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Carson first appeared on Tonight! as a guest of Steve Allen, making a prank phone call to Jack Paar. (Paar rumbled the pair within seconds.) As host, he steered a steady course between the hyperactive pranking of Allen and Paar’s earnest inquiry. Whether delivering the opening monologue in front of theatrical curtains or sat at his desk in front of a mural of imposing Midwest scenery, idly tossing cue cards full of failing gags over his shoulder, he exuded a comfortingly straight-up bonhomie in increasingly fractious times. The wit was bolstered by a platoon of star writers, and the lurid sports jackets were from his own line of dresswear, but the easy manner and genuine interest in what his subjects had to say were all Carson’s own. The show soon became Carson’s, incorporating his name into its title and eventually relocating with him from New York to beautiful downtown Burbank.
Teetotal and averse to showbiz parties, Carson was a reluctant off-duty celebrity, becoming a star only after he’d parted the stage curtains following McMahon’s preparatory crescendo of ‘Heeeeere’s Johnny!’ Under the lights, he could converse with the cream of Hollywood and hold his own with New York’s literati. Long-standing tit-for-tat feuds, especially with actor and compulsive put-down merchant Don Rickles, escalated with each meeting into the realms of obsession; both men walking a fine line between the all-in-fun wink for the audience and all-too-convincing mutual animosity.
When the show ran out of stars, it made its own. Tiny Tim, a towering, baleful oddball who sang ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’ in an unearthly falsetto, was discovered by Tonight and became a regular, even marrying his beau in mock-Georgian splendour on a special edition of the programme, with McMahon as chief usher: ‘We cordially request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki right here on The Tonight Show. But right now here are some words of wisdom from Pepto-Bismol tablets.’115
Away from the star circuit, Carson invited ‘ordinary folk with a story to tell’, especially pensioners such as a 103-year-old woman who still drove regularly, whom he handled with warmth and a total absence of condescension. Folk with odd obsessions were another rich vein: Carson was the first to televise the subsequently worldwide craze for domino toppling, inviting Robert Speca into the studio to knock down 6,999 pieces. All civilians were treated the same as the stars: Carson gave them all their due, resorting to his trademark conspiratorial sidelong glance to camera only if the subject was really asking for it. A tangible link between celebrity and public decades before social media, Johnny Carson sat at the fulcrum of American popular culture.
His unaffected largesse prompted generosity in his guests. When Alex Haley appeared on the show to promote the mini-series Roots, he brought with him a leather-bound book entitled Roots of Johnny Carson, a 400-page, intensively researched trawl of the Carson family tree reaching back to sixteenth century Essex. It was, of course, the perfect all-American heritage, another piece of the Average Guy legend.
Other chat shows filed up alongside Carson. On ABC, Dick Cavett creamed off the intellectual crowd for whom Carson felt too safe. For CBS, Merv Griffin tackled Carson’s populism head-on. From 1982, David Letterman followed Carson in the NBC schedules, triumphantly reactivating Steve Allen’s intricate horseplay (including the teabag suit) in an hour produced, as part of Carson’s uniquely favourable contract, by Carson’s own people. Carson’s stature was not so much presidential as kingly. Though Kermit the Frog was briefly mooted as a replacement in the late 1970s, the thought of Carson yielding his desk to anyone else remained taboo.
When Carson abdicated at the age of 66, the effect was of a long-peaceful kingdom plunged into civil war. Letterman, long seen as heir apparent, lost out to the less admired Jay Leno, and decamped to CBS, to be replaced by Conan O’Brien. Rivals, including Tom Snyder and Jimmy Kimmel, proliferated. Machinations behind the desks became as much a public spectacle as the encounters over them. The unholy viewing hour remained exceptionally popular, but it never regained the stature of the man whose one job was to introduce America to itself. Carson himself summed it up, when pausing for breath after an innocuous bit of business spun gloriously out of hand, climaxing in tearful laughter, trademark karate chops and cries of ‘Hi-yooo!’ ‘That,’ said the exhausted host, ‘is what makes this job what it is.’ ‘What is it?’ asked McMahon. Carson thought hard for a second, and eventually answered, ‘I don’t know.’116
ITV (Granada)
Current affairs go commando.
IN 1963 CURRENT AFFAIRS reached critical mass. In the summer, Britain’s press enjoyed unprecedented levels of political influence when they published the indiscretions of John Profumo. The shaming of a British minister was followed by the death of a US President. For four days in November, from the first, breathless, interruption of an episode of soap opera As the World Turns, through the assassination of Oswald and the state funeral on the twenty-fifth, the USA turned to television for information and support, specifically to Walter Cronkite of CBS News. A programme that combined the fearlessness of an investigative tabloid with television’s immediate visual impact had to be made, and it was.
The current affairs feature began with BBC’s Special Enquiry in 1952 and, the following year, its flagship Panorama. ITV returned volley with This Week and Searchlight. The latter, edited by Australian ex-tabloid editor Tim Hewat, caused such regular controversy it devoted one edition to scrutinising itself. When the Television Act finally caught up with Searchlight’s insufficient impartiality, Hewat reassigned his men the banner of World in Action, a ‘Northern Panorama’ that would fundamentally change the look of TV documentary.
Hewat created World in Action to cover a single subject each week. On-screen reporters were replaced by voice-overs including that of James Burke, leaving the screen filled with the matter in hand. The matter was often visualised with shamelessly unsubtle tabloid stunts, such as staging a mass funeral in a Salford street to introduce a report on bronchitis. These were organised by the show’s team of fixers, who also arranged everything from foreign currency to access to closed borders. Tactics like this helped World in Action’s audience rise to twice Panorama’s.117
World in Action also introduced the 16mm film camera. Several times less bulky than the usual 35mm Arriflex, the smaller gauge apparatus cut the size of a location crew from twelve to six, giving the team greater manoeuvrability. Where before events were brought in front of the camera, now the camera could dive straight into the situation. The consequent grainy smutch of those early guerilla reports was a badge of honour; Hewat upbraided one fastidious producer’s suspiciously immaculate African footage as a screen full of ‘bloody back-lit begging bowls!’118
When a huge story broke at an inconsiderately late point in the week, the leaner team could put an emergency programme together in under three days. All-nighters pulled to cover breaking scoops like the collapse of the John Bloom business empire were celebrated in hard-bitten Fleet Street tones. ‘We have to do a week’s work in two days. It’s impossible, but sometimes it gets done,’ editor Alex Valentine told TV Times, adding wistfully, ‘I’ve never seen so many dawns in my life, I don’t mind telling you.’119
Tabloid clichés in the publicity material were fine. Tabloid clichés in the content were signs of slackness. As the same subjects came round again each season, the show’s style atrophied. Anything that worked, like the Salford stunt, was recycled when time and inspiration went. ‘World in Action is sometimes in danger of becoming a victim of its own form,’ wrote Peter Hillmore, lamenting its use of picture postcard scene setting – canals to introduce Amsterdam, or a politician’s view preceded by the Houses of Parliament from the Thames. ‘I know the team has to fill thirty minutes with film, but it doesn’t always