PM Show Hr 2 | Mark Malkoff on the Genius of Johnny Carson

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's that time, time, time, time, Luck and Load.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Michael Varry Show is on the air.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
It's easy to think these are the worst of times,
but actually, in many ways, we are living through a
golden era. You know, when you stop and think about
the fact that, you know, when I was a kid,
if you were a fan of gun Smoke, for instance,
you might occasionally get a gun Smoke rerun, or if
you were a super fan of Johnny Carson, might occasionally

(00:45):
get a Johnny Carson show that would air outside the
usual time when you watched it, or maybe there'll be
a brief interview. But then all of a sudden, this
golden era of the ability to get really granule granular,
to really geek out on subjects that you care about

(01:10):
and learn everything there is to know about it. Well,
that was true of YouTube, where people could put up videos.
But then we entered the podcast era. The people who
do what I do were scared to death of the
podcast because they would replace them. And I was asked
by people in the business of media, are you worried
about podcasts? And I said, no, If you're ever worried

(01:32):
that someone else's content is going to replace you, your content's.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Not very good, make it better. Use that as a challenge.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
I love the fact that there are people who indulge
they're absolutely crazed, insane fanaticism of various things, and they
make podcasts about them, and they build up the crime podcasts,
which are mostly a female which is interesting. It's true

(02:02):
of crime, it's sports, military, so many things. So I
came across a fellow named Mark Malkoff, who is a
Johnny Carson nut, and he wrote a book about Johnny Carson,
and it's entitled Love Johnny Carson. One obsessive fans journey
to find the genius behind the legend. And we were

(02:26):
partly interested in how someone gets so obsessed with something
that they do a podcast, which we find to be
really cool. But we happen to believe that a part
of what we do here and a big part of
what Rush did, and Rush was an inspiration to us,
as well as everything that came after. We're all based
on the genius of Johnny Carson, so we don't question

(02:46):
his object of affection. Mark Malkoff, host of the Carson
Podcast and author of the book, Welcome to the program.

Speaker 4 (02:54):
Thanks for having man. It's a pleasure.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
So let's start with before we get into your project
and your love of Johnny Carson, which we share, we
just don't share your extensive knowledge of him. What was
the basis of your Carson interest.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
My dad got into Carson when I was a young
age five or six, stand up Friday nights, and there
was nothing more fun. I mean, Carson was great with kids,
with animals, with one hundred year old people, with celebrities.
It was my introduction to show business. Rodney Dangerfield. I
didn't understand the politics certainly when I was a kid,
but it was this party and I just had so

(03:32):
many questions about how the show was put together. It
never occurred to me. I had talked to over four
hundred people, and everybody would want to tell me their story.
People really really loved this time at their period. They
loved Johnny Carson. Hence the title the book Loved Johnny Carson.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
I'm sure you got a lot of when you said, Hey,
I'm doing a book on Johnny Carson, you had a
lot of people kind of that's the statement love of
Johnny Carson. You interviewed more than four hundred people. Carol Burnette,
l Brooks, Bob Sackett, Larry King, Michael J. Fox, Palaoun
Pounds tone. Was there anybody you called who had a
reason they would not do an interview, like they didn't

(04:10):
like him or they felt slighted.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
I couldn't get Joan Rivers I really wanted to I do.
She was nice to me, but I couldn't get her.
I couldn't get Waye Newton, who had a problem with Johnny.
But those are really the only two people that had problems.
Pretty much everyone else wanted to talk to me. David Letterman,
who I actually worked for, I couldn't get him.

Speaker 4 (04:28):
He's very hard to get interviews for.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Maybe Bette Midler, But overall, it was like everybody wanted
to talk everyone from bab Youuger to Jimmy Buffett.

Speaker 4 (04:37):
They would tell me how special it was.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Jimmy Buffett told me before Johnny Carson he couldn't get
booked on television. He said, Mark, you were the first
one ever to ask me in my entire career about
Johnny Carson. It was the biggest break of my life.
So these people just wanted to tell me their stories.
It was unbelievable the access I got just because of
Johnny's name, and he's been off the air for over
thirty years. All the late night hosts still talk about Carson.

(04:59):
It's a test it to Carson's ability in his work.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Well, we use his music when I tell Dad jokes.
We often hold the show, we play clips of the show.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
It was so important to the zeitgeist of American comedy
at the time, but so influential in that everyone is
carrying a piece of that today and will be for
some time. So many people developed some aspect of their
comedy from that. I mean, many is the time. I'm
fifty five. Many is the time that I will stay

(05:31):
up late at night and in order to decompress after
I prepared for the show the next day, I'll go
to old Carson episodes and I'll watch him interview Don Rickles.
I mean, it's hard to explain how funny Don Rickles
was to someone today. Let me ask you a couple
questions things that I know you wrote about in the book.
Carson hated Saturday Night Live, and that's part of the

(05:54):
reason he left. That's what you say in the book.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
If it was in the beginning, He's the one that
basically got Saturday Night Live going, Because if Carson didn't
want re runs anymore of the tonight show of Saturday
eleven thirty. So Lauren Michael, the creator of SNL, went
to Johnny's office and got his blessing to do this
show eight episodes in an unknown Chevy Chase is on
the cover of New York magazine and they're announcing him

(06:17):
as the likely successor to Johnny Carson, and Chevy said something,
I never want Johnny's job, and Johnny took offense at that.
Jamie Curtin on Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live made
fun of Johnny, and then eventually Johnny was really upset
at the Dana Carvey sketches where Dana Carvey was mocking
Johnny Carson, making.

Speaker 4 (06:37):
Him look out of touch and seen Island. It really did.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
One of the reasons why Johnny quit is because he
did not want to be perceived like Bob Hope, we
thought suck around way too long. Carson wanted to be
remembered at the top of his game, and those sketches
of the Saturday Night Last sketches really really hurt him.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
But I've had the opinion. I've had this view before.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
Ramona, our producer, and I've talked about Johnny car arsenal
a lot, and we have a real love Johnny Carson
is to book. We have a real love for Johnny Carson.
And obviously he was a more complicated man than he
betrayed portrayed on the show.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
But he also he was very sensitive. One of the
things you.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
Hear and you know better than I is that he
was very sensitive to criticism.

Speaker 4 (07:25):
She was. He was a sensitive period.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
I mean when he would go home to Nebraska, it
gets sentimental and cry in his boyhood home. When he
went back, he just yeah when his friend the best
drummer maybe of all time, but hey Rich, he found
out twenty minutes before the show that Buddy.

Speaker 4 (07:39):
Rich died bald in his office.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
Sobbing his red eyes during the monologue fairly can get
through it. But the criticism was one thing that Carl Sagan, astronomer,
was good friends with Carson, and he on the show
interrupted Carson twice and corrected him, and Johnny just was
really embarrassed.

Speaker 4 (07:56):
They never had Sagan on again.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
You would think that somebody in the publicuy would be
a little bit more than skinned, but Carson was just
deatly sensitive. If he believe somebody hurt his feelings or
wasn't loyal to him. They pretty much didn't exist anymore.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
And and that is a man of great and deep passions.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Hold with us for just a moment.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
We're talking to Mark Malcoff, host of The Carson podcast
the book Love Johnny Carson, One Obsessive Fans Journey to
Find the Genius.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
You Got the Michael Berry Show?

Speaker 4 (08:29):
Who Came?

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Martin Malkoff is our guest.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
He is the host of The Carson Podcasts, a podcast
about Johnny Carson. He is the author of the book
Love Johnny Carson, One Obsessive Fans Journey to Find the
Genius behind the legend on air battles that came into blows.
It wasn't every night, but it did happen, And part

(08:52):
of that was a lot of these folks were drunk.
George Pepperty was drunk. He got into a battle with
Paul Williams, Marlon Brando and joj al Kabor. Again, I
think alcohol in that era was much more common, and
I think that may have.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
Been part of it.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
But what did you make of that happening so often
on his show?

Speaker 1 (09:12):
People were drinking, they were smoking, and it was just
you know, back then people would remain on the panel,
on the couch, and sometimes you get these personalities where
a drunk George Popard, you know, famous from The A
Team and other movies, called George called Paul Williams a midget,
and Williams got up ready to fight George Poopard. I
talked to Paul Williams about that, and I watched the clip.

(09:33):
I mean, it's Carson. It was just complete anarchic. I
think that was part of it. Now everything is very
produced and safe, where back then they would keep the
mistakes in everything. Carson believes he never wanted a stuff
tape and occasionally a drunk Marlin Brando in nineteen sixty
four in Jaja, it got it in on it together and.

Speaker 4 (09:52):
It made for good television.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Carson once had Chevy Jason, the prop comic Gallagher on
and they got into a scuffle and just verbally, verbally,
but you never.

Speaker 4 (10:01):
Knew there was danger. Now that doesn't.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
Happen, but even Carson doing his monologue, but sometimes a
joke wouldn't work and it would bomb, and there was
that danger with Carson being such a skilled comedian, being
able to recover and being even funnier on a bomb joke.
There wasn't a safety that there is now in late
night TV. And I think that was part of the.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Excitement you talk about in the book speaking of alcohol
and drugs at the time and being more open that
he saved a comedian's life who had been addicted to drugs.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
That's right now. Johnny would talk on the Tonight Show
about his battle with alcohol. He'd say that he would
have one drink too many and he would turn into
a till of the hunt. And some people when they
drink would get fun loving. Johnny said he would go
to the office and want to fight everyone. Ed McMahon
saved him many times. So at Frank Sinatra, it was
something he struggled with. So there was a comedian that
went on the show many many times and did stand

(10:54):
up and he had.

Speaker 4 (10:55):
A bad drug problem.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
And the comedian's father actually wrote Johnny Carson.

Speaker 4 (10:59):
That I need your help.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
And Johnny sat down with this comedian and said, I
am not going to book you on the show anymore
until you go into rehab and you were you're going
to kill yourself. And this comedian, because of Carson and
a few other people, got clean and sober, and to
this day, gives Carson credit for saving his life. And
then once he was clean, he was back on Johnny's

(11:21):
show and happy ending. And Carson would do that for people.
He didn't want credit. He when he left one hundred
and eighty million dollars foundation to charity, he didn't want
credit for it. I mean he was just behind the
scenes constantly. These are the stories that got from the people.
That's why the books called love Johnny Carson, and they said,
I love Johnny Carson. Just a carrying, caring guy comedians.

(11:44):
He would help the young comedians out with a joke suggestions,
Like George Lopez, when he viewed, for example, said after
the show, Carson sat down with him and said, I
would change it to this, And Lopez took Carson's advice
the next night and said that Carson was absolutely right.
The biggest left he was he was un a that's
right to have the comedian look good. His number one
rule was I'm going to make my guests look good.

(12:05):
He didn't have to top the comedians like some late
night hosts have to be the funniest one. And Carson
was secure with himself to just kind of stay back
and let the guest shine which is very uniquely John Ay.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah, he had a comedic genius his timing. You know,
I have studied his show. Aside from being entertained, I've
studied his timing. And you know Rush Limbaugh, who was
a master of a purely audio medium being being radio,
and I think responsible for the reason we have talk
radio today. He saved the dial. He had such incredible timing.

(12:39):
Carson's timing is just incredible. It's unkenny how good he is.
It's like watching Tom Brady. You don't realize how good
he is because he makes it look effortless.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
He makes it look easy. He doesn't seem to be struggling.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
You're right, And all these people that were guest hosts
would try to do the show and found out how
hard it was. It looks easy. You have Jameson Roger
Moore try to guest host the show.

Speaker 4 (13:02):
He's so nervous when he's guest hosted.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
He's literally sweating through his suit during commercials. We had
to bring a hair dryer on to try to dry
his suit because he was perspiring so much. Because it
was so difficult, people like Arnold Palmer and Joe Namath
would try to guest host The Tonight Show, Kirk Douglass
and Johnny.

Speaker 4 (13:18):
Would watch it home with these.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
People attempting to do his job and thinking it's hilarious.
Once in a while you'd get a David Letterman or
Gary Shandler or Jim Rivers that could do it. But
he had the hardest grind and show business. I mean,
it was unrelent and the beginning he's doing an hour
and forty five minutes and went down to ninety minutes essentially.

Speaker 4 (13:35):
In an hour. But everybody said it was a punishing grind.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
You know, Alec Baldwin hated conservatives and conservative radio.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
And they're all blowhards. And so he was going to
do his own show.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
Very talented our actor, incredibly talented actor. And so he
hosts a show one day and within the first minute
he tells the producer, let's say the producer's name.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Was Bobby, do we have any calls?

Speaker 3 (14:01):
No, okay, well get us some calls, and about twenty
seconds later, within the first five minutes he asked for
calls about fifteen times. And we play it sometimes from
a purely chaden freud basis that it's not as easy
as it looks to do what someone does well, and
he thought, well, I'm good at everything else. I think
people thought, you know, I'm just being Johnny Carson's easy.

(14:24):
You just go out there and laugh a little. Oh
my goodness, the best that ever was made. It seem
so darn simple. You know you talked about town competitors.
Oh yeah, he had a lot of competitors and he
annihilated them all. In nineteen seventy one.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
He a Dick Habot, David Frost, MERV Griffin, maybe Joey Bishop.
He had four TV's going on at the same time.
At eleven thirty in his apartment, He's stettying his own
show in all the competition, nobody more competitive than them.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
Wait a moment, talk about an all star team list
that Dick Cabot, MERV Griffin.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, and it was either Murf Griffin or Joey Bishop.
And then David Frost had a TV show opposite. So
Carson is studying all his own show and everybody else.
And yeah, I mean the Dick Haviot show with the
clips on YouTube are unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
And I Gotebot told me.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
Being twelve years old, meeting Johnny Carson, who would have
been twenty two at the time. Oh, he was doing radio.
He was a local magician and Cabot met Carson in
a church basement in Nebraska. Told me all about meeting Carson.
Backstage during Johnny's Magic show, he introduced twelve year old
Dick Cabin and two other magician friends and they both
stood up and Cabot wrote in his diary in his
journal that night, this was the greatest day of my life.

(15:39):
I met Johnny Carson.

Speaker 4 (15:42):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
He uh. I enjoy.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
His interviews so much, his voice, his delivery, and the
way his brain works. I find it to be absolutely
just a fascin and very smart, very smart discussions, very
smart interviews. I think I think he was He was
so very good at that. It's it's uh, it's amazing.

(16:09):
Hold with us if you will. Mark Malkoff is our guest.
He is the host of the podcast known as The
Carson Podcast about Johnny Carson, and he is the author
of the book Love Johnny Carson. One obsessive fans Journey
to find the Genius behind the legend. Some of you
know we are massive Johnny Carson fans. Here on the

(16:30):
Michael Berry Show.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Like Malcoberry's show, when someone has a deep passion. My
wife has that for gardening.

Speaker 3 (16:45):
I've got many friends who have that for guns, others
who have it for cars, others who have it for travel.
I find that people who have a passion, whether it's
a hobby or a study or a collection, those people
tend to be happier people. It gives you an outlet,

(17:08):
a place to put your happiness, a place to bottle
it up and pull it back out and let the
aroma overcome you. I think it's a healthy thing to do.
I've enjoyed watching the podcast space grow and develop. Of
course we have a podcast. It's a rebroadcast of our show,
but we do separate episodes that are just for our

(17:28):
podcast listeners, and I really enjoy. At the end of
the year, these are starting to come in. People will
will tell me, they'll send a screenshot. Hey, I'm your
number one fan, I'm your number four fan. I listened
to one Guy ninety nine one hundred and five minutes
or hours or whatever it was of your show this year.

(17:49):
You were the Your show was the number one show
I podcasted this year. I enjoy the heck out of that.
When I started, we were just radio. When we added podcast,
it was meant to just be complementary. That's with an E,
not an iramon. It's not like, oh, such a nice podcast.
It was meant to go well with it. But the
podcast has allowed people, many of whom have kept their

(18:11):
day job but now indulged their desire to talk about things,
and many of whom have have surpassed some radio people
in what they make in the process. Some of these
are very monetizable, but in any case, it gives us
these places to go and really get deep into a
subject that we love, and we love Johnny Carson. So

(18:33):
Mark Malkoff is the host of the Carson Podcast and
the book Love Johnny Carson, One obsessive fans journey to
find the genius behind the legend. He did not find
Tim Allen funny prior to Home Improvement and wouldn't let
them book him.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
That was yes, that was Johnny's tallon. Booker Jim McCauley
did not think Tim Allen was funny, and Tim Allen
had to get on Home Improvement and it was I
think five show in American Finally he got booked on
the show and they did not want him to do
stand up, but he said, this is my Dream and
he did okay, but they if he didn't get Home.

Speaker 4 (19:09):
Improvement, they never would have put him on.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
He was one of those people for whatever reason that
just they just were not fans of.

Speaker 3 (19:19):
It's interesting. He also had a list of banned show
guests and why they were vanished, and I'll start with
Jay Leno, who was banned for you wrote seven years.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Yeah, Jaylino went on the show and did extremely well.
And this was a good problem I had is that
Johnny wanted him back very quickly, and he kept coming back.
Jaylino ran out of material and so much so that
he had a couple appearances where he did really poorly,
and Johnny said, I don't like him anymore.

Speaker 4 (19:51):
He's never doing the show again.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
And then Jay Leno started going on David Letterman's twelve
thirty show in NBC and got red hot, so so
much so in nineteen eighty six, Johnny Carson relented and said,
I want Leno back. Leno very wisely said I want
a guest host. They gave him two guest hosts. He
did well, and then he became permanent guest host, and
we know he inherited the Tonight Show, but it was

(20:13):
at seven or eight years where he couldn't get booked
on Carson's show.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
What was Carson's response to Leno getting the show instead of.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
Letterman, Yeah, it was he definitely wanted Letterman to get
this show, but NBC never asked Johnny. It was one
of those things where they wanted to get the permanent
guest host job to Gary Shanley, and Shanley turned it down.
They were reluctantly gave it to Leno, and then Leno
went to all the NBC station affiliates with his manager,
Helen Kushnik, politics to all the affiliates that is good

(20:43):
with NBC, and Dave Letterman on his show was calling
the NBC executives' penheads, making fun of ge the parent company.
Who are they going to get the Tonight show to?
It was obvious that they were going to go to
the person that would be easiest to deal with, So Johnny,
he really wanted it to be Dave Letterman, but NBC
just went with the sayd choice of Leno. But when

(21:05):
Johnny did retire, he made a cameo in Dave Letterman
show and he never went on with.

Speaker 4 (21:09):
The line out.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
So yeah, he had just a close relationship with with
with Dave, and Jay's manager planted a fake story that
NBC wanted Johnny out in nineteen ninety one, and there
was there was a little bit of bad blood, but
Johnny was okay with Jay after a while. But it
was one of those things that he was really rooting
for Dave.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
That whole drama behind that. I remember that playing out.
That was pho fascinating stuff. I mean, that was captivating.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
I don't I don't think anybody would care today if
Kimmel or Foalden or you know, any of those guys.
But at that time that was you know, you only
had the three networks that those were.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Those were heady days.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
You mentioned Gary Shanling, and you know he was such
a big deal for a while there. My favorite Shandling
line is he said that television makes everyone fatter. It's
added ten pounds to my lips. Very prominent, right, It's
a great line.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
Shandling was his dream was the guest host the show,
and Albert Brooks was set to guest host for the
first time in nineteen eighty three, and then Albert Brooks
had a kidney stone was in the hospital and as
an unknown second time ever an unknown person guest host
at the time, so previously David Letterman was unknown when
they put him on, and Shandlin got the call to
guest host and started bawling his eyes up because his dream.

Speaker 4 (22:23):
Was coming true.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
And you can see him coming at the guest host
for the first time, unknown in his.

Speaker 4 (22:28):
Eyes or water he just because this giant grin.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
On his face of this dream is coming true.

Speaker 3 (22:33):
I can only imagine there. You talk about the first
ever correct list of banned show guests why They're vanished,
which includes Swellen de generous Uh, Carl Sagan, his friend,
William Shatner, Jerry Lewis.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Gary Lewis was rude to Carson staff. Carson expected anybody
that came into his home to be a guest or
guest host to treat everybody with respect, and Lewis did,
and so he was banned from that. Ellen DeGeneres was
told not to do a joke that they deemed offensive.
If she did it, she was never allowed back on
with Carson. It was just he looked at it has

(23:10):
just having the people having manners. William Shatner went on
Johnny and would not let Johnny get a word in
for two or three minutes in the opening, and we
was telling him this long winded story, no payoff, not
approved in the pre interview, and he was just and
then he turned his back to Carson and talked to
Buddy Hackett, who was the previous guest that was strike
to strike number three is back then, Johnny Carson would say,

(23:33):
our next guest is on the TV show TJ Hooker
on another network on Saturday night, and you weren't allowed
to say the network, And of course Shatner said, watch
me on ABC, and that was the third strike and
they had to mute that out of the broadcast and
Shatner was never welcomed back after that point. And then
Carl Sagan, the astronomer, him and Carson were very good friends.
But Sagan interrupted Johnny twice during a spot and corrected

(23:58):
him on a statistic, and Johnny was just as you
wouldn't think a guy like that would get so be
so sensitive and so embarrassed.

Speaker 4 (24:04):
But he never would have say been on again.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
I would maybe other people wouldn't, but I've studied him
so much that I find out there's you know, you
don't end up that big a deal and be sort
of blase about it. People underestimate how competitive people like
this are. And you have to be so intense because
it is your being being Johnny Carson, the television personality.

(24:31):
You know, there was no space left for anything other
than that, and that's his whole.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Life all the time.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
And I think people are surprised at anyone like that
who appears to be so petty because everyone else is
so balanced. Well, that's the reason you're not super successful
is because you're balanced. There is a trade off, and
there's nothing wrong with that. More with our guests, our
Vital segment, Mark Malkoff, most of the Carson Project podcast
and the book is Loved Johnny Car.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
Jackie Here, Where's Jackie?

Speaker 4 (25:03):
A crash that killed Congresswoman Jackie will.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
Or Ramona and I talked about Johnny Carson a lot.
You will notice Johnny Carson clips played. You will hear
Johnny Carson show audio when I tell one of my
goofy Johnny Carson one of my one of my goofy
dad jokes. And so when we discovered there is a

(25:28):
podcast called the Carson Podcast about Johnny Carson by Mark
Malcoff in a book Now Love Johnny Carson. One obsessive
fans journey to find the genius behind the legend. We
had to have him on and so everything we needed
to know about Johnny Carson. And we're racing to our end,
so I'm going to ask you rapid fire questions.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
Let's do it.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
Joe Gallow, the mob Boster Boston, wanted to kill Carson.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Tell me about that.

Speaker 4 (25:52):
That's nineteen seventy one.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
Gallow, who's the mafia, figured to get out of prison.
They're at Jilly's in New York City, which is a
bar rest run.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
Carson would talk about it.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
On the Tonight Show. If he had a drinking problem.
When he drank, he wanted to fight the room. He
wouldn't remember a thing, and he when Joey Gallo was
in the bathroom, Carson hit on Gallow's girlfriend, and Jillie Rizzo,
the owner, said get Carson out of here. Gallow's going
to kill Carson. So what happened is Frank Sinatra had
to intervene and sit down with Gallon, said I need

(26:22):
a favor. Leave Carson alone, and Gallos said, you tell
Carson the only reason he lives in breathe is because
he knows Frank Sinatra NBC at the same time had
to go to the top boss, which was Joe Colombo,
and Joe Colombo insisted for everything to be all good,
that NBC had to do a report, a favorable NBC
News report on Joe Colombo.

Speaker 4 (26:41):
I watched it with my own eyes. It's unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
There was no reason for NBC News to do a
favorable story on Joe Colombo, and they did that. And
those were the two things that made Johnny Carson basically
live again. The drinking was always a challenge, and Brick
Sinatra saving in his life. It's the only reason why
Carson did the Reagan inaugural he hosted because Sinatra was
producing it and he asked Carson to do it. And

(27:06):
then you know, when Sinatra saves her life, you say yes.
Because Carson just did not want to do at that
point anything that would be considered political taking side. But
because it was Sinatra, he said absolutely well.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
On the subject, Carson would make jokes about Ronald Reagan,
and Nancy Reagan was apparently furious at him when would
call it.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
She called in twice once she was upset that Johnny
was doing jokes about Ronnie duying his hand she said,
Ronnie does not die his hair. So the next day
Johnny Carson on the show said, I hear Ronnie does
not guy his hair, but he does bleach his face.
So that was in response to Nancy Reagan and then
believe it or not, back in the day Saturday Night Live,
then Johnny Carson and a lot of the shows did

(27:47):
drug humor, and Nancy Reagan, when she became First Lady,
wanted that all to stop and she called carsa jow
and said, no, we're drug jokes, and they really did stop.
So that was a good thing. But yeah, there were
definitely politicians like Jimmy Carter. Mom got upset at some jokes,
and Gerald Ford wasn't happy to Chatty Chase and Johnny
Carson for the stumbling jokes. But overall, the President's got

(28:08):
to kick out of it. Like it was talents with
George Herbert Walker Bush, they spent some time together and
really appreciated one another.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
Bush had an uncanny neck, the elder Bush for making
personal relationships. He did that with Dana Carvey, invited Carved
to the White House, made him do the Bush wouldn't
be prudence not going to happen, and that over, there's
still a human owned. One of the stories I found
most fascinating about the vanity of Johnny Carson and the

(28:39):
eye surgery and hepatitis.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
I'll let you take it from there.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
So Johnny was, as I mentioned, was there.

Speaker 4 (28:45):
Was nobody more competitive.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
So in nineteen seventy one, Johnny has all these younger competitors.
David Frost is fourteen years younger, sick hab it as
ten years younger.

Speaker 4 (28:54):
Handsome guy. Johnny's getting older.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
His girlfriend at the time became one number three, encouraged
him to stop dyeing his hair, so his hair is
turning white. His mom, Ruth back in the Raska, said, you.

Speaker 4 (29:06):
Look so old with the white hair.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
So Johnny checked himself into an hospital and made up
the excuse to get hepatitis, but he was really getting
eye surgery, cosmetic eye surgery.

Speaker 4 (29:17):
But he didn't realize when he said claim.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
That he had hepatitis, that everybody who had contact with
him for a week or two would have to get
painful shots. The NBC meners administered over two hundred Gamma
goblin shots to all the employees of The Tonight Show
and Gas like Tony Randall. Anyone who was around Johnny.
Johnny was horrible. He never heard him that everyone would be.

Speaker 4 (29:39):
Getting shots like this.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
But then he would NBC executives that weren't even around
Carson that what is the shot to show their proximity
to Johnny Carson.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
I mean, he's the.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Biggest star in America, so that I want my shot
as well. So yeah, that was probably the biggest into
of Carson's competitiveness. The part of this he probably went
with that incident.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
Yeah, you know, I don't have a problem checking into
the hospital and the story being yeah, he's got hepatitis,
but prayers he'll be back soon. But when you find
out the effect that's having on other people in the
sacrifice they're making, I think that's the point where a
normal person, which we know he wasn't yes, would say,
all right, okay, look I was being vain ha ha,

(30:22):
here's me. But no, he could not do that. He
could not do that.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
He was horor But it was too late, and he
knew that even if the newspaper communists within we hear
Johnny Carson doesn't really have hepatitis.

Speaker 4 (30:34):
So he was in a bind.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
But he it was unbelievable that people had these painful shots,
and yeah, that was probably the height of his competitiveness,
and he just you know, when people would went up
against him, it's just that he would do anything to
stay to stay, to stay number one, and he did.

Speaker 4 (30:52):
He was number one.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
He was number one, and he was for a very
long time. It was an incredible run in the quality
of the show, in the ground breaking nature of the
comedy they were doing. Especially, but his off stage personality
has been oft remarked to be reclusive.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
You say, that's not true.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
I come to his inner circle, the people that spent
the most time with him, and the medium may amant have.

Speaker 4 (31:16):
To be cold on aloof but the people I talked
to that.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
Spoke that really spent the time with him and told
me consistently he was almost the same Johnny on and
off camera, which I could have believed because of the
cold and aloof Moniker. They told me that it was
a small group of people, but if he felt comfortable
with if he was, he was almost the same Johnny,
maybe a little less regarded, but yeah, that was one
of the biggest revelations. But again, it was a small

(31:41):
group of people, and he demanded loyalty.

Speaker 4 (31:43):
He gave loyalty. They all said there was no.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
Better friend than Carson. But when you were on camera
and you didn't know people, he was very, very shy,
and for self preservation reasons, he would shut down. I
mean everyone wanted a piece of him. Mark Devid Chapman,
who killed John Lennon, had the short list of people
to kill. Carson was on the list. The routinely had
to protect Carson's life.

Speaker 4 (32:04):
So yeah, a lot of times people.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Would think that he's being cold in the loop, that
it was just self preservation.

Speaker 3 (32:10):
You talk about a thirty year career on The Tonight Show,
over forty five hundred broadcasts, interviewed more than twenty five
thousand guests. If he made had to pick one, who
do you think he admired and adored and liked the most?

Speaker 1 (32:29):
I think probably maybe Jack Benny was his hero. I
mean Jack Benny someone Carson studied, and you could see
the influence with the silences and Elizabeth camera.

Speaker 4 (32:39):
When Jack Benny died.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
After the funeral, Carson for three hours was an uncontrollably
sobbing in his part in his home and it was
doubt I think with the person that he really loved,
maybe second would have been Don Rickles. I think maybe
the third favorite person he had on might have been
someone who wasn't even famous, that Potato ship lady. He
would make the people that were not famous in this celebrity.

(33:02):
This was a woman who was a potato chip inspector
in Indiana, sixty five year old Myrtle Young to notice
the potato chips are in different shaped objects.

Speaker 4 (33:10):
Carson has her on and.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
She becomes a huge start, travels across the United States,
goes international, and Carson and is brilliant, had ed McMahons
stratta for a woman and then he chops down on
a chip and this woman thinks Carson's getting her collection.

Speaker 4 (33:25):
She almost has a.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
Heart deny Carson and his brilliance whereveals No, I have
my own bowl of potato chips and that is probably,
I think one of the most popular kip clips Dad
and maybe ed Ams with Tomahawk, or maybe one and
two most famous clips the Carson adored her.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
Mark Malkoff, you have a fascinating, fascinating fetish.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
I find it to be most interesting.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
The host of the Carson podcast and the book of
which he is the author, Love Johnny Carson, one obsessive
fans journey to find the genius behind the legend.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Thanks for another nice thank you, and good night.