I just read “Carson The Magnificent,” a biography of the “Tonight Show” host which Bill Zehme worked on for years and years. Unfortunately, he didn’t finish it before dying last year, so his researcher/assistant Mike Thomas took the reins and got it over the finish line.
I looked forward to reading it so much I pre-ordered the book as soon as it had a publication date, and when it arrived Wednesday, I dove right in, getting through it in two days.
As Mike explains in the introduction, completing Bill’s book meant going through a storage unit full of notes, interview transcripts, and paraphernalia he’d collected. Bill interviewed everyone he could find who had any connection to Carson. The thought he might miss something drove him nuts. Mike quotes Bill’s friend Robert Kurson, who said Bill “always felt compelled to interview a third cousin he’d just discovered, or a friend of a friend of a friend who’d emerged from his research and had a wonderful anecdote to add.”
Somehow, Mike was able to cull all of that into a 300-page volume, which reveals every aspect of Johnny’s career, beginning in childhood as a magician, to his first broadcasting jobs, through his epic run as the biggest moneymaker NBC ever had. Along the way, Bill goes into minute detail about Johnny’s four marriages, his drinking problem, and the personal life he rarely shared.
I would have liked to have read more anecdotes about things that happened on the air, which guests Carson loved or hated, and why he wouldn’t book female comics like Elayne Boosler. In fact, there are very few quotes from women except those he was married to and his mother, who never showed any pride in his accomplishments.
Bill was a guest on my radio show many times and we emailed back and forth about other things, including this project. He was the one who suggested I talk with Johnny’s second wife, Joanne, when she released DVDs of “The Johnny Carson Show,” a CBS series he did before “The Tonight Show.” I’ve put a link to that conversation below, as well as two I had with Ed McMahon, and a piece I wrote about Bill upon hearing of his death in 2023.
To say Bill was obsessed with Johnny would be an understatement. He revered him from the night he started watching as a teenager all the way up to being in the studio when Johnny recorded his final broadcast on May 22, 1992. A decade later, Bill convinced Johnny to sit for a rare interview which became an Esquire piece entitled “The Man Who Retired.” That article led to the contract to compile this book.
One of the things that fascinated me in “Carson The Magnificent” was the back story on “Johnny’s Theme,” the song that played at the top of his “Tonight Show” from 1962 to 1992. I knew the song was written by a then-twenty-year-old Paul Anka, but I didn’t know that Anka had copied much of it from a song he composed and sang in 1959, “It’s Really Love.” Then Walt Disney had two other recordings made, one by Mouseketeer singing star Annette Funicello and the other as an instrumental by conductor/arranger Tutti Camarata and Tutti’s Trumpets.
Carson liked Anka’s rewrite and agreed to use it on the show, but only if Anka gave him co-writer credit. Anka couldn’t complain too much because, according to Bill, royalties from the song’s nightly exposure (plus reruns and compilations) earned Anka and Carson about $850,000 each — per year!
Here’s the 1960 instrumental, “Toot Sweet,” which became “Johnny’s Theme” two years later…
- My rare interview with Johnny Carson’s second wife, Joanne, who’s very open about their relationship and his career (5/9/07).
- An extended conversation with Ed McMahon about being Johnny Carson’s second banana, how he taught fighter pilots to land on aircraft carriers as a Marine Colonel, and his days as a pitchman on the Atlantic City boardwalk (4/5/00).
- A conversation with Ed McMahon about his book, “When Television Was Young” (11/1/07).
- My piece about Bill Zehme upon hearing of his death last year (3/27/23).