Carson the Magnificent

Starred review from October 1, 2024
Although it has been more than 30 years since the last episode of the The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson aired, Carson retains the title as the undisputed "King of Late Night."" Beloved for his disarming charm and sardonic humor, Carson had a seemingly effortless rapport with audiences and guests that belied his self-deprecation and doubt; in his mind, he was only a ""prince."" Celebrated celebrity profiler Zehme offers a meticulous biography, compiled before his death in 2023 and completed by his longtime research assistant, Mike Thomas. The result is a buoyant, reverential homage to the entertainer Zehme admired above all others. Sourced from scores of original interviews with family, staff, crew, and guests, plus voluminous print and digital archives, the narrative bounces from Carson's early TV career as a game show host, to his All-American Nebraska boyhood, multiple marriages, and ultimate command of late-night television from 1962 to 1992. The emerging portrait shimmers with nuance and wonder, praising Carson's impeccable comedic timing while probing his inherent emotional reserve. Although Carson did not invent the celebrity talk show genre, he defined it for the hosts who now preserve his legacy. Few people could truly know Carson; Zehme came closer than most.

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October 15, 2024
A biography of American late-night television's biggest star. Zehme, author of biographies of Frank Sinatra and Hugh Hefner, had a lifelong love ofTonight Show host Johnny Carson. In 1973, at age 15, Zehme was "already a full-blown Carson fanboy." As a reporter forRolling Stone, he tried unsuccessfully to secure an interview to coincide with Carson's 1992 retirement after a 30-year run. In 2002, Zehme, now withEsquire, "gets extended face time" with the star for a piece to mark 10 years since Carson's departure. Shortly after Carson's death in 2005, Zehme began work on a biography. The task was overwhelming--"there was always more to be gleaned"--even before Zehme's 2013 diagnosis of stage 4 colorectal cancer. He died in 2023, having finished only the first three-quarters of this biography. Thomas, a longtime Chicago arts reporter, has completed the book in time for Carson's 2025 centenary. The result is an admiring work that nonetheless acknowledges the lows as well as the highs of Carson's life--he had three divorces--and career, from his ill-fated 1955 variety programThe Johnny Carson Show, to his 1957-62 stint as host of the ABC game showWho Do You Trust?, to his taking overThe Tonight Show from Jack Paar in 1962. It's easy to tell where Zehme left off and Thomas took over. The tone changes dramatically, from Zehme's florid style to Thomas's drier approach. Those florid passages, which make up most of the book, are baroque in the extreme, with lines like, "And so, like sun and moon and oxygen and ionosphere, Johnny Carson was always there, reliable and steadfast." Despite the purple prose, the result is an entertaining look at not only a unique figure in 20th-century popular culture but also a bygone era in American television. A fun if overly flamboyant appreciation of a TV giant.

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November 4, 2024
After biographer Zehme (The Way You Wear Your Hat) died in 2023, journalist Thomas (The Second City Unscripted) stepped in to finish his long-gestating account of the life of Tonight Show host Johnny Carson (1925–2005), with splendid results. Eschewing a chronological approach, Zehme opens with a detailed recap of a 1973 Tonight Show episode featuring Carson at the height of his popularity. The narrative also describes the fracas within NBC caused by Carson’s abrupt decision to leave the show in the early 1990s, and covers his low-profile retirement, during which he turned down NBC’s frequent entreaties for him to host various specials. Such seclusion was typical for the intensely private Carson, Zehme suggests, noting that the host often demurred when asked about his adolescent stint in the Navy during WWII’s final months and feigned nonchalance in the lead-up to his 1962 debut as Tonight Show host (according to his second wife, Carson was restless in anticipation of his first show, constantly “pacing like a caged animal”). Though the tone is mostly laudatory, Zehme’s nuanced portrait presents Carson as plagued by a bottomless need for “validation, most any damned kind of it,” which fueled his workaholism and frequent marital infidelities. Carson’s fans will appreciate the glimpse behind the curtain. Agent: Chris Calhoun, Chris Calhoun Agency.

October 25, 2024

Zehme (author of the bestselling The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin') began writing this biography in 2005. After Zehme's death in 2023, journalist Mike Thomas (You Might Remember Me) completed this much-anticipated book about iconic entertainer Johnny Carson, host of The Tonight Show from 1962 to 1992. Prepub Alert.

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