Photo: Harry Benson
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Where's Johnny?
By Bob Shayne, July & August 2002
Ten years after Johnny Carson left The Tonight Show, a former staff member reveals life behind the colorful curtain—and launches a Malibu manhunt to track down the elusive host
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Johnny Carson's Malibu estate—neighbors call it a
compound—is surrounded by a high black wrought-iron fence.
I'm walking past the front gate, past a towering guardhouse
made mostly of tinted glass, a cross between a toolshed and a PT
Cruiser. The guardhouse sits behind the fence, rising above it
almost two stories high. Supposedly the height allows the guard
to monitor the main gate and the property across the street,
where Johnny has built a tennis court and pool. Rumor has it
there's a tunnel that connects the two sites.
The guard is lean with gray hair, distinguished despite his work
shirt and jeans. I imagine he has an AK-47 in his lap—signs
along the fence pronounce the vague yet ominous warning
"Armed Response"—but he smiles and says hi as I
pass. Actually, he looks a little bit like Johnny. And as I walk
past I'm struck by a psychic, Carnac-like moment. Is that
actually Johnny? Is this how the reclusive 76-year-old Carson
spends his days? Literally guarding his own privacy?
No. Of course not. But here in Malibu, Carson is like a
combination of Howard Hughes and the Loch Ness Monster:
mysterious, enigmatic, yet so famously familiar we feel we
know him. I've lived a mile from Johnny's house
for 16 years, and I've never seen him once (and it's
hard to find anyone who has). I booked guests for Johnny 30
years ago on The Tonight Show, and I never saw him in
the NBC cafeteria, and only fleetingly at company parties.
And yet despite Johnny's legendary standoffishness—or
perhaps because of it—lately I've found myself thinking
about my ex-boss. It's the 10th anniversary of his emotional
final show—May 22, 1992—and America feels strangely
different. Bigger, harsher, louder, as if a thousand chattering
voices are still vying to replace the one we lost. Simon and
Garfunkel once lamented the loss of Joe DiMaggio, but now, in a
world that feels increasingly mad, it's Johnny we
miss—his reassuring smoothness, his hip Midwestern charm.
It's damn near impossible to dislike Johnny, and I say this
as someone who sort of knew him—even though, of course, no
one ever truly knows him.
Johnny was my boss, though we were never formally introduced. I
started working for him in 1972, shortly after The Tonight
Show moved from New York to beautiful downtown Burbank. Peter
Lassally, Johnny's affable associate producer, lured me from
my job as head writer for a local morning show with three
promises: an extra $50 a week, the glamour of the big time, and a
chance to sleep in. As a night person I took the job. Fast.
Johnny eventually became aware that I worked there, though even
then the average viewer spent more time with him than I did. Each
day he'd roll into the parking lot around 1 p.m. in his
Mercedes and disappear into his office, reappearing only during
an occasional rehearsal. Fred de Cordova, the show's
producer, might join him for some hush-hush conferences, but the
rest of us would typically see him only at showtime, walking down
the metal stairs from his dressing room over to the studio at NBC
Burbank, perfectly groomed in his Johnny Carson Collection suit,
tissue paper tucked in the collar to keep the makeup off his
shirt. He'd stand in the wings, silent, alone, fidgeting,
seeming skinny and small as the makeup man dabbed tan skin tone
on his hands.
And then something amazing would happen. Doc and the band would
strike up the theme, the makeup man would yank the tissue from
his collar, Ed would bellow "Heeeeeeeeere's
Johnny," and Johnny Carson would transform from a nervous
Nebraskan into a bigger-than-life star—self-assured, cocky,
in control, striding through the multicolored curtains to
thunderous applause, the most beloved entertainer of our time.
The appeal, in a way, was simple. Johnny was a star who never
seemed like one. Sure, he had multiple wives and bank accounts,
but you could imagine Johnny eating breakfast in a small-town
diner the way you couldn't about, say, the Rat Pack. It was
as if viewers could sense the underlying shyness beneath the
smooth exterior. Craig Tennis, the show's former head talent
coordinator, used to say you could read Johnny's thoughts on
his forehead. When he was offended, or shocked, it was like neon
running across his forehead saying "I'm with an
idiot" or "This woman is hot," and because he
hadn't said it out loud, which would have been offensive, we
all had permission to laugh, we all felt in on the joke. And we
all felt we knew him.
I'm eating lunch with one of Johnny's neighbors at a
Malibu beach restaurant, about a mile from the Carson compound.
I've decided to find out what Johnny's been doing these
past 10 years, and the neighbor is my first solid lead. Sort of.
The guy has lived on Carson's street for years, yet he
clearly knows less about him than I do. As we chat over pasta and
enjoy the ocean view, he spouts the petty complaints I'll
hear from other Carson neighbors: mainly, that Johnny never seems
to recognize them on the rare occasions they spot him on the
street or at a restaurant. One neighbor, a computer engineer, has
managed to join the tiny Carson clique, playing tennis with
Johnny several times a week. But he won't return my calls. He
doesn't want to be ostracized for talking to the media.
We leave the restaurant, and my guest guides me to a private
beach. From here, he says, you can spy part of Johnny's
estate. So we trudge through the sand, gaze up at a cliff, and we
see ... nothing. Some rocks, some greenery, a cyclone fence. No
Johnny.
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