Late-Night Lord Johnny Carson Dies

David Letterman, Jay Leno, Saturday Night Live. Even today, almost any late-night TV laugh can be traced back to one source: Johnny Carson.

Carson, who, for 30 years, defined American comedy and made sleep deprivation desirable as the quintessential host of NBC's Tonight Show, died Sunday at his Malibu home of complications from emphysema. He was 79.

"No single individual has had as great an impact on television as Johnny," Jay Leno, who inherited Tonight from Carson in 1992, said in a statement. "He was the gold standard."

David Letterman, who longed for the Tonight stage himself, said he and his peers were "pretenders" compared to his idol.

"We will not see the likes of him again," the host of CBS' Late Night said in a statement. "Thank God for videotapes and DVDs. In this regard, he will always be around."

Carson's nephew, Jeff Sotzing, told the Associated Press that the late-night great was surrounded by family at the time of death. Sotzing said there will be no memorial service.

In September 2002, Carson confirmed he was battling emphysema, an incurable lung disease most often linked to cigarette smoking, a longtime habit of the comic's.

Carson had been beset by various health problems since his retirement more than a decade ago. He underwent a quadruple-heart bypass in March 1999. Some reports said the comic had suffered a heart attack, necessitating the emergency surgery.

The reserved quipmeister, who mentored a generation of future comedy stars including Leno, Letterman, Jerry Seinfeld and Roseanne, was rarely seen in public in recent years.

But even in repose, Carson's comic mind was not at rest. Just last week, former Tonight Show producer Peter Lassally said Carson was still feeding jokes to Letterman.

"He can think of five jokes off the bat that he wishes he has an outlet for," Lassally told reporters at the Television Critics' Association's Winter Press Tour. And when Letterman used the punch lines, Lassally said, "Johnny [would get] a big kick out of that. I think the thing he misses the most is the monologue."

In an extremely rare interview with Esquire in April 2002, 10 years after his final monologue, Carson said, "I still, believe it or not, have dreams in which I am late for The Tonight Show."

Carson's subconscious could be forgiven for obsessing about his former gig. The show was, he pointed out, the place where he spent two-thirds of his adult life. The onetime amateur magician began his Tonight Show reign in 1962. At the time, he was the skinny, affable quizmaster of Who Do You Trust?, and viewed as a low-wattage replacement for then-irreplaceable Jack Paar. But soon, Carson, with chortling announcer Ed McMahon by his side, would perfect his greatest trick--turning himself into an institution.

His nightly opening monologue (prefaced by McMahon's hearty "Heeeeere's Johnny!") became a touchstone of popular culture. One 1973 joke about a toilet-paper shortage led to real-life toilet-paper hording by loyal viewers. Sly but rarely mean, Carson put an easygoing coda on the cracks with his signature golf swing, literally sweeping away the punchlines and signaling the start of the celebrity interviews or Aunt Blabby sketches.

By the late 1960s, Carson had become such an icon that even the Beatles' John Lennon couldn't mask his disappointment at being met with guest host Joe Garagiola instead of the real deal. ("Where's Johnny?" Lennon sadly inquired during the 1968 appearance with mate Paul McCartney.)

By the late 1970s, the question became, "Who'll succeed Johnny?" As Carson pared back his work schedule (from live to tape, from five nights a week to four, from 90 minutes a night to 60 minutes), the watch was on for a successor to the king. The pundits ran through dozens of the possibilities--David Brenner? Richard Dawson? That Letterman kid?--but Carson was not going anywhere. He bridged President Kennedy's Camelot and President George H.W. Bush's New World Order; ruled from the Cuban missile crisis to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

During his run, Carson became known as the late-night killer. Merv Griffin, Joey Bishop, Dick Cavett, Alan Thicke and others tried to launch rival p.m. shows on rival outlets--and failed. It wasn't until Arsenio Hall arrived in 1989, tapping into a younger, more diverse and presumably hipper audience that the silver-haired Carson suddenly looked vulnerable.

Perhaps Carson's greatest legacy was his role as the nation's comic arbiter. If Carson thought you were funny, you were golden--your career launched via a five-minute Tonight Show routine. And if you made Carson laugh? You were beyond golden--you were a Chosen One, invited to sit next to the god. Letterman, Leno, Seinfeld, Roseanne, Sam Kinison, Albert Brooks and dozens of others all made breakthrough Tonight appearances.

Without Carson's blessing, even Saturday Night Live's own storied run would not have begun. In 1975, Carson asked NBC to stop airing his Tonight reruns on the weekends. In search of a show to fill the 11:30 p.m. Saturday time slot, the network found writer/producer Lorne Michaels. But it still needed to clear the show with Carson. Assured SNL wouldn't tread on his turf, the king gave his approval.

Carson was born John William Carson on October 23, 1925, in Corning, Iowa. Shortly after his birth, his family relocated to Nebraska, a state that the almost-native son would go on to routinely booster.

As a teen, he gigged around as "The Great Carsoni," a magic-and-ventriloquist act. Leaving the card tricks to the caped fellows, Carson turned to radio and TV announcing, and, in 1951, landed his first show, Carson's Cellar.

CBS' The Johnny Carson Show (1955) was his network debut. More long-term success came with Who Do You Trust? Carson emceed the daytime game show on ABC from 1957-62, hooking up with announcer McMahon along the way.

When Paar famously--and abruptly--quit the Tonight Show in 1962, Carson was enlisted, becoming the program's third host. (Steve Allen was the first, from 1954-57.) Because of contract issues with ABC, Carson wasn't free to host NBC's Tonight for six months following Paar's departure. The intervening 26 weeks were filled by guest hosts. Carson, with McMahon at his side, finally debuted on October 1, 1962, with Groucho Marx as their first guest.

In a statement Sunday, McMahon called his friendship with Carson "professional, familylike and one of respect and great admiration."

In all, Carson, with McMahon always nearby, would do more than 4,500 Tonight episodes (4,531, to be precise). In May 1991, despite years of speculation about when he would depart, NBC brass was caught off guard when Carson up and announced his impending retirement at the network unveiling of its new fall schedule. The move set off the Great Late Night TV Wars of 1991-92, best chronicled in the best-seller, The Late Shift. (The short version: NBC offered Leno the Tonight gig; Letterman got mad; NBC secretly re-offered the Tonight gig to Letterman; Letterman turned down NBC and fled to CBS.)

Carson's final Tonight came on May 22, 1992, at age 66. After a farewell week highlighted by appearances from Bette Midler (who won an Emmy for crooning until Carson got misty-eyed), Robin Williams and Elizabeth Taylor, the last show was for the inner circle only: Carson, McMahon and band leader Doc Severinsen, who showed clips and said their good-byes. There was no mention of Leno, who was to take over the show the following Monday, and who had been Carson's exclusive guest host since 1987.

Carson never did give Leno an on-air blessing. He never returned to Tonight. In fact, his only post-retirement, late-night appearance came on a 1994 Late Show With David Letterman. (And even then, he didn't speak; he waved.)

"I think I left at the right time," Carson told Esquire in 2002. "You've got to know when to get the hell off the stage, and the timing was right for me."

While there was speculation at the time of his retirement that he would make movie deals or return to his game-show roots, the Great Carsoni did the hardest thing of all: He stayed retired.

He went on cruises, became fluent in Swahili, packaged his old Tonight broadcasts for home video, even lent his voice to an episode of The Simpsons. But he didn't return to TV. He rarely gave interviews (two, in his first 10 years of retirement). He said he didn't have anything to say. Didn't have anything to prove. He'd done it all.

Not that Carson was overly impressed by his legacy, mind you. "It's just a television show," he once said, "not the Dead Sea Scrolls."

The much-married Carson wed four times, divorcing three times. Two of his splits, to the former Joanne Copland (1963-1972) and the former Joanna Holland (1972-1985), involved public wrangling over alimony payments. Carson made the best of it, slyly poking fun at his marital misfortunes on the air.

His fourth marriage, to Alexis Mass, took. The two met on the beach in Malibu, California. (She was taking a stroll by his beach house.) They wed on June 20, 1987.

In addition to his wife, Carson is survived by two sons, Christopher and Cory, by first wife, the former Jody Walcott. A third son, Richard, also by Walcott, died in a car accident in 1991.