Almost five thousand times, Johnny Carson walked through those colored curtains after I had taken a considerable amount of time to say two words: “Heeeeere’s Johnny!” Almost five thousand times he walked out to the sound of a song he had helped to write, in a unique style that defined debonair, and with a grin that brought to mind the cutest kid in detention, to show millions of Americans the happiest way to end the day.
Ever since Johnny Carson’s final passage through those curtains on May 22, 1992, so many sweet bits of all those shows have been rerunning in my mental VCR—my “Very Cherished Remembrances.” I awaken in the middle of the night and hear myself saying to Aunt Blabby, “I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
And I hear Aunt Blabby reply, “You haven’t seen your shoes in a long time either.”
And I hear Johnny as Mister Rogers merrily telling all the boys in the neighborhood what to do to all the girls as he merrily sings:
It’s a go-to-bed day in the neighborhood,
A day to kiss any cute neighbor who would . . .
And I see a python slipping between Johnny’s legs while the look on his face seems to say he’s wondering if the snake has mistaken him for a tree or is checking to see if his fly is closed.
And I hear Carnac the Magnificent say that the question for “These are a few of my favorite things” was “What do you say to a doctor wearing rubber gloves?” and the question for “Chicken Teriyaki” was “What is the name of the last surviving kamikaze pilot?” And the question for “All systems go” was “What happens if you take a Sinutab, a Maalox, and a Feen-a-Mint?”
And I see myself interviewing Johnny as Shirley Temple after she has become a candidate for congress and I am fighting back laughter, for “Shirley” has just sung:
On the Good Ship Lollipop,
Where the jollies never stop.
And I see—and I hear—the greatest smorgasbord of entertainment in the history of American show business.
“Smorgasbord, Ed?” I can hear Johnny saying now. “Sometimes a Spam sandwich too.” And once in a while, a ptomaine tamale.
“But Johnny,” I reply, “absolutely everyone has said that your show was the best thing that ever happened to TV. ”
“They’re forgetting Romper Room.”
After reading inflated copy for a new NBC sitcom, Johnny used to say with a roll of his blue eyes, “And hilarity ensues.” He would read something like:
About to delight you on Wednesdays at nine is a new show called Foot and Mouth. Tired of the singles scene on Iwo Jima, nine cool young podiatrists move to a loony loft in Greenwich Village, hoping to start with feet and move up. And hilarity ensues.
And right after that hilarity, Wednesdays at nine thirty, is Dear Darwin. Unable to find an apartment, Louella moves into the Bronx Zoo where she falls head over heels for a chimpanzee who’s been head over heels a lot too. But Louella does have a problem, and not just that the chimp is two feet shorter and not Methodist. Can she take him home to her mother as her boyfriend or should her story be that he’s just a pet? Dear Darwin will have you going both ape and bananas. In a show that will quickly become your favorite inter-species romp, a lovable lunatic looks for her place in both New York and evolution. And hilarity ensues.
“And hilarity ensues.” But only in my misty mind.
He was a shy and private man, who once said to me, “I’m good with ten million, lousy with ten.” He ran from tributes faster than he ran on the tennis court, faster than he ran from a growling baby leopard and jumped into my arms when I showed that a good second banana knows how to catch the star. Of course, for every other moment in our thirty years on The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson carried me.
He was a man who could make the sharpest ad libs, recover from the worst jokes, and do the longest comic double takes; but one night in his dressing room, while smoking what must have been his hundredth unfiltered cigarette of the day, he said, “Ed, I just don’t know how to take compliments.”
“You’ve gotten some of those, have you?” I said.
“Yeah, one last week from a UPS guy, but he must’ve thought I was Dick Clark.”
We were able to joke about almost anything, but Johnny was serious now. He simply did not know how to respond to the legions of people who knew he was America’s classiest entertainer.
“Legions, Ed?” I hear him saying. “Is that the American or the French Foreign?”
“Johnny, I just meant that an awful lot of people love you and also know you’re a very nice guy.”
“I wish my first three wives had been among them.”
“But not Alex,” I hear myself saying.
“No, I finally got it right. ”
“And so did I with Pam.”
“We were slow learners, weren’t we, Ed?”