Mike Thomas: Carson the Magnificent

Kelly sits down with old friend Mike Thomas to talk about “Carson the Magnificent,” a book about the iconic talk show host Johnny Carson. The legendary Bill Zehme began the book but never finished it. Years after Bill’s death, Mike was brought on board to complete the book. 

 

There’s a passage on page 23 that is so beautifully written and really speaks to who Johnny Carson was. 

“Inside the box, where it was dark and warm, where he was bright and cool, here came a man called Johnny (and was 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.” 

 

Bill and you write about this sense of omission in Carson. 

“Certainly, he understood withholding better than a tax accountant, and thus all but effortlessly made such careful withholding both his art and his magic. He perfected the economy of self, accumulated untold fortune by virtue of deft omission.” 

 

I had never seen it reported that Johnny kept two items behind his desk on the ‘Tonight Show.’ 

“He kept two artifacts at his feet behind his desk all those years: a rubber chicken, symbolizing Comedy, and a wooden arrow, left over from a bad Custer sketch, symbolizing failure.”