Johnny Carson

Premier late-night TV talk show host for three decades whose longevity was matched only by his enormous popularity and his salary. A former amateur magician, radio comedy writer, radio and TV announcer and host of several quiz shows ("Earn Your Vacation", "Who Do You Trust?") in the early days of TV which followed WWII, Carson catapulted into national consciousness when he replaced Jack Paar as the host of "The Tonight Show" in 1962. The celebrity talk show format did not originate with Carson, but his unique blend of quick wit, his patented slow takes, his topical and mildly "blue" humor, and his expert timing and delivery made him the TV personality audiences wanted to invite into their bedrooms and the show became an almost instant hit.

Perhaps Carson's most likeable talent was his ability to laugh at himself: his famous wry chuckle provided a host of impersonators with more than ample material, and few personalities have played so well off their own occasional failed jokes. Over the years his rapport with announcer-sidekick-human laugh track Ed MacMahon and his flashily dressed orchestra leader Doc Severinsen only grew, and Carson displayed considerable talents for impersonation (his Ronald Reagan being especially hilarious), sketch comedy (often featuring such recurring characters as Carnac the psychic), and improvisation (such as his dealings with unusual animals and small-town eccentrics who guested on his program).

As Carson's hair turned from brown to a dashing silver his audiences themselves matured; they have kept abreast of his many marriages through his perennial alimony jokes. Carson's "cool" persona, eager to please yet given an occasional edge via bursts of satire, perfect for the "cool" medium of television, has never translated well onto the big screen, but his place in pop Americana has long been secure.

Over the years Carson deftly took on all challengers to his late night supremecy--Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett, Pat Sajak and Carson discovery Joan Rivers among them--and soundly trounced them all in the ratings, known as the man nearly all of America invited into their bedrooms via television. Though successful competition for younger and urban audiences came in the late 1980s in the forms of Arsenio Hall and Carson's time-slot follower David Letterman (both unabashed Carson admirers), and while he scaled back his workload to just a few nights of new episodes per week Carson held the loyalty of spectators who favored more "soothing" viewing and looked forward to the smooth golf swing which so often ended his opening monologues. Both his moving and dignified final installments of "The Tonight Show" and his many subsequent honors--he received a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor in 1992 and the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors for career achievement in 1993--showed that the public interest in Carson never waned, and while his retirement from the show sparked a fierce on-air battle between his "Tonight Show" successor Jay Leno (who had guest-hosted for Carson one night a week for several years) and Carson's preferred heir Letterman (not only did Carson show his favortism with a handful of cameos on Letterman's CBS series "The Late Show," it was revealed in 2005 that Carson also supplied jokes to Letterman's monologues over the years since his retirement), neither host has reached the heights of popularity or the ratings dominance that Carson did.

The post-"Tonight Show" years for Carson were intensely private ones, and he quietly and steadfastly refused to return actively to show business, preferring to stand on the strength of his work, which remained remarkably popular when Carson began marketing his old episodes on home video. He did find occasional outlets for his creativity: along with his uncredited jokes for Letterman, Carson wrote short humor pieces for The New Yorker magazine, but otherwise he preferred life out of the limelight for over a decade. "I have an ego like anybody else," Carson told The Washington Post , "but I don't need to be stoked by going before the public all the time." His relaxed, unassuming view on show business, even after being annointed one of its kings, attest to the not-so-surprising-after-all cultural importance of the genial "TV personality" that is Johnny Carson.