Books: "Carson the Magnificent," By Bill Zehme with Mike Thomas

 

Carson the Magnificent

By Bill Zehme with Mike Thomas

Simon & Schuster; hardcover, 336 pages; $30.00

Bill Zehme was a longtime writer at large for Esquire, as well as Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Vanity Fair, who made an art form of his profiles of the biggest names in the entertainment world. He was the author of the New York Times bestseller The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin' and Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman, as well as coauthoring memoirs of Jay Leno and Regis Philbin. 

Zehme passed away in 2023, so this book, which he began writing in 2005 and is a story unto itself, was completed by his research assistant Mike Thomas, who spent more than fourteen years as an arts and entertainment features writer at the Chicago Sun-Times, and is a regular contributor to Chicago magazine. Thomas is the author of The Second City Unscripted: Revolution and Revelation at the World-Famous Comedy Theater and You Might Remember Me: The Life and Times of Phil Hartman.

The book opens with a Prologue by Thomas, in which he writes about Zehme's long fascination with Johnny Carson, starting with when he would stay up on weeknights to watch "The Tonight Show," which began at 10:30 p.m. in South Holland, Illinois. Zehme wrote about Carson for his college paper, then after an unsuccessful attempt to get backstage soon after with a press pass from when he had an assignment for Time magazine, and then eventually when he got to do a feature for Rolling Stone, and be backstage, during Carson's final shows in May 1992.

Nearly a decade later, Zehme's dream of interviewing Carson becomes reality when interviews him in February 2002 for an Esquire profile. The article on the famously reclusive Carson, who largely vanished after he signed off "The Tonight Show," was titled, "The Man Who Retired." 

Carson passed away three years later, in January 2005, and that's when Zehme decided to write a biography on him, essentially an expansion of the Esquire article. From then on, he interviewed and reinterviewed people in Carson's orbit, from friends, family members, ex-wives, co-stars, and poker buddies, as well as continuing his deep research. 

Thomas writes of Zehme, "He also began expanding his already sizable collection of Carsonia: anything Carson-related, he must have. Here's a sampling of the jam-packed miscellany that came to fill most of a large storage locker on Chicago's North Side: Rows of fat binders stuffed with interview and show transcripts; piles of newspaper and magazine clippings; every book ever written on Carson; scads of photos; crates of videotapes, cassette tapes, and DVDs; tax returns, accounting records, and financial ledgers; marriage agreements and divorce settlements; personal notes and handwritten jokes; a cancelled $1,500 check, big and pink, from Carson to Severinsen; one paisley polyester necktie, seventies (or maybe eighties) fugly, from the once wildly popular Johnny Carson Apparel Clothing Line."

Zehme then suffered an illness in 2013, with about three-quarters of the book completed. The debilitating nature of this in the decade before his untimely passing at 64 years old, meant it would be left it to Thomas to complete. "I've never lost sight of the fact that, despite my contributions, this is Bill's book. I'm grateful and humbled, however, that friends and family members - including Bill's daughter, Lucy, and his sister, Betsy - think he would have approved of my stewardship."

Carson the Magnificent is a remarkable work, as Zehme traces his life from being a kid in Nebraska who was obsessed with magic, to a Navy ensign in World War II, to a burgeoning radio and television personality, to eventually hosting "The Tonight Show," whose impact was immeasurable, with a lot of it simply because of who he was. 

A detailed description of an episode from Tuesday, September 18, 1973, draws the reader in, allows one to imagine why this was a destination every night. The guests were actor Tony Randall, radio/television sitcom stars Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, comedic actor Jerry Van Dyke, and author William Peter Blatty. 

One of the exchanges with Randall came after he performed a vaudeville-style tune. When Randall returns to his seat by the desk, Carson reaches for a cigarette, which rankled Randall, who famously hated smoking. "The Odd Couple" star then said, "You will not smoke in my presence," to which Carson replied, "And, from now on, you will not sing in mine." They also mused about possible fears of getting old or dying, showing the random nature of conversations Carson would have with his guests, beyond most of the superficial fare on late-night shows now.

While that was a typical episode, Zehme then describes Carson's first show, on October 1, 1962, in an annotated fashion, with so many tidbits, including that it was Groucho Marx who performed for fifteen minutes at the start of it before bringing Carson out.

Carson also was known for his multitude of regular characters, including his favorite, "Tea Time Movie" host Art Fern, soothsayer Carnac the Magnificent, fiery Aunt Blabby, and magician El Mouldo.

The parts on "The Tonight Show," which also featured sidekick Ed McMahon and bandleader Doc Severinsen, are written in such a way that you can envision it. 

Some of the most fascinating parts of book are the revelations about Carson's personal life, far beyond what the public knew at the time, and Zehme's fascination with his life after "The Tonight Show." Part of that was how Zehme got to know Carson's staff at his Santa Monica offices, so would see him in passing often enough before that 2002 interview, which was his ultimate goal. 

Zehme captures the essence of the greatest late-night host in this excerpt: "John William Carson lived all the fat glamorous thrilling life he ever needed, and wanted, inside of that picture box. The very best of him, he made sure, was electro-magnetized and transmitted and reconverted, which is the way he always wanted it to be, and this was more than fine with us on the receiving end. Inside the box, where it was dark and warm, where he was bright and cool, he became a man called Johnny (and not ever John). There, he had risen and reigned as iconic king and cultural potentate - a smooth midnight sentinel possessed of  Herculean fortitude and winking glimmer and other ineffable qualities mastered solely to resonate behind a glass picture screen, especially when it was very late. (No other skills came to him as naturally.) There, his stinging japes humbled unworthy leaders of state and his facile charm stirred the bosoms of desirous females and soothed the sleepy souls of prone subjects who numbered in the millions upon millions upon millions, possible ad infinitum. By 1978 (halfway into his long helmsmanship), more than four times the population of the planet had supposedly and somehow beheld his wry splendor, by dint of recurrent encounter on multitudinous boxes planted throughout North America alone - although (and here he surely would have yawped, 'Give me a break!') this was some statistical meringue whipped up by the National Broadcasting Company, chief patron of his sturdy tenure. In fact, he measured out a careful ubiquity so as to never wear out welcome: across twenty-nine years, seven months, three weeks - an epoch that commenced on October 1, 1962 - he performed his unique services in full public view for at least 5,500 hours,  or a bit less than eight months of hours, which is still more than any other mortal filled in his peculiar line of night work and does not factor in additional hours when his work was shown over again (which it was, generously) or when other people gamely spelled him from duty; his frequent absences, after all, merely stoked his legend of general evasiveness. (Wheeeeere's Johnny?)"