A 10-Year-Old’s Tribute To Carson

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Back in 1962, my family drove east in our station wagon for a wedding in New York City. I was 10 years old, and looking back at that trip, I realize how much the world has changed since then. To begin with, most people (especially entire families) didn’t fly. If they traveled at all, they drove. John Kennedy was in the White House just a year (with the Cuban missile crisis, the great civil rights struggles, and Vietnam still to come). There was obviously no Internet. There wasn’t even cable. Three networks dominated the airwaves, NBC, CBS, and the lesser of the three at time, ABC. No CNN. No Fox. Not even any PBS – that was still a loose consortium of “educational” stations that lived on the castoffs of old equipment that the three networks donated as tax write-offs.


It’s hard to remember, as well, the impact of New York City on a 10-year-old from Milwaukee. This will give you a clue: I was amazed by the elevators in the Americana Hotel where we stayed (now the Sheraton New York). Never having traveled so many floors so fast – my parents let me go on runs by myself (another distortion from today’s very real need for overprotection).


On the first day in town, my family went in two different directions. My father took my sisters somewhere – perhaps a museum – and I went off with my mother and grandmother. The shock came when my guardians of the day asked me if there was anything I wanted to do in the big city. (This almost never happened.) My response was quick – I told them that, more then anything, I wanted to see a live television show.


Although a great deal of the live production of television’s “golden era” had turned to tape by 1962 and most of the evening sitcoms and dramas had already moved to L.A., New York was still churning out daily game shows, as well as the news broadcasts and, at NBC, the “Today” and “Tonight” shows (Jack Paar was the very popular host).


The three of us walked over to Rockefeller Center, and before we knew it we were sitting in a large audience in an inner studio of a game show called “Who Do You Trust?” I don’t remember how the game was played. What I do remember was finally comprehending how what I was seeing on the stage in front of those large studio cameras translated into what I saw in our den back in Wisconsin. There is one more thing I remember as if it were yesterday. The host was an unusually nice and funny young man who seemed to connect with everyone in the audience. His name, of course, was Johnny Carson. As we were leaving, my grandmother, who seemed to have some insight into these things (and probably missed her true calling as a programming executive) predicted “that young man will have a big career ahead of him,” she observed. “He’s a real mensch.”


Some months later, back in the Central Time Zone, I heard that Jack Paar was leaving “The Tonight Show,” a show I wasn’t allowed to watch because it was on too late and his replacement was none other then the game show host that I actually knew. I would start to watch him when I stayed overnight at my grandmother’s house – she also seemed to feel the connection – and became a life-long fan.


As I passed from grade school … to high school … to college … to adulthood, a lot changed in my world, but there was always one constant. It came on at 10:30 Central Time every night. Same announcer. Same “open.” And perhaps most of all, the same warmth and friendliness. The man seemed to appreciate that we tuned in, and in gratitude he became one of the great workhorses of the trade.


One Carson line stays with me: I wondered how he would acknowledge the end of one of the most brutal years in our country’s history: 1968. So I specifically tuned in the New Year’s Eve show that year to watch his monologue. What could he possibly say that was both appropriate but light, considering it was still a comedy show? Carson came out and said: “I’m really sorry to see this year go – it’s my second favorite.” Then a long pause. “My first favorite was the year Hitler marched into Poland.”


Irony! The man used irony and he used it with such exquisite timing and delivery that I remember it more than 35 years later. I would try to imitate him – never coming close.


So it was with a tear (which surprised me) when I heard that Carson had died over the weekend. I am sorry that he didn’t have more years to enjoy his retirement out in that warm Los Angeles air. And I’m sorry for all of us, because television today seems so less gracious than when it was ruled by masters like him.


“That Johnny Carson … he’s a real mensch.”



Mr. Kozak has been a writer for television news shows including “Nightline,” “Moneyline with Lou Dobbs,” and “World News Now.”


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