Book Review: King of the Night: The Life of Johnny Carson, by Laurence Leamer (1989)

The paperback cover of King of the Night, by Laurence Leamer. King of the Night was originally published in 1989. This is the updated edition, published in 2005, that contains a short afterword covering Carson's life from 1989 until his death in 2005. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor.)

Johnny Carson doing what he loved best, sometime during the 1970's.

In my summer-long quest to learn everything about Johnny Carson, I read Laurence Leamer’s 1989 biography of Carson, King of the Night: The Life of Johnny Carson. Even though it was published more than 25 years ago, Leamer’s book is the definitive biography of Carson. Leamer did his homework on Carson, as he interviewed hundreds of people who knew him. 

King of the Night gives the reader a fascinating portrait of Johnny Carson, a man who was able to connect with millions of Americans every night as the host of The Tonight Show, but who found it difficult to connect with people in his private life. Carson was married four times, had difficult relationships with his three sons, and had very few longtime friends. 

Leamer dissects Carson’s life in detail, and the reader is fully immersed, for better or worse, in the various investments and lawsuits that Carson was embroiled in. King of the Night makes an interesting counterpoint to Henry Bushkin’s 2013 memoir, Johnny Carson, which I reviewed here. Bushkin, who was Carson’s lawyer for many years, also handled many of Carson’s investments, and according to Bushkin, those investments were quite successful. However, Leamer paints a different picture, and after reading King of the Night it sounds like Bushkin’s investments were not very successful at all. Now I wonder how much of Bushkin’s book was an attempt to change his image from King of the Night. 

Honestly, reading King of the Night made me a little sad for Johnny Carson. I hope he was a happy man, and yet I have the feeling, from all that I’ve read about him, that it was a challenge for him to find happiness. He brought such joy to so many people for so many years, and yet, like so many entertainers, it seems as though he had a difficult time finding a similar joy in his private life. Also, like so many entertainers, Carson was happy and fulfilled when he was doing The Tonight Show, but the other hours of the day were more difficult for him to fill.

Carson was brutally honest in a 1986 interview in which he said, “If I had given as much to marriage as I gave to The Tonight Show, I’d probably have a hell of a marriage. But the fact is I haven’t given that, and there you have the simple reason for the failure of my marriages. I put the energy into the show.” (p.352) 

One of the most insightful quotes from King of the Night comes from Jeanne Prior, who was Carson’s secretary in the 1960’s. She told Leamer, “Except for the beginning years of his life, I don’t think Johnny has ever been rejected. Just think of the fact of going around for thirty years and never being rejected by almost anybody, not waiters, not anybody. What do you think would be easier to live with, his life or the life most of us live? There is a cost, and that’s why he insulates himself.” (p.160) I think that gives the reader some idea of what it would have been like to be Johnny Carson, and why success can be so difficult to deal with. 

Whatever he was like off the screen, on screen Johnny Carson projected warmth and a likability that came through the television set. Shelly Schultz, a talent coordinator for The Tonight Show in the 1960’s, said of Carson, “I think that he is one of those rare phenomenal people who understood the medium.” (p.143) That’s very true, and Carson’s understanding of television served him well during his long career.

Johnny Carson presided over a media landscape that is totally different from 2016. King of the Night opens in 1987, as Carson is celebrating the 25^th anniversary of his hosting The Tonight Show. Yet even then, as Leamer writes, “The networks had begun to decline, viewers lost to cable networks and video recorders. It was unlikely that any other performer would ever have the same hold over the American night.” (p.2) Of course that’s even more true now, as no one on late night television has the same reach that Johnny Carson did. Carson’s career is unique in late night television history, and it will remain so. Johnny Carson is the man who set the standard; he is the late night host that all others are measured against. 

Johnny Carson was one of television’s biggest stars, and King of the Night allows us a look at his private and professional life. If you’re interested in Johnny Carson, King of the Night is the book that paints the most complete picture of Carson’s life.

Book Review: Mommy Dearest: The Explosive Epilogue to the Bestselling Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin (2016)

Cover of the e-book Mommy Dearest, by Henry Bushkin, 2016.

In April of 2016, Henry Bushkin released an epilogue to his 2013 memoir Johnny Carson. (I reviewed Bushkin’s memoir here.) The epilogue bears the cumbersome title Mommy Dearest: The Explosive Epilogue to the Bestselling Johnny Carson. It’s only about 20 pages long, and it’s only been released as an e-book. Mommy Dearest is not very essential, but it was cheap and short, so I read it. Mommy Dearest explores the relationship between Johnny Carson and his mother, Ruth Carson. Just about everyone who has written about Johnny Carson has come to the conclusion that much of Carson’s personality can be traced back to his difficult relationship with his mother, who never gave him the love and acceptance he wanted. 

In Mommy Dearest Bushkin writes, “There’s not a single factor that contributed more to Johnny’s dislike towards women (and lack of real attachment to other people) than his own mother, Ruth Carson.” In Mommy Dearest, which was written with Dr. Arthur Malin, Bushkin diagnoses Carson as suffering from Narcissist Personality Disorder, or NPD. Was Carson a narcissist? Perhaps, but it might also be true that being a huge celebrity for many years made him a narcissist. In Johnny Carson, Bushkin tells a story about Carson throwing a fit when his room wasn’t ready at the Las Vegas hotel he was performing at. Sure, Carson was more annoyed than he should have been, but when do you think the last time Johnny Carson had to wait more than 5 minutes for anything was? Probably 1958. If you’ve had everything handed to you on a silver platter for decades, why would you have any patience? Jeanne Prior, Carson’s secretary during the 1960’s, said of him: “Except for the beginning years of his life, I don’t think Johnny has ever been rejected. Just think of the fact of going around for thirty years and never being rejected by almost anybody, not waiters, not anybody. What do you think would be easier to live with, his life or the life most of us live? There is a cost, and that’s why he insulates himself.” (King of the Night, by Laurence Leamer, p.160) I’m not trying to defend Carson’s behavior, but put it in a broader context. In general, I think it’s difficult for celebrities to keep in touch with the real world, and latent tendencies in their personalities can bloom once they have wealth and power.

Bushkin goes on to compare Carson to other Hollywood narcissists like Charlie Sheen and Alec Baldwin, which adds to the page count, but doesn’t really add anything to the narrative. It isn’t really “explosive,” since Carson’s difficult relationship with his mother has been well documented in other books, including Bushkin’s first book. It seems as though the only reason Mommy Dearest exists is because Bushkin suddenly realized that Johnny Carson was a narcissist, which seems obvious from reading Bushkin’s first book about his boss. 

Overall, Mommy Dearest is an inessential sequel that doesn’t add very much to the canon of books about Johnny Carson.

Book Review: Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin (2013)

The cover of Johnny Carson, by Henry Bushkin, 2013.

Henry Bushkin, Joyce DeWitt, and Johnny Carson, 1980's.

Henry Bushkin worked for Johnny Carson for eighteen years, from 1970 until 1988. Bushkin was Carson’s lawyer and one of Carson’s closest friends during this period of his life. In a 1978 New Yorker profile of Carson, author Kenneth Tynan asked Carson who he entertained at home, and Carson responded, “My lawyer, Henry Bushkin, who’s probably my best friend.” It would seem that Bushkin would be as well-equipped as anyone who knew Carson to solve the enigma that was Johnny Carson. 

Bushkin didn’t talk about Carson on the record very much until he released Johnny Carson in 2013. Bushkin’s memoir of his time spent working for Carson became a best-seller, and it’s the only book of any note about Carson that’s been published since his death in 2005. Johnny Carson is certainly a juicy, dishy piece of gossip, as Bushkin relates numerous stories and anecdotes showing Johnny Carson in a less than flattering light. 

One of the first times that Bushkin met Carson, the talk show host was organizing friends to break into an apartment that his second wife Joanne was renting that Carson suspected she was using to cheat on him. After the break in provided conclusive evidence of Joanne’s unfaithfulness, Bushkin was summoned by a drunken Carson to meet him at Jilly’s Saloon, where Carson proceeded to bare his soul to Bushkin, a man he barely knew. Bushkin quotes Carson as saying, “I can’t quit smoking and I get drunk every night and I chase all the pussy I can get. I’m shitty in the marriage department. Make sure you understand this.” (Bushkin, p.38) It’s a great scene, but as I read it I had to wonder, did it really happen? It just seems a little too perfect, as Carson also reveals in the conversation that his mother, Ruth Carson, “deprived us all of any real goddamn warmth.” (Bushkin, p.38) For Johnny Carson to thus unburden himself emotionally was highly unusual. But maybe this odd conversation helped to strengthen the bond between Carson and Bushkin.

After these first emotionally charged encounters, Carson made Bushkin his attorney, and Bushkin helped in Carson’s divorce from his second wife, Joanne. Bushkin also moved with Carson when The Tonight Show relocated to beautiful downtown Burbank in 1972. Carson and Bushkin played tennis regularly together, and Bushkin and his wife Judy often socialized with Carson and his third wife Joanna. Working for Johnny Carson was never easy, as Carson expected that he would always be Bushkin’s first priority. 

Johnny Carson is filled with stories about Carson’s incessant womanizing, and his frequently icy moods. Johnny Carson shows us Carson at his very best and very worst, and while that’s entertaining to read about, it's hard to get a picture of what Carson was like day to day. 

Bushkin negotiated Carson’s contract with NBC in 1980, which paid Carson a whopping $25 million a year. Carson’s new contract called for him to film three episodes of The Tonight Show a week, for 37 weeks out of the year, which meant that Johnny was making $225,000 for every episode of The Tonight Show. That’s a pretty good chunk of change. It’s a measure of the incredible power Johnny Carson had in 1980 that he was able to cut back his working week to three days. 

A provision of Carson’s 1980 contract was that his production company would sell NBC five television series. This was an opportunity for Carson to become an even wealthier and more powerful man than he already was. Bushkin played an active role in the business side of Carson Productions, and he pushed Carson to become a TV and movie mogul, but Carson simply wasn’t interested in creating an entertainment empire.

The last part of Johnny Carson gets a little dull, as it deals less and less with Johnny Carson and more with Bushkin’s involvement in Carson Productions. Bushkin was eventually fired in 1988, and his relationship with Johnny Carson came to an end. 

Bushkin makes it clear throughout the book that Carson was an extremely difficult man to deal with. Carson could be blunt in assessing himself, once saying to Bushkin, “You know I don’t have much of a talent for happiness. I never have. My mother saw to that.” (Bushkin, p.254) 

While Bushkin claimed that he was surprised when he read in 1978 that Johnny Carson considered Bushkin his closest friend, Judy Bushkin, Henry’s ex-wife, said, “I don’t know if Henry can think of anyone as a friend, except for Johnny. I’ve never known Henry to be really close to anybody except Johnny. I think that was true of Johnny as well. They had each other, and that was that.” (King of the Night, by Laurence Leamer, p.267) 

Maybe it was just the 1970’s setting, but as I read Johnny Carson, I couldn’t help but think that Henry Bushkin would make an excellent character in a Philip Roth novel. Bushkin starts out as an earnest Jewish attorney who eventually becomes the selfish double of his emotionally distant WASP boss. Johnny cheats on his wife, so Bushkin too cheats on his. The novel would practically write itself. What would the title be? Bushkin’s Kvetching? 

Johnny Carson is an entertaining read about one of the most interesting American entertainers of the last half-century, a man whose work still looms large over the late night television landscape that he helped to create.