It's probably not wise to blog while overly emotional, but here I am -- numb and in shock.

"Johnny Carson Dead of Emphysema at Age 79"

I woke up just after 6:30 this evening, realized it was time for the NBC Nightly News, and felt around for the remote. It took only a few seconds to realize why they were talking about Johnny in the past tense.

There goes another large chunk of my life. Shove it in a pine box and stick it six feet under. Whatever I said about Ronald Reagan a few months ago, multiply it by 1000 and apply it to Johnny Carson. He's one of the major reasons I am who and what I am today.

I've never before felt so hurt and lost over the death of anyone I didn't personally know. But most Americans over a certain age feel like we knew him. We call him the overly familiar "Johnny" instead of Mr. Carson. Back in the day, he was the only game in late night television. It was Johnny or a "Million Dollar Movie." He came into our bedrooms every night for decades. That's longer than most people spend in bed with a spouse.

Q: Who's been at the conception of more children than anyone else?
A: Johnny Carson!

Johnny was there from the time I was born. I remember my father coming home in the 70's, turning on the TV, and there was Johnny. My crib was in the living room of our tiny, one bedroom apartment. Practically from the time I was born I'd go to sleep to the sound of Carson and his guests. The Tonight Show was 90 minutes long back then. When I was older, I remember thinking, "Doesn't this show ever end?" It seemed to be on all night and all the time.

During my adolescence, in a much larger house, I'd lie in bed at night, straining to hear the show as the sound drifted from the living room and down the hall. In the early 80's when I got my first VCR (a BetaMax, no less) the first things I taped were Star Trek and NBC's late night duo Johnny Carson and David Letterman. My procedure was to tape the talk shows at night, watch them in the morning, rewind and repeat. This past Carson-less decade, I've regretted not keeping his shows. What I wouldn't give to be able to watch them again. Who could have imagined an entertainment industry or world without the King of Comedy?

In the late 90's, I spent the summer house-sitting near Palm Springs. For the first time in years I had access to cable. The Family Channel constantly played Tonight Show anniversary specials, and every night another episode of Carson's Comedy Classics, edited down Tonight Shows minus the interviews. I watched them all, and I treasure those memories as much as any in my life.

The King of Hollywood

"The Hollywood tradition I like best is called sucking up to the stars." -- Johnny Carson

Stars came in and stars went out. Some endured, some burned bright and fizzled fast, but for 30 years one stayed constant and was bigger and more important than them all, though few seemed to notice. It's impossible for people today to realize the power and influence Johnny Carson wielded. He was not just the King of Late Night. In my mind, he was the King of Hollywood.

Stars would stack up four or five deep on his couch. Stars with a capital S. The Dean Martin's, Sammy Davis's, and Burt Reynolds' of the world would sit on the couch for 90 minutes till the show was over. You did not run out on Mr. Carson the way celebrities hawk and run today. That would have been career suicide, and everyone knew it. If you couldn't get on the Tonight Show, you couldn't get on in the business.

If you were on Carson's good side, you got all the publicity you needed. If you were on his bad side, you may as well pack it in. Johnny Carson was the stamp of approval for the entertainment industry in the same way the New York Times was the standard bearer for journalism. Any type of entertainment that could benefit from television felt Johnny Carson's influence. As such, he shaped our media for the decades of his dominance and beyond.

When Lorne Michaels wanted to start Saturday Night Live he had to get Johnny's permission. At the time, repeats of the Tonight Show were shown in the Saturday late night time slot. Lorne had to convince Johnny that what they were doing was a just little ensemble sketch show and in no way meant to be competition for the Tonight Show. If Johnny had balked, frowned, said, "No way, kid, maybe next time" there'd have been no John Belushi, Bill Murray, or Adam Sandler.

It's safe to say that if there weren't a Johnny Carson there'd no longer be an NBC. At one time, he accounted for 20% or more (depending on who's figuring) of NBC's income. When the ship was floundering, Johnny was the ballast that kept it afloat. It's testament to what a single star can accomplish for an organization.

The World Keeps Turning

"Find me any performer anywhere who isn't egocentric. You'd better believe you're good, or you've got no business being out there." -- Johnny Carson

You know what I hate more than anything else about life? It just keeps moving on. No matter what happens, life just keeps moving. It doesn't matter how good, great, smart or talented a person might be, they pass this way but for a little while then life leaves them behind. Greatness can stand with us, then no-one even remembers it was there.

We're already forgetting Johnny. I was disappointed to see that only two brief articles about him were posted here (that I saw, anyway). All memories fade, and the people most targeted by today's number crunching executives were either too young to remember Johnny's days in the sun or weren't even born yet.

He was so good at what he did, so accomplished, so at ease that it was easy not to realize how talented and skilled he was.

How Do You Explain Genius to Someone Who Wasn't There?

They say the Al Jolson we are left with can't compare to the one who stood before you. Films and phonographs don't begin to capture the magic and charisma he exuded. Likewise, people who have grown up in the post-Carson era have no idea what they are missing. Hardly a week has gone by that I don't lament his absence. I watch the late night programs and long for Johnny to be doing the interviewing, for him to be making the political observations, for his class, dignity, and style of comedy to take over the sketches and set pieces.

Craig Kilborn reportedly studied Carson's old shows. He concluded, "I would do that and watch him, and it's depressing 'cause he is that good." That's what I think every time I watch someone else trying to do what he did. Everyone fails in the comparison. But we're older and have some perspective on what is involved.

I saw a message board this evening where someone announced Johnny had died. Almost immediately a young girl spoke up and said, "Who's Johnny Carson?" The nature of his work -- commenting on and interacting with the ephemeral -- makes it impossible by nature for his work to endure. His work was so much of its time that watching Carson repeats even while he was still on the air often meant not being able to get the joke if you hadn't heard it the first time around and could remember the reference from the first getting. I lifted one of my most oft used lines from Johnny: "Diagrams of the jokes will be available in the lobby after the show." It would be very difficult for someone coming at it today, without the historical perspective of having been there, to appreciate what he did. Sadly, there's not much that stands apart from the show and the time.

"I'm concerned about values -- moral, ethical, human values -- my own, other people's, the country's, the world's values." -- Johnny Carson

Late night television, all entertainment really, has taken a wild divergence from the time of Carson. His brand of stars and show business doesn't exist anymore. There are too many channels and too many fly-by-night celebrities trying to fill them. Every network needs a star and any tooth-whitened urchin will do. We've all become too inured, too calloused and accepting of a daily diet of the vulgar and the mundane. We need a touch of the magic and mystery, the aura and class that was old-time Hollywood and most especially its brightest representative, Johnny Carson. He was Hollywood's face to the world at a time when the world wanted to gaze lovingly, not turn away in disgust.

Leave 'em Wanting More

I had always hoped Johnny would come back in some capacity, even if only some sort of occasional guest appearance. His final words on the Tonight Show were a hope that someday when he found something else he would like to do and came back before us that we would welcome him as graciously as we had all his late night years. Some might think he never found that something else. Some think the private man had tired of public life.

I think, as odd as it sounds, he was afraid of failing. One of the things I learned from Carson was that most people spend a lot time failing at what they do before they make a success of it. (One of the problems with today's hype machine is that entertainers trying something for the first time are forced to do it in the splashiest, most public way possible. The philosophy of "trying it out on the road" has been totally abandoned.) Johnny had many failed programs before he finally found his greatest success on the Tonight Show. From his parting words, I think he realized that trying something new was actually starting all over. It was a little late in the game for that and likely failure. Why tarnish the legend he'd spent a lifetime building?

One of his last appearances was on The Late Show with David Letterman when it visited California. Dave pretended to have lost the Top Ten List. After a few moments of fumbled searching, Johnny Carson suddenly appeared to hand him the blue card. The audience went wild. Dave induced Johnny to sit behind the desk. Johnny sat there for a moment and you could almost see it all rushing back to him, the power, the thrill, the life that had been his. You could almost see him considering doing it all again. Then, like Hamlet saying "No more" to the idea of a permanent sleep, he shook his head and stepped back.

While he was in college, Johnny wrote an in-depth study of comedy. He was a student of entertainment. There's an old show business adage that goes, "Always leave them wanting more." That he did.

My Last Week with Johnny

Johnny's career and legend were still important enough that when longtime producer Peter Lasally revealed last week that Johnny occasionally wrote jokes and slipped them to David Letterman, the news hit all the major outlets. Someone reported that Johnny recently told sidekick Ed McMahon, "I'm still writing jokes. I don't know why."

That gave me hope. Maybe he'd soon consider an appearance. Maybe he wasn't done with show biz after all. What it most gave me hope for, though, was that maybe, just maybe, I still had a chance to meet him. I've mentioned before that there were only 3 people I really wanted to meet in my life: Ronald Reagan, Bob Hope, and Johnny Carson. Though Johnny was still alive, I recently wrote that I'd never get the chance. The publicity of this past week stirred my hopes.

"I don't know of a person in comedy or television who didn't sort of grow up with Johnny Carson as a role model." -- David Letterman.

I will consider it one of the great failures of my life that I never met the man or even got to see him work -- even more so than with Hope and Reagan. I don't know why it never occurred to me to go see a taping of the Tonight Show. Even when he first announced he was retiring there was plenty of time to get down there. By the time the idea penetrated my mind, it was too late. Crowds circled the block. If I knew then what I know now, I'd have stood in line for a week in a driving hail storm.

"I never thought this would happen." -- Ed McMahon

When thinking about Johnny, the unwanted thought would occasionally intrude that he couldn't live forever. How would I react to a world without Carson? That was something I didn't want to think about or deal with. Today I woke up and the day I dreaded had arrived. What a way to start a day. I once had a friend who was drifting away from me. The last thing I got to tell her was that the world was a better place with her in it. Well, today, with Johnny Carson's death, the world is a little less "better of a place." You know?

I can't begin to express to you how much I loved the man and his work, how important they were to me, how much I've held dear to anything Carson related I could get a hold of. If you ever see me perform comedy (in a play or filmed entertainment -- I don't do standup) I think you'll see a lot of him in my work. Everything I know about timing comes from Johnny Carson. I'm sure more of my comedic sensibilities than I'll ever know come from him as well.

Farewell to a Fallen Hero

To the King of Late Night, the King of Comedy, The King of Hollywood I say,

Goodnight sweet King,
And flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest

The King is dead, and there is no-one to take his place.

Good-bye, Johnny, wherever you are. I and millions of others will always love, remember, and treasure you. I really hope you knew it. I really, really do.

Yours,

Gene Nash