From the very start of the show, Johnny and I had not just a rapport but a comic rhythm. He brought out things in me that I didn’t know were there, certainly not when I was doing Philadelphia’s news or when I was calling to strollers on the Atlantic City boardwalk, telling them how to slice a tomato:
“Step right up, folks, and prepare to be dazzled by the world-famous Morris Metric Slicer!”
“I never heard of it, mister. Are you Morris?”
“No, I’m Ed, and I’m your new friend because you can forget about the two dollars these babies usually sell for! We’re cutting the price to one dollar!”
“You got something for toenails?”
“You’ll forget you have toes when I slice this tomato! Now tell me: What do they call New Jersey?”
“The pits.”
“Yes, and also the Garden State with the world’s greatest tomatoes. Now just look at this! The Morris Metric Slicer can slice a tomato so thin that you can read a newspaper through it! Use your tomato to find out the latest mayor to go to jail!”
My work as a pitchman taught me how to sell anything to anyone. My work with Johnny put me on a level I never dreamed of achieving. I am not a professional comedian or even an amateur, but there were times when Johnny made me one. A part of the show that he and I particularly loved was the few minutes after the monologue, when we improvised in what we called “the five spot.” No script, no rehearsal, just the two of us in comic flight together, flying without a net. Sometimes we flew, sometimes we crashed.
“You dont’ have to find my ‘Good evening’ funny, Ed.”
But our altitude was usually high because we could read each other. Just a knowing look, a half smile, a certain slight movement of the head, and the signal was sent. There were nights after Johnny’s monologue when he and I were ad-libbing and he seemed to have a resistance to bringing out the first guest. Seeing something in Johnny’s eyes, I knew that he wanted us to go on rapping together, playing back and forth and getting wilder and wilder, until perhaps the first guest had gone home and it was time for the first commercial. I believe in ESP because Johnny and I had it. Or, as a basketball star once said after Johnny had asked how he always knew the location of a player he was feeding, “We have ESPN.”
Johnny did use writers for the monologue and the sketches, but we always felt the show was best when the two of us were ad-libbing our way into the wild blue yonder.
THE LEONARD BERNSTEIN OF COMEDY
One stunning part of Johnny’s talent was that no matter how wild the show got, he always had total control. The pies flying, the chimps romping, the kids blabbing, the models flaunting their chests—all of it was grandly orchestrated by the Leonard Bernstein of comedy.
On many nights, I remembered Johnny’s words, ones that could have been called the philosophy of The Tonight Show: “I never want the show to feel too planned.”
The show certainly wasn’t too planned the night that Bob Newhart and I turned back the clock—again and again. Our inspiration wasn’t Albert Einstein but an author of a new book called something like Myth and Metaphor in Modern Mexican Plumbing or An Anecdotal History of Wool—one of those books that can help you fall asleep. Like many authors whose books are less than riveting, this man came out in the last ten minutes of the show and at once revealed himself to be as interesting as the directions on a tube of Vaseline. Bob and I saw that Johnny couldn’t wait for these last ten minutes to pass; eagerly, his eyes kept glancing to the glassless clock at the end of the couch.
I don’t remember which of us did it first, but either Bob or I was suddenly possessed to convert the show to dullness savings time. When Johnny wasn’t looking, one of us moved the clock back about seven minutes. Moments later, Johnny glanced at the clock and was dismayed to see that this author’s anesthetic had another seven minutes to be inhaled.
Miraculously, Johnny kept the interview on life support. And about two or three minutes later, when he wasn’t looking, one of the evil twins again moved back the clock’s minute hand, making it still seven minutes to the end of the show. In all the years I was with him, I had never known Johnny to panic, but he seemed to be considering it when he glanced again at the clock and saw that this deadly interview still had seven minutes to go.
Revealing how compassionate we were, Bob and I finally allowed the time to run out. Thousands of people told Johnny that he put them to sleep when they meant that he merrily kept them awake. This night, however, many people undoubtedly were put to sleep, not by Johnny, of course, but by an author who seemed to be talking for forty-five minutes.
TO THE RESCUE!
It was wonderful to see Johnny riding to the rescue of a dying sketch.
“I took my car to the garage,” he once said as a character in a sketch, “and they told me the engine was knocking.”
“So they told you the engine was knocking,” I said, as if taking a hearing test.
“I believe I just said precisely that,” Johnny replied, “and not Hamlet's soliloquy, which, of course, might be funnier than where this is heading.”
“Then let us see, O Giver of Fair Warning. When they told you the engine was knocking, what did you say?”
“I said, ‘Answer it.’”
It was an ancient joke that no longer worked for third graders. When the audience didn’t answer Johnny’s “Answer it” with a laugh, he and I moved into gear.
“So that’s what you said, did you?” I said, quoting from The Second Banana’s Handbook.
“No, I said Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address,” said Johnny to just a bit of laughter. “Gee, I thought that was a joke. I seem to be alone in that thought. Forget the Gettysburg Address; it’s time for prayer. Or else time to get the net.”
“Perhaps I could tell a cute story about one of my children,” I said.
“And clean the place out like a fire drill? Actually, I have one: Ed’s baby just learned to crawl by watching Ed come into the house.”
“Little Gordon.”
“Yes, little Gordon.”
After another moment of silence, Johnny said, “This audience isn’t really bad when they’re awake. Now last night . . . last night, we had a rough audience.”
And from throughout the congregation came the cry, “How rough was it?”
Johnny’s own net had caught them again.
THE GREAT ZOOLOGICAL DEBATE
We also were happy going into another intellectual dead end, a zoological one, where we managed to linger for many years. Charles Darwin would have liked the long-running debate between Johnny and myself over which was smarter, the horse or the pig. Well, maybe not Charles Darwin, but certainly Charles Schulz.
Johnny thought the pig was smarter than the horse and I agreed; but the good second banana had to take the second beast.
“The pig is definitely smarter,” Johnny kept telling me, resisting the temptation to discuss the future of the World Monetary Fund.
“No,” I said, “if the pig were really smart, he wouldn’t end up as breakfast. I mean, no one orders horse and eggs.”
“Ed, I’m not aware of any pig that has become Krazy Glue. Or even the sane kind.”
“Johnny, is there a Kentucky Derby for pigs? Not even a pig Pimlico. No one was ever out money on a pig. No one ever rooted for a pig, except another pig. It just sits there all day—in mud.”
It wasn’t easy for two grown men to sustain such an idiotic argument for several years, but Johnny and I were up to it—or down to it, if you prefer.
“And pig spelled backward is gip ,” I once said.
“That may be true, O Mascot of the Betty Ford Clinic,” Johnny said. “However, pigs happen to be architects. Did you ever hear of any story about three little horses building a house of bricks?”
“Did you ever hear of a pig paying off at twenty to one?”
“I wonder if I should start calling you Mister Ed,” he said.
“Johnny, horses have had Secretariat and Whirlaway and Seabiscuit. Name one famous pig.”
“Imelda Marcos,” he said.
Carnac the Magnificent and I were both wondering if we would be replaced by a professional act.
CARNAC THE MAGNIFICENT
I loved ad-libbing for the five spot, but I had a special feeling for Carnac the Magnificent, the all-knowing soothsayer from the East with a massive turban who gave questions to the answers I told him. In fact, I kept padding my introduction. I think I peaked on the night that I said,
And now, bow your heads toward Tibet—and if you don’t know where Tibet is, try Pismo Beach—for here he is; that famous sage, soothsayer, and seersucker from the mysterious East; the all-knowing, all-telling, semi-omniscient dress designer to Janet Reno; the borderline sage, would-be prophet, and Nepalese underachiever . . . Carnac the Magnificent!
And out came Johnny in his oversized robe and preposterous headdress—the towering bejeweled turban that belonged on a seven-foot center. He started walking toward the desk, missed a step, and grandly fell on his face.
On that particular night, I not only enriched my introduction, but I was able to turn Carnac into heartwarming payback to Johnny for what he had done to me a few weeks before by letting me twist in the wind during an Aunt Blabby sketch.
“Welcome, O Great Sage,” I said.
“May a thousand blessings flow across your body,” Johnny said.
“That many, O Magnificent One?”
“With that body, a thousand might not be enough. May you get your first French kiss from a diseased camel. May a love-starved fruit fly molest your sister’s nectarines.”
“Abuse from you is like praise from anyone else,” I said.
“I don’t know what that means, but I know everything else.”
“And now the envelope with the answer to the unknown question,” I said, holding it in the air. “I have in my hand, as you can plainly see . . .”
“Of course I can plainly see, and unfortunately I’m seeing you.”
“I said those particular words, O Semidivine One, because sometimes the sand gets in your eyes and . . .”
“May sand fleas get in your shorts.”
“Back to the envelope. A child of six could plainly see that it is hermetically sealed.”
“What’s that child doing up at midnight?”
“That is not one of your questions, O Semisplendid One. Let me return to the valid questions and say that my daughter, who is four and a half but acts considerably older, can plainly see that the question has been kept in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnalls’s porch since noon. No one, absolutely no one—” And I pounded the desk.
“Carnac may have to call security.”
“—knows its contents!”
“You are right, Large Person,” said Johnny. “May those blessings keep flowing over you, with some Gordon’s as well.”
“O Source of All That Is Wet, O Divine Spigot, we are ready for your first intuition.”
“May we have absolute silence, please,” he said.
“Many times you have received that,” I said, triggering a huge laugh with perhaps the best zinger I had ever thrown on the show.
After letting the laugh play, Johnny said, “Clearly, you have funds put away.”
1. Moonies
2. A cat and your wife
3. Lollipop
4. Preparation H and take-home pay
5. Dairy Queen
6. The American people
7. Sis Boom Bah
8. A B C D E F G
9. Mr. Coffee
10. The Loch Ness Monster
11. Mount Baldy
12. The zip code
13. A linen closet
14. 20/20
15. “Thank you, PaineWebber”
16. Coal Miner’s Daughter
17. Real people
18. NAACP, FBI, IRS
19. I give a damn
20. Hasbro
21. Spam and Jim Bakker
22. Ovaltine
23. Bungy diving and a date with Geraldo
24. Hop Sing
25. All systems go
26. 10–4
27. Persnickety
28. “These are a few of my favorite things”
29. Hell or high water
Announcer: “I hold in my hand . . . the last envelope.”
30. A pair of Jordache jeans and a bread box
1. Name a religion that drops its pants.
2. Name something you put out at night and someone who won’t.
3. What happens when someone stomps on your lolly?
4. What can you depend on for shrinking?
5. What do you call a gay milkman?
6. Name the loser in the 1976 presidential race.
7. Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes.
8. What were some of the earlier forms of Preparation H?
9. Name the father of Mrs. Olsen’s illegitimate baby.
10. Who will they find sooner than Jimmy Hoffa?
11. How do you play piggyback with Telly Savalas?
12. What do CIA agents have to remember to go to the bathroom?
13. What do gay Irish guys come out of?
14. What will a gallon of gas cost by next year?
15. What might a girl say at a stockbrokers’ orgy?
16. Where can you pick up a nasty soot-rash?
17. What do lonely inflatable people buy for companionship?
18. How do you spell naacpfbiirs?
19. What did it say in the beaver’s will?
20. How does Tito Jackson get work?
21. Name two things that’ll be in the can for the next eighteen years.
22. Describe Oprah Winfrey in high school.
23. Name two things that end with a jerk on your leg.
24. Name a prison for one-legged people.
25. What happens if you take a Sinutab, a Maalox, and a Feen-a-Mint?
26. How do a big guy and a little guy split fourteen bucks?
27. How do you get paid when you’re picking snicketies?
28. What do you say to a doctor who’s wearing a rubber glove?
29. Name two things you really don’t want in your underwear.
30. Name two places where you stuff your buns.
Handing him the envelope, I finally said, “And now, O Great Wind from the East, here is the answer to your first question.”
“I was afraid we’d never get to this,” Johnny said. “And I was afraid we would.”
He pressed the envelope to his forehead and said, “V-8.”
“V-8,” I said, and Johnny eloquently scowled at me.
And then he opened the envelope and read, “What kind of social disease can you get from an octopus?”
The audience laughed and then groaned.
“This audience would lob a grenade at Bambi’s mother,”
Johnny said.