Word: carsons
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...Carson's nightly rituals and idiosyncrasies have become as comforting to millions of viewers as warm wool pajamas: McMahon's booming, endlessly imitated introduction ("Heeeeeere's Johnny"); the natty golf swing that signals the end of the opening monologue; Carson's nervous tics (fiddling with his tie, drumming a pencil on the desk), which have provided grist for impressionists from Rich Little to Dana Carvey. The program has had moments of great theater, from Tiny Tim's wedding to Miss Vicki to Michael Landon's poignant last appearance to discuss his terminal cancer. But mostly the show has succeeded because...
...history of Carson's years at the Tonight show is, to a large degree, the history of television. In 1972, after 10 years in New York City, he moved the program to Burbank, reflecting an industry-wide migration from the East to the West Coast. In 1980 the show was cut from 90 minutes to an hour, creating a tighter entertainment package out of the more free-flowing gabfest that had become, in some ways, a relic of an earlier TV era. (One element that was lost: book authors, who had often been slotted in the final 15 minutes...
...Carson created a nation of political cynics, he has also fostered a nation of show-business insiders. Not simply because of the parade of Hollywood celebrities who troop onto his show each week, but because of the , intimate, conspiratorial style of his TV persona. What Carson discovered that set him apart from talk-show predecessors like Steve Allen (who created some of the bits that Carson later adapted) was that the very act of hosting a talk show could be the subject of comedy. Carson enlisted the audience as collaborators, with everything from the chorus of straight lines that arose...
...Oddly, Carson, one of the most intimate of comedians, has always been one of the most remote of public personalities. More than most celebrities, he is wary of the press and aloof from the Hollywood social scene. Indeed, that may be another reason for his uncanny longevity. The few glimpses the audience has had of Carson's private life -- notably his three divorces, which he frequently uses as comedy material -- make it eager for more. Though he was on TV almost every night, Carson was one of the rare celebrities who never got overexposed...
...Johnny Carson phenomenon will probably never be fully explainable. "The idea that one man, basically unscripted, could last on TV for 30 years -- it's a freak of television," marvels Jeff Sagansky, a former NBC program executive and now president of CBS Entertainment. And like most freak accidents, it probably will never happen again. Carson's retirement is another milestone in the slow withering of the network mass audience. Even if Leno manages to succeed, much of Carson's audience will undoubtedly disperse to other hosts and other shows. TV's late-night living room will never be quite...