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In 2002, Bill Zehme landed one of the most coveted assignments for a magazine writer: an interview with Johnny Carson—the only one he'd granted since retiring from hosting The Tonight Show a decade earlier. Zehme was tapped for the Esquire feature story thanks to his years of legendary celebrity profiles, and the resulting piece portrayed Carson as more human being than American TV icon. Following Carson's passing in 2005, Zehme embarked on an exhaustive nearly decade-long research journey, interviewing dozens of Carson's colleagues and friends to craft this "immensely informative and insightful" (The Minnesota Star Tribune) biography, although his efforts were halted by a cancer diagnosis. When he died in 2023 his obituaries mentioned the Carson book, with New York Times comedy critic Jason Zinoman calling it "one of the great unfinished biographies."
Yet the hundreds of pages Zehme managed to complete are astounding both for the caliber of their writing and how they illuminate one of the most legendary talk show hosts of all time: A man who brought so much joy and laughter to so many millions, but was himself exceedingly shy and private. Zehme traces Carson's rise from a magic-obsessed Nebraska boy to Navy ensign in World War II to a burgeoning radio and TV personality to, eventually, host of The Tonight Show—which he transformed, along with the entirety of American popular culture, over the next three decades. Without Carson, there would be no late-night television as we know it. On a much more intimate level, Zehme also captures the turmoil and anguish that accompanied the success: four marriages, troubles with alcohol, and the devastating loss of a child.
In one passage, Zehme notes that when asked by an interview in the mid-'80s for the secret to his success, Carson replied simply, "Be yourself and tell the truth." Completed with the help from journalist and Zehme's former research assistant Mike Thomas, Carson the Magnificent offers just that: an honest assessment of who Johnny Carson really was.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
November 5, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781797183718
- File size: 264720 KB
- Duration: 09:11:29
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Bill Zehme began his Carson biography in 2005, and with Zehme's death last year, friend Mike Thomas completed the final third. Johnny Heller delivers a consistently solid, dry, yet folksy newscaster performance of the audiobook. Heller's style is nasal and gravelly, exerting sporadic underplayed enthusiasm. The work contains facts aplenty associated with the Nebraska boy who would become the late-night television king with "The Tonight Show." But while the matters of record surrounding Carson's life are here, there is little explanation of the man himself, who was introverted and moody except in front of the cameras. The production's opening and closing big-band music is a weak imitation of the stylish "Doc" Severinsen and his NBC orchestra. Carson, the man, remains a magnificent and inscrutable mystery. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine -
November 4, 2024
After biographer Zehme (The Way You Wear Your Hat) died in 2023, journalist Thomas (The Second City Unscripted) stepped in to finish his long-gestating account of the life of Tonight Show host Johnny Carson (1925–2005), with splendid results. Eschewing a chronological approach, Zehme opens with a detailed recap of a 1973 Tonight Show episode featuring Carson at the height of his popularity. The narrative also describes the fracas within NBC caused by Carson’s abrupt decision to leave the show in the early 1990s, and covers his low-profile retirement, during which he turned down NBC’s frequent entreaties for him to host various specials. Such seclusion was typical for the intensely private Carson, Zehme suggests, noting that the host often demurred when asked about his adolescent stint in the Navy during WWII’s final months and feigned nonchalance in the lead-up to his 1962 debut as Tonight Show host (according to his second wife, Carson was restless in anticipation of his first show, constantly “pacing like a caged animal”). Though the tone is mostly laudatory, Zehme’s nuanced portrait presents Carson as plagued by a bottomless need for “validation, most any damned kind of it,” which fueled his workaholism and frequent marital infidelities. Carson’s fans will appreciate the glimpse behind the curtain. Agent: Chris Calhoun, Chris Calhoun Agency.
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