I met Johnny Carson through NBC Entertainment chief Brandon Tartikoff when I arrived at NBC in 1986. Johnny was a man of enormous talents and a huge star, but he was also unfailingly kind, unassuming, and approachable. We hit it off right away, and over the next 15 or 16 years we had a great deal of fun together in some exotic locations. After he retired in 1992, Johnny and his wife, Alex, were always heading off to some fascinating part of the world, and Suzanne and I would frequently find ourselves lucky enough to be invited to join them. Together we traveled to Russia, Africa, Alaska, Catalina Island, England, the San Juan Islands, and Vancouver.
Johnny was no ordinary tourist. He worked hard to learn about the places we were going. He had an extraordinary gift for languages and a great deal of self-discipline. In preparation for our trip to Russia, he taught himself Russian. Before we traveled to Africa, he learned Swahili. Not many people know this, but during World War II when he was in the navy, he was assigned to a code-breaking team, a position that required great skill with numbers and memory and abstract thinking—not what you might expect from one of the greatest comedy entertainers of all time.
Russia, USSR
July 1990
In late June 1990, Johnny Carson and I planned our first trip to Russia. We both had always wanted to go, and we were especially intrigued by the political and social upheaval unfolding at the time. The dramatic transformation of the USSR grabbed our attention, and we wanted to see it firsthand. Johnny was very interested in Russian history and culture, and he even took the extreme step of learning to speak Russian.
Suzanne and I flew into Frankfurt and then to St. Petersburg to meet Johnny and his wife, Alex. We were greeted by a young man who introduced himself as a chaperone. He explained we had to listen to him and follow him. And we did, even though we knew he would have to report on us at the end of every day.
In St. Petersburg we were all eager to visit the Hermitage, the beautiful old museum. We were shocked to see, as we walked down the corridors, stacks of paintings leaning up against the wall and sculptures scattered on the floor, covered by sheets. Our guide explained these pieces had been moved from storage warehouses around Leningrad because of concern about security, given all of the change the country was going through. The fear was that the people inside those warehouses would take some of the artwork for themselves or sell it.
We learned from news stories in 2006 that more than 200 art objects, from jewel-encrusted icons and paintings to jewelry and silver chalices, were stolen. Eventually it was revealed that a handful of underpaid curators and at least one university professor had sold some of the museum pieces to antiquities dealers and pawnshops. I remembered what it felt like, the four of us wading through some of these treasures, haphazardly strewn around the rooms—shocking and surreal.
In Moscow, we went to our NBC News Bureau, which was very much in the news at the time. Jim Maceda, one of NBC’s best-known news correspondents, was the bureau chief. While he was taking us around, he explained the political and social climate in Russia at the time.
On our last day in Moscow, we asked if we could go to a working-class Russian restaurant where tourists were not allowed. We ended up in a family-owned business catering to a lot of workmen and shirtsleeve types. Johnny began trying out his Russian, ordering things, and soon a lot of strange food showed up. Suzanne, Alex, and I just looked at each other. Meanwhile Johnny had turned around to the table next to us where seven or eight men were huddled around large platters of dark meat and very dark gravy—what we used to call mystery meat in college, meaning no one knew what animal it came from.
Suddenly Johnny got up, moved over beside the next table, and said something in Russian. Our tourist guide was frowning. I had my fingers crossed that this wasn’t going to turn into a bad situation. And then the others pulled up a chair so Johnny could join them at the table, and pretty soon Johnny Carson was telling jokes to the Russian working men who were eating these big plates of mystery meat! And the Russian workers were laughing in just the right places, so they clearly got the punchlines.
Other people in the restaurant started looking over at that table, where an American was hosting a kind of informal comedy club. Every other joke they would toast Johnny with another shot of vodka, and by the time we got out of there, we had had more mystery meat and vodka than we care to remember. That was one of the first trips we took together, and even though it lasted only a few days, it was marvelous.
Africa, the Serengeti plain
February 1994
Although I was not keen about going on an African safari, I was willing to go along with Johnny. I figured if I could go toe-to-toe with Madison Avenue every spring in upfront sales, then a few wild animals on the open plain wouldn’t scare me.
A safari chief met us in Tanzania, complete with equipment and a team of men, and took us out to the Serengeti plain, which turns out to be the world’s largest racetrack, stretching through several countries. We were going out to view the great annual migration. If you get on the right spot in the track, you can witness a great movement of nature far from civilization.
In preparation for this trip, Alex Carson had called to tell us there were severe luggage restrictions. I have traveled all my life, and I take these things with a grain of salt, but I could see Alex was taking the rules literally, and she sent us information about what we should take. We had to pack everything into two small nylon bags, called a C1 and a B1. The B1 bag was the bigger of the two, but it was still pretty small; the C1 was about the size of a briefcase. So I picked up a couple of these bags from a Rockefeller Center store and brought them home to Suzanne, who gave me some stern sideways looks as if to say, “Forget it. I’m not taking my clothes in those bags!” Well, she was always trouble anyway.
So we ended up packing those bags and a lot of other bags, too. We met up with the Carsons in the Amsterdam airport, and sure enough, there were Johnny and Alex with just their two small bags. Together we flew on to Tanzania, where we were met by our guide from the safari company. All of us hopped into the truck for the first leg of the trip, the Carsons with their minimalist luggage and us with our big pile. The guide looked at me and I looked at him, and he said, “Oh well,” and threw it all on the truck. And so we were off, with Johnny looking longingly at his two little bags.
That first truck took us to a breakdown area where there were a few more trucks and a bunch of guys and a lot of stuff. Next thing we knew we were on a single-engine plane, flying to an airstrip where we met up with more trucks and still more stuff. One big truck was loaded up with camping gear and another with food and supplies, and we ourselves got into a big Land Rover. We drove for hours to our camp for the first night, a remarkable spot right on the relative edge of the Serengeti plain. Suzanne and I had a tent, the Carsons had a tent, and the guys running the safari had a tent. It was like being on the 50-yard line of a football game, and in the daylight, we were thrilled to see what was going by.
Our first morning in the Serengeti, we could see elephants in the distance, and the guide said we could get closer, so we started driving into a wooded area with a narrow pathway. We could hear in the distance what we thought was thunder, but it turned out to be the elephants coming from behind us. We asked the guide, “What do we do?” And he said, “Nothing, we just stop.” Even though we were in a big four-door Land Rover, the elephants were coming right next to us. The vehicle was high off the ground and they were still quite a bit higher than we were, and they were moving swiftly and banging into the Rover a little bit. There were at least 40 or 50 of them in an area of trees, and we were occupying the little trail they wanted to be on.
We wanted to go to a riverbed in the middle of the Serengeti where it is very flat, like West Texas. The guide told us that hippopotamuses hang out in the bottom of the riverbed. So Johnny and I decided to explore on foot, with the Rover creeping along behind us. We saw a big animal rising out of the riverbed covered with mud, and we both thought, “Well he can’t be very fast.” Then suddenly, he started up toward us, picking up speed. Johnny and I looked at each other in surprise, thinking we had better get back in the Rover, which by then was well behind us.
We were 20 yards from the Rover and the hippo was about 50 yards away, closing in on us. He came right up to the vehicle and banged it with his head. The guide told us that was just a warning; he could have knocked over the car and we would not have been able to do anything except to shoot him. Which you’re not allowed to do unless it’s a life-threatening situation.
That evening, as we all sat around the campfires recovering from our close encounter with the hippo, Johnny got up and joined the workers at their campfire. And sure enough, he soon had them laughing, speaking fluidly in the Swahili he mastered during the prior 6 months. It was like that Moscow restaurant all over again. The safari workers didn’t know Johnny Carson from the man in the moon, but they were listening to him and laughing, and soon they started telling their own jokes. This went on for well over an hour, with Johnny doing what he loved best.
Our last day in Africa was in Nairobi. We had no personal security as we entered the airport departure terminal. We were standing in line to check in when a military truck pulled up to the doors. Out jumped 20 or so heavily armed paramilitary “troops” shouting and screaming at all of us to empty our pockets, and give them our money and passports. Johnny, Alex, Suzanne and I put everything we had in our hands into our pockets and pretended not to understand. Just as the bandits got to us, police arrived shouting over a spray of gunfire. The bandits fled and we boarded the plane and left as fast as we could. We all were wrecks with our passports and wallets intact!
Juneau, Alaska
July 1995
By the end of 1994, Johnny asked me and Suzanne to take a trip to Alaska with him and Alex the next summer. So in July 1995, we met up in Juneau.
The next day we decided to charter a plane to a nearby glacier. We flew right up to the mountain in a small, single-engine prop plane, and then landed on the glacier where the ice and snow were packed hard enough for landing. Our small plane was dwarfed by this glacier. In fact, there is nothing smaller than a small plane in Alaska. Everything in the state is so big: beautiful mountains and rock ledges.
When we were in Alaska, we took a day trip into a long fiord with a glacier at the end. We went several miles without seeing anyone. Just as we got to the glacier, we were standing on the boat’s bow taking pictures when a horn blew and a large riverboat-type cruise boat came into sight. There were a few guys on the deck waving to us. Johnny waved back and more guys appeared waving. Suddenly the whole upper deck of the boat was filled with waving men. Johnny was waving like crazy as the captain came out and told us that this was a gay cruise he had seen before! Johnny glanced back at Suzanne and me and quipped, “Well they certainly must like the show!”
The next day we made our way by boat to Sable Island. John Jacob Astor had a fur-trading post here, on this small island that faces both the protected passage and the raw Pacific Ocean. When we arrived we decided we had a taste for king crab. One of the locals told us there was a man nearby who sold them. Now, when they say “not too far away” in Alaska, you have to be careful about what that means—it could be a day’s journey. We were directed to an old cannery that had once employed Chinese immigrants but was owned now by someone in the lower 48. So we decided to head there, even though the captain confessed he didn’t know where he was going.
We wound up in a beautiful little harbor that was the site of the cannery. Back in the day, all the fish products would come in and be sorted, cleaned, chopped up, put into cans, and shipped out. Today you can still see the remains of the dilapidated wooden structures that were housing for the Chinese workers.
We were greeted by a very large fellow named Mark who welcomed us and said yes, he had king crab for sale. But first he insisted on showing us around and introducing us to his wife. So we tied up our boat and followed him to his really tiny house, where we met his wife, Mary, who was roughly the same size as her husband. She proudly showed us all the many dolls she makes by hand at their kitchen table with authentic Eskimo and other native costumes made out of leather. “Very nice,” we said, “but we’re really here for the crab.” Silence.
Finally Mark spoke up. “I catch king crab and I keep them in a big container out in the water. But I am not allowed to sell crabs at retail. I’m only allowed to sell them at wholesale to people who have wholesale licenses.” John and I looked at each other. Then Mark continued. “But… if you were to buy some dolls, I could give you some crabs.”
Meanwhile, my friend Johnny Carson was staring at the dolls, trying to calculate the value of a king crab in dolls. But we were determined, so we told Mark that sounded terrific, and we started grabbing dolls. When we had a handful, Mark looked over at us with an expression on his face that clearly said, “That is not a lot of crab.” Several armfuls of dolls later, we were making our way back down to the dock to get the crab when Mark paused by a small shack. His parents were inside, he said, visiting from Bakersfield, California. His parents loved Johnny, he said; could we take a moment to meet them?
So Johnny and I looked at each other and shrugged, as if to say, “Well, we’re here and we have the dolls and we’re on our way to get the king crab, and there are two people living in that shack from Bakersfield?!”
All the windows were shut and all the shades were drawn in this shack and it had to be a hundred degrees inside as Mark introduced us to the two older people. “Mom, I want you to meet Johnny Carson.” And without a blink, she looked up from her knitting, looked right at Johnny, and said, “You know, I never liked Johnny Carson.” John looked at her, smiled, and said, “Nice meeting you, too, ma’am.” So we just backed out the door, Mark apologizing profusely. And now we really wanted those crabs.
Eventually Mark pulled out of the water a cage bound by heavy chains that must have weighed 250 pounds, and took out a giant crab probably 6 feet across. We just looked at him; we weren’t exactly prepared with crab-carrying equipment. “Oh don’t worry,” Mark said. “I’m going to kill them for you; you won’t have to take them alive.” Then, he stomped on that sucker with his size-13 shoe and tore it apart with his bare hands—no gloves, no equipment.
It turned out to be probably the best king crab I ever tasted in my entire life.