They weren't always high on Johnny

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on January 26th, 2005

While watching the press slobber over Johnny Carson on the occasion of his demise, we were reminded of the time, somewhere in the middle of his reign, when the entertainment press– too full of itself or of cocaine, or hyperventilating from the effort to keep ahead of the tidal wave that was the Youth Culture– was less than complimentary about Mr. Carson. He was too old, or not hip, or he was hiding a dark side, or he was all of those things. And, as such, he should move over and turn over the reigns of late night to… who? Bert Convy? Marjoe Gortner? Not sure who the editors of Penthouse or TV Guide or The New York Times had in mind, but one thing was sure: They weren’t enamored of Johnny any more. We thought we imagined the viciousness of the rhetoric, but then we came across a 1978 New Yorker article, from which this is excerpted:

“He doesn’t drink now.” I turn to find Lazar beside me, also peeking at the man outside. He continues, “But I remember Johnny when he was a blackout drunk.” That was before the Tonight Show moved from New York to Los Angeles, in 1972. “A couple of drinks was all it took. He could get very hostile.”

I point out to Lazar that Carson’s family tree has deep Irish roots on the maternal side. Was there something atavistic in his drinking? Or am I glibly casting him as an ethnic (“black Irish”) stereotype? At all events, I now begin to see in him—still immobile by the pool—the lineaments of a magnified leprechaun.

How nice. Vicious gossip, ethnic stereotyping. Boy, when the entertainment press decides you’re finished, you had better be a special kind of human being to hold on. Sure, the article, on balance, is a positive one, but who remembers anything from it except that horrible characterization of Carson as a hostile drunk who drinks until unconscious and lives only for the television camera? The most insidious kind of character assasination is that which affects a certain amount of awe and masquerades as a serious, but reverent profile. Read the whole miserable thing here.

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