October 1, 1962…’Tonight’ With Johnny Carson Debuts
October 1, 1962…’Tonight’ With Johnny Carson Debuts
At the clip link above is the audio of the first 3 minutes of the debut show with Groucho Marx introducing Johnny. The video has been lost but below, we have the next best thing…rare pictures from that night!
The guests that night in NBC’s Studio 6B were Joan Crawford, Mel Brooks, Tony Bennett and Rudy Vallee. We are fortunate to have photos of all but Mel Brooks and I’ll make some comments on the pictures that you’ll see when you click on them individually.
Notice in the audio Carson mentions two intros…one for the east and one for the rest of the country. This is a bit confusing, but here is what he was referring to and why.
Carson inherited from Paar a show that was 1 3/4 hours (105 minutes) long. The show actually had two openings, one starting at 11:15 p.m. and included the monologue, the other that listed the guests and re-announced the host, starting at 11:30. The two openings gave affiliates the option of airing either a fifteen minute or thirty minute local newscast preceding ‘Tonight’, but remember…even the network evening news was only fifteen minutes long till 1963.
As I understand it, this actually started with Steve Allen. As we saw last week, ‘The Steve Allen Show’, sponsored by Knickerbocker Beer on WNBT in New York, was a big hit. This was the predecessor to ‘Tonight’ and when the show moved to the NBC network and The Hudson Theater, they wanted the loyal local audience to follow the show to the network, so they give Allen fifteen minutes to do some bits that were more for the local NYC area audiences.
The thinking was that most of the country may not “get” the local humor, so Gene Rayburn re introed Allen at 11:30 for stations to join in after that. At that mark, Allen continued with a broader but short monolog.
Somewhere along the line, the local humor emphasis went away in that 11:15 segment and it became the broader monolog but national viewers saw the show without any monolog if stations joined at 11:30. This is all quite murky and there is very little written on this, but we do know that Carson never liked this.
As more affiliates introduced thirty minutes of local news, Carson’s monologue was being seen by fewer people. To rectify this situation, Ed McMahon and Skitch Henderson co-hosted the first fifteen minutes of the show between February 1965 and December 1966 without Carson, who then took over at 11:30. Finally, because he wanted the show to start when he came on, at the beginning of January 1967 Carson insisted the 11:15 segment be eliminated and it was. Enjoy and Share! – Bobby Ellerbee
Tony Bennett debuted the song “I Wanna Be Around”, famed for its genesis–an Ohio housewife wrote Johnny Mercer a letter suggesting that for the first line of a song. He composed the tune…and gave the woman co-writer (and royalty) credit.
I read once that it took the network more than a year to persuade all the affiliates to lengthen their late newscasts, so the show could start everywhere at 11:30.
I think there is some footage from this first show, but not that I can find on the web. I have seen it in TV specials, but no where else.
I’ve said this before……if they can find a recording of Super Bowl I (albeit incomplete), then perhaps there is hope for finding a recording of Carson’s first Tonight Show The chances of a videotape, color or B&W, surfacing may be astronomical, but there’s always the chance that a kinescope exists of this show. There is hope. We just have to keep looking. Tis the holy grail of television.