King Johnny and the Princes Although my experience has been primarily with Jay, this is about all the great late-night and sketch shows. Johnny, Jay, Dave, Jimmy Fallon, Arsenio, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, SNL , Bill Maher, Jimmy Kimmel, and Conan--these are the shows and people who I believe have truly helped shape the way America looks at politicians, celebrities, and events. September 27, 1954, late-night TV was born with host Steve Allen. Two interesting facts: First, The Tonight Show was created by Pat Weaver, Sigourney Weaver''s father, and second, no one remembers Steve Allen. But they should. He invented the modern talk show format, which, like the horseshoe crab and English anti-Semitism, has remained basically unchanged for eons. If you take a horseshoe crab from today (and they are delicious in a puff pastry) and one from 400 million years ago, they look similar. There are, however, differences in late-night style, for my belief is that each host takes what others have done, builds on it, and gives it a unique twist.
Steve''s show in a nutshell: Steve had an opening, music, celebrity interviews, an audience bit, and, I usually hate this word but it is perfect applied to him, a sensibility best described as zany. He also did something that is key to the success of a show--he loved to laugh, and when he cracked up in the middle of a sketch with Don Knotts or Tom Poston or Louis Nye, it signaled to the audience at home that it was time to laugh. Take a look at the old clips or at PBS''s great documentary in the Pioneers of Television series. You can trace a line directly from Steve Allen to David Letterman. Steve Allen left as host in early 1957 and NBC decided to tinker with a winning format. Sound familiar? This next version of The Tonight Show was made more like the Today show, with news and features. The host was the immortal Jazzbo Collins, and it ended up being, what''s the word I''m looking for .a disaster.
NBC realized its mistake and switched back to the late-night format that had worked. Next came Jack Paar. Jack was urbane and erudite, and you got the feeling that he was a genuinely witty man. What marked Jack''s reign at the top was the intellectual quality of the guests. Paar had on guests such as William F. Buckley and Peter Ustinov (Google them), and he reveled in their stories. Jack wasn''t as good a joke teller as he was a storyteller. He also was willing to go where no talk-show host had gone before, doing a show in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, and interviewing Fidel Castro as well as presidential candidates John F.
Kennedy and Richard Nixon. He also was the first to show the true power of television, in essence destroying the career of newspaper columnist Walter Winchell. Winchell was an ink-stained bully who went unchallenged whenever he took on those he didn''t like. But Jack Paar answered back in his nightly monologues, skewering Winchell. According to Neal Gabler''s book about Winchell, it began when Winchell refused to retract an item in his column saying that Paar had marriage problems. Jack used his show to claim Winchell''s column was "written by a fly," that "his voice was too high because he wore too tight underwear," and that Winchell had a "hole in his soul" and was a "silly old man." Paper may beat rock, but newspapers don''t beat TV. In the end, television 1, newspapers 0.
Winchell''s may have been the first, but his was certainly not the last career brought down by a late-night monologue. The problem with fully describing the styles of Steve Allen and Jack Paar is like describing eight-track tapes to people younger than thirty. The fact is, Steve''s and Jack''s time was before my time, I didn''t see them live, and very few tapes of their entire shows exist. I know Ty Cobb was a great ballplayer but I have to take the word of those who wrote about him at the time he played. These shows are like dinosaur fossils. We know dinosaurs existed, we know they were big and important, but we can''t really be sure what they looked like. That is unless you''re a creationist who believes that the dinosaurs were around a few thousand years ago and that they lived on a diet of ferns and very slow senior citizens. Which reminds me of a great Lewis Black joke: If you believe that dinosaurs and people lived at the same time, you think The Flintstones cartoon is a documentary.
So despite The Tonight Show ''s having marked sixty years on the air, those earlier years and hosts are too far back in the historical record for me to really comment on. For our purposes, history began in October 1962, when Johnny Carson began his ninety-minute show in New York. Ninety minutes! And what a first show. Johnny was introduced by Groucho Marx, and guests included Joan Crawford, Tony Bennett, Mel Brooks, Ed Metzger, and Rudy Vallee. Referring to his entrance as he walked onstage, his first joke was "Boy, you would think it was Vice President Nixon." Right then and there, commenting on people who were in the news, Johnny set the tone for what was to be. Johnny Carson was the king. Starting out in a world of three networks and not many entertainment choices, Johnny established once and for all what late-night monologues were supposed to do.
People watched the evening news at dinnertime, and prime-time TV afterward--usually shows about genies, hillbillies, talking cars, and passengers stranded after a three-hour tour. He was the one who made everyone laugh at the news of the day. It was real-time viewing: no Hulu , no taping to watch later. You turned on the TV at eleven thirty, watched and laughed, had sex, and went to sleep. Or if you were real adventurous, you had sex while watching TV. By the way, I''ve tried that--the problem is, who has the remote? Johnny took what Paar did and added great comedic bits plus something else; he made the guests funny in his interaction with them. His jokes were brilliant, and he was the one who made the monologue important by putting the focus on pop culture. How does he rank? Ted Williams was the best hitter who ever lived, Jim Brown was the greatest running back, Ron Jeremy is the greatest porn star, and Johnny Carson is considered the best late-night host.
How do we know this? Let me make an analogy. If ten people tell you that you have a piece of spinach stuck in your teeth, you have a piece of spinach stuck in your teeth. When every host who came after Johnny idolizes him, when every observer of late night heaps praise on the same person and says he''s the best, then guess what--he is the best. And twenty-three years after he went off the air, Johnny Carson is still ranked number one in terms of popularity. In a 2014 survey by the people at YouGov research, 32 percent of Americans said Johnny was their favorite talk-show host of all time. Jay was second, at 8 percent, and everyone else was at 6 percent or lower. One reason for Johnny''s popularity is that he was able to use his "desk" and his interviewing style to amplify the comic brilliance of his guests. Look at any YouTube video of Carson with Don Rickles.
Johnny was content knowing he was the star, and he could afford to turn the spotlight on his guests and let them shine. I think the great Billy Wilder said it best about Johnny: He enchants the invalids and the insomniacs as well as the people who have to get up at dawn. He is the Valium and the Nembutal of a nation. No matter what kind of dead-asses are on the show, he has to make them funny and exciting. He has to be their nurse and their surgeon. He has no conceit. He does his work and he comes prepared. If he''s talking to an author, he has read the book.
Even his rehearsed routines sound improvised. He''s the cream of middle-class elegance, yet he''s not a mannequin. He has captivated the American bourgeoisie without ever offending the highbrows, and he has never said anything that wasn''t liberal or progressive. Every night, in front of millions of people, he has to do the salto mortale [circus parlance for an aerial somersault performed on the tightrope]. What''s more, he does it without a net. No rewrites. No retakes. The jokes must work tonight.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case. Johnny is the gold standard, and anyone who followed had an impossible standard to match. And Jay Leno came as close to it as anyone could. Caveat three: I love Jay. He is the best monologuist who ever lived, a great human being, and he made me part of the family for twenty-two years. He came to all three of my kids'' bar mitzvahs, staying for the service and the reception when even I didn''t want to be there; took care of an air ambu.