The last time Johnny Carson appeared in the news was just a few days ago. It emerged that, even as he lay near death, he was writing jokes for David Letterman.
There was great irony in that, as everybody in the American TV racket knew. When Mr. Carson's three-decade tenure as host of The Tonight Show ended in 1992, it was Jay Leno, not Mr. Letterman, who became the heir to Johnny's throne. Obviously, Mr. Letterman was Mr. Carson's own favourite, but the decision about his replacement was out of his hands.
Now, almost 13 years after the bitter battle to replace Mr. Carson caused Mr. Letterman to defect to CBS, the clash seems ancient history. So much has changed in late-night TV and, in fact, everything has changed since Johnny Carson first ruled in late night. If there was irony in Mr. Carson supplying jokes for David Letterman's monologue, there was no irony in the style that made Mr. Carson the king.
It's hard to imagine now, but Mr. Carson's great success came when he did a 90-minute show from New York every weeknight. It was a relaxed, jokey chat show with movie stars, writers, intellectuals, magicians and standup comedians
stopping by, sometimes for the banter and the camaraderie, not just to plug a movie or promote a new TV show. Guests drank liquor, smoked cigarettes and made sexist jokes about ex-wives and showgirls.
It was Rat Pack era TV, at a time when there were only three channels available to most Americans. The Tonight Show brought distant celebrities into living rooms, every night. It was long before Inside Hollywood, Extra, Access Hollywood all those celeb-obsessed TV shows ever existed.He didn't only succeed Steve Allen and Jack Paar as host of The Tonight Show. He continued a variety-show tradition established by Ed Sullivan. But where Mr. Sullivan was decidedly square and couldn't fake being hip, Mr. Carson seemed to know intuitively that the trick to American TV success was to be both hip and square. Doc Severinsen was seriously square, as was Ed McMahon, but the guests could sometimes be plucked from the counterculture. It didn't always work, but Mr. Carson tried.
If he was obviously bewildered by Alice Cooper in full makeup and uncomfortable with Mr. Cooper's sneering tone, Mr. Carson stayed hip by nurturing the young standup comics who were an essential part of The Tonight Show at its zenith. He brought on George Carlin, Jerry Seinfeld and David Letterman and relished and learned from their deadpan, irony-drenched observational humour.
He was the most famous man in America then, not only for The Tonight Show but for his many marriages and business failures. He talked about them often on the air. In contrast, viewers were stunned a couple of years ago when Mr. Letterman actually admitted to having a girlfriend during a show. Mr. Carson was much more direct, once holding up a copy of the National Enquirer during a show and blasting a story in it, about his marriage, as complete lies.
And yet he was distant, unknowable. In a celebrated profile of Mr. Carson written by Kenneth Tynan for The New Yorker in the late 1970s, Mr. Tynan said, "It is only fair to remember that he does not pretend to be a pundit, employed to express his own opinions. Rather, he is a professional explorer of other people's egos."
The take on Mr. Carson was that he was essentially empty. He did those endless shows and every night went home to brood and then came back to do another show. If there was core, he wasn't going to let anyone see it.
His ultimate legacy is the creation of the late-night talk show template — the monologue, the band, the guests and the goofy bits. It's a template that has been much used by others and, in a way, has bedevilled Canadian television as, time and again, there's another failed attempt to have a Canadian equivalent of The Tonight Show.
In the years since Mr. Carson's Tonight Show epitomized the genre, it has been impossible to duplicate. Everything has changed. It was telling that when Mr. Carson finally ended his tenure at NBC, there wasn't really one show or host to truly succeed him. First, there was the split — Mr. Leno on NBC and Mr. Letterman on CBS. Both diverted from Mr. Carson's style. Mr. Leno became a joke machine and Mr. Letterman relied on savage irony.
Then came the rapid growth of cable channels and the late-show format continued to morph. Now, the late-night show that matters in America is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It's on the cable channel Comedy Central (in Canada also on CTV), which allows for all sorts of rude humour. It's a fake news show, a sneer at politicians, at the TV news business and television itself.
Johnny Carson never sneered. He mocked and needled, but he knew that what he did was part of show business.
Mr. Carson's death is a reminder that American showbiz ain't what it used to be. He'll never be matched and his show never duplicated. He could write jokes for Mr. Letterman, but never for Jon Stewart.
He was old-school to the end.
