonight Show” in 1962, Johnny Carson entered America’s homes and stayed there for three decades.

The bits were fun, the regular guests always seemingly on a friendlier note with him than any other talkshow. It was his monologue that made the show what it became- an institution. He spawned more clone talk shows with his format and was influential in late night more than anyone else. It’s been said that he was at more baby creations than anyone else (a joke that lived in infamy through many incarnations).

Most of this website’s readership is of the age that barely knew who Johnny Carson was, and if so only caught the latter end of his glory years. We didn’t really get to see the true genius of the man as it happened; instead, we see clips of his work cut down to mere moments. Personally, I watched the last couple of years of the Tonight Show that he hosted until his retirement. At that point, he left television and returned only once.

Recently, it was written that Carson had supplied jokes to the closest he has to an heir to the throne, David Letterman. Both Letterman and Leno (Carson’s heir to the Tonight show if not to his wit) plan on tributes Monday night to the one who gave the two men their starts in the industry.

There is a DVD set out in stores still of the Tonight show under his guidance. Pick it up sometime and take a look at it. You’ll see that while there are many today that call themselves talk show hosts, none can claim the role of the King like Johnny Carson.

Good Night.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 23rd, 2005 at 9:34 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.