Word: leno
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...LENO may or may not be the hardest-working man in show business, but he's certainly got the hardest job. After Johnny Carson's lavishly covered farewell to the Tonight show, Leno faces the impossible task of measuring up to a legend. He did seem unusually tense his first week. He lacks Carson's easygoing charisma, and he barrels through interviews as if he can't wait to get to the end of the question sheet. But his monologues are sharper than Carson's, and he has given the show a needed coat of fresh (mostly purple) paint, with...
Come May 25, the show will be renamed The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, a subtle prepositional shift from its current title, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Jazzman Branford Marsalis, who will be the music director, has already written a funky new theme song. A new set will replace the old one. Ed McMahon will be gone, to be replaced by no one. Leno has earned the chance to occupy Johnny's chair, but now he must prove he can fill it. Although the show is an institution, it is Carson's institution, and Leno must make...
Some comedians suggest that the Tonight show will turn Leno into an electronic vaudevillian, a video jokemeister. He worries about that. "I went from telling jokes to telling stories," he says, "and now I'm back to telling jokes." He is concerned about becoming detached from his audience. As a stand-up, Leno traveled to your door like a salesman; now he's popping into your bedroom without ever leaving the studio...
...Leno watched comedians on The Ed Sullivan Show making lame jokes about kids with long hair. He remembers thinking how hopelessly out of date they were. The idea is chilling to him. "I heard an older comedian the other day trying to be young, and he used the word hep," Leno says, shaking his head. "You try to be the age that...
...Leno brings his trademark nice-guyness to a late-night institution...