The many characters Johnny played in his sketches were legendary—Carnac the Magnificent, Art Fern, Floyd R. Turbo, Aunt Blabby, Ronald Reagan, Rambo, Tarzan, El Moldo, the Easter Bunny, Shirley Temple, and Count Dracula. And he did it with an uncanny instinct for what was funny. The script was always just a runway from which he took off, often in surprising directions. The most challenging part of my job was following him.
For example, during one monologue early in 1977, Johnny found that certain words were coming from his mouth as if he were speaking Ukrainian.
“Yetserday, U.S. Steel announced . . . ,” he said, and then he wrinkled his brow in mock alarm, paused, and asked me, “Ed, do you find that yesterday is a particularly hard word to pronounce?”
“No, Johnny,” I replied. “I say it successfully all the time. Once even yesterday—not to make you feel bad about it.”
Johnny was feeling anything but bad. He was preparing for takeoff. “Yesterday,” he sang, “all my troubles seemed so far away. Now it looks as though they’re here to stay. Oh, I believe in yesterday.”
At this point, Doc’s band had sneaked in an accompaniment and I began to hum, making sure that Johnny held the lead as our cockamamie chorusing continued. We were no threat to the Beatles or even to the Slugs. We were more like a couple of guys at whom people on the street toss coins.
Finally, perhaps because he feared that word of this performance might reach Paul McCartney, Johnny stopped and said, “Now what was I talking about? Oh, yes. Yesterday.”
But refusing to let him off the hook, Doc Severinsen began the music again and Johnny plunged into a second chorus, after which he silenced the band with a karate chop. There was loud applause and then as long a pause.
Where can he go from here? I wondered.
Johnny knew where, saying, “About twelve hours ago, U.S.
Steel announced . . .”
With the audience roaring, he said to me, “That’s what makes this job what it is.”
“Just what is it?” I asked.
With a frown of genuine puzzlement, Johnny said, “I don’t know.”
Johnny had turned a slip of the tongue into another inspired flight.
“Okay, that’s over,” he said. “Now what do we do for fun?”
“Let me get back to you on that,” I replied.
“Two grown men,” said Johnny.
“Graduates of major universities,” I said.
This wacky climate that Johnny created turned unlikely people into comedians. In a tongue-twisting routine called the Copper Clapper Caper, Johnny became the first and last man to ever make Jack Webb funny. He did the same to John Wayne, who turned to me and said, “I’m not drinking anymore, Ed.”
“Really?” I said.
“Does tequila count?”
That night, I went to dinner with John Wayne to further explore the proper scoring of tequila.
ART FERN—HOST OF TEA TIME MOVIE
Johnny’s character of Art Fern was host of Tea Time Movie, which presented matinees of such unforgettable films as Gidget Takes on Fort Ord, Ma and Pa Kettle Host an Orgy, The Merry Widow Has a Change of Life, Abbott and Costello Visit a Leper Colony, and Debbie Flunks Her Wasserman. Turner Classic Movies may have introductions to great films by distinguished directors like Sydney Pollack, but Sydney is a tongue-tied amateur compared to Art Fern’s introductions of the cinematic swill on Tea Time Movie.
Of course, it was hard to look at Johnny because next to him was always Carol Wayne, whose breasts should have been designated as national landmarks. It may have been tea time, but all I could think of was milk. With Carol Wayne’s bosom beside him, and partly ahead of him too, Johnny often gave Tea Time Movie an
R rating. In one pre-movie commercial for some sexual aid, Art Fern asked, “Has romance gone out of your relationship? Does your bed move only during an earthquake? Does your wife keep a can of mace on the night table? Are you tired of hearing, ‘That’s it?’”
Because I’m such a deeply sentimental guy—I cry at beer commercials (the ones I didn’t do)—my favorite Tea Time Movie was Andy Hardy Gets a Girl in Trouble, starring Hoot Gibson, Henry Gibson, Dean Stockwell, Jimmy Dean, and Dean Rusk. Art Fern’s introduction to it should be carved on the entrance to a landfill.
Some of you folks who are repeating the sixth grade may have trouble understanding the plot of Andy Hardy Gets a Girl in Trouble. You see, Andy Hardy lived in an innocent time, when everyone was a little stupid and nobody knew how babies were made. That information was first released by Alfred Kinsey, but to naive little Andy, Kinsey was the friendly neighborhood bookie and Trojans were only at USC.
AUNT BLABBY
Aunt Blabby was another Carson character, for which we never rehearsed because we never rehearsed for anything. We just went to his office, looked at the cards, and then winged it. However, if I had winged it when flying for the Marine Corps the way Johnny and I did one night with Aunt Blabby, I would have left myself on a Korean mountainside.
Johnny was supposed to be my comic copilot, but on that particular night he took his hands off the controls to see if I could fly solo. The happy opening gave no sign of the crash to come.
“I’m old and dense,” Aunt Blabby said. “One would be enough.”
“One would be enough,” I said.
“Why do you repeat everything? I can get that at a Taco Bell.”
And then came an ominous moment, when I asked, “I’ve been wondering, Aunt Blabby, what do you think of a May-December marriage?”
“Well, they have a hell of a Labor Day,” she replied.
The studio was like a library.
“Oh, really?” I asked, knowing that Johnny would save it.
“Where does it say, ‘Oh, really?’”
There was a smattering of laughter.
“You know, just for fun, maybe we could do some jokes instead.”
There was a big laugh and I relaxed. That was a mistake.
“Aunt Blabby, I hear you just traveled overseas. Did you make it to Italy?”
There was silence from Johnny.
“To Italy,” I said. “It’s near Yugoslavia. Also Greece.”
More silence from Johnny.
“Do you want to expand on that?” I asked, picturing viewers flipping to the Weather Channel. It was certainly getting hot onstage.
I was wondering if there might be any work for me at CBS when Johnny finally said, “No, I don’t.”
“Don’t want to talk about that?”
“You got it.”
“I hear there are a lot of statues in Italy,” I said, getting a big laugh while wanting to put Aunt Blabby in a home.
“I didn’t know that,” Johnny said, and the explosion of laughter revealed that the two of us had finally come out of the tunnel before crashing into another train.
“Now that you’ve found your voice, Aunt Blabby, tell me this,”
I said. “You’re a handsome woman . . .”
“And you’re Ray Charles.”
“Do you go out on many dates?”
“Not only can I not get a date,” Aunt Blabby said, “but men come into my house to steal my calendars.”
I am interviewing Aunt Blabby, who had managed not to age gracefully.