The Books: Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker; edited by David Remnick; ‘Fifteen Years of the Salto Mortale’, by Kenneth Tynan

Next up on the essays shelf:

Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker, edited by David Remnick

Life Stories is a collection of “profiles” from The New Yorker, edited by David Remnick.

In 1978, influential theatre critic (and enormously entertaining writer – I haven’t read his diaries yet, but I will!) Kenneth Tynan wrote a profile of Johnny Carson for The New Yorker. He had had some business dealings with Carson, which he is open about in the profile. Because of that personal relationship, he was able to get access to Carson (which was notoriously difficult), and all of Carson’s friends, who spoke openly and honestly about the man. The piece is not a puff piece, it does not ONLY flatter. That’s what makes it so fascinating. It attempts to deal with the sheer impact of Carson on American life, and on television, and how his position, at the time, was unrivaled. There were other talk show hosts, and popular ones, but none of them even came close to dominating the American viewers the way Carson did. His ratings were astronomical. More people watched him than didn’t watch him. Tynan tracks that journey, where Carson came from, his background, his jobs up to the point of taking on The Tonight Show, but the piece is far richer and more nuanced than just a biographical sketch.

Tynan watches the show and analyzes certain bits, why they work, how Carson survives bad jokes, how Carson is totally in control – except when he isn’t, and when he isn’t, he can turn it into comedy gold. He has a “whimsical” streak, which kept things loose for him, and of course nobody could touch him in terms of comic timing. But Carson brought something else to the table. He brought a quality of listening that was quite unique. Of course, if you bored him, he wouldn’t tolerate it, and would cut to commercial more often than not. Get this boring bozo outta here. But if you entertained him, he knew how to sit back and give you the floor.

Many many comedians owe him their livelihoods. “He made me.” “He started me.” “Being on Carson changed my life.” Etc.

None of this can easily explain the charm and depth of Tynan’s piece, which is often laugh-out-loud funny, and not just because of some of the hilarious quotes from Carson, but because of Tynan’s particular gift of description, analysis, word choice. He, in some ways, bemoans Carson’s middle-of-the-road approach, and wonders if Carson misses being more radical, more political. Trying to please everyone means, of course, that you will disappoint many. But Carson walked a high-wire act with his guests, night after night after night, and unless you grew up at a time when he reigned supreme, it is very difficult to describe how omnipresent he was. Tynan makes the point that as giant a star as he was in America, his fame did not really translate into other countries. It was too topical, too American, too ripped-from-the-headlines. Carson could travel to Europe (which he rarely did) and walk around totally anonymous.

A favorite quote from the piece: An interviewer asked Carson, “What made you a star?” Carson replied, “I started out in a gaseous state, and then I cooled.”

I was fascinated by the images given to me, by Tynan, of Carson at a party (he rarely attended parties), and how he maneuvered socially. He could be chilly, he could be distant, but then he could be very warm, too. He held his cards close to the chest, but at the same time, if you saw him on The Tonight Show, you’d think that there’s be nothing better than to be listened to by this man! He was excellent with children, animals, and the elderly. I always enjoyed those spots on the show. He really seemed to relax then. And then of course, when he would have Don Rickles on, or Mel Brooks, he was able to just sit back and be an audience, because they would take over. It must have been a relief.

The piece is enormous, with multiple parts, but I’ll excerpt a bit of it with a hilarious anecdote from Robert Blake about what it was like to appear on that show.

Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker, edited by David Remnick; ‘Fifteen Years of the Salto Mortale’, by Kenneth Tynan

Since a good deal of what follows consists of excerpts from the journal of a Carson-watcher, I feel bound to declare a financial interest, and to admit that I have derived pecuniary benefit from his activities. During the nineteen-sixties, I was twice interviewed on the “Tonight Show.” For each appearance I received three hundred and twenty dollars, which was then the minimum payment authorized by aftra, the TV and radio performers’ union. (The figure has since risen to four hundred and twenty-seven dollars.) No guest on the show, even if he or she does a solo spot in addition to just chatting, is paid more than the basement-level fee. On two vertiginous occasions, therefore, my earning power has equalled that of Frank Sinatra, who in November, 1976, occupied the hot seat on Carson’s right for the first time. (A strange and revealing encounter, to which we’ll return.) Actually, “hot” is a misnomer. To judge from my own experience, “glacial” would be nearer the mark. The other talk shows in which I have taken part were all saunas by comparison with Carson’s. Merv Griffin is the most disarming of ego strokers; Mike Douglas runs him a close second in the ingratiation stakes; and Dick Cavett creates the illusion that he is your guest, enjoying a slightly subversive private chat. Carson, on the other hand, operates on a level of high, freewheeling, centrifugal banter that is well above the snow line. Which is not to say that he is hostile. Carson treats you with deference and genuine curiosity. But the air is chill; you are definitely on probation.

Mort Sahl, who was last seen on the “Tonight Show” in 1968, described to me not long ago what happens when a guest fails to deliver the goods. “The producer is crouching just off camera,” he said, “and he holds up a card that says, ‘Go to commercial.’ So Carson goes to a commercial, and the whole team rushes up to his desk to discuss what went wrong. It’s like a pit stop at Le Mans. Then the next guest comes in, and—I promise you this is true—she’s a girl who says straight out that she’s a practicing lesbian. The card goes up again, only this time it means, ‘Come in at once, your right rear wheel is on fire.’ So we go to another commercial. . . .” Sahl is one of the few performers who are willing to be quoted in dispraise of Carson. Except for a handful of really big names, people in show business need Carson more than he needs them; they hate to jeopardize their chance of appearing on the program that pays greater dividends in publicity than any other. “Carson’s assumption is that the audience is dumb, so you mustn’t do difficult things,” Sahl continued. “He never takes serious risks. His staff will only book people who’ll make him look artistically potent. They won’t give him anyone who’ll take him for fifteen rounds. The whole operation has got lazy.”

When an interviewer from Playboy asked Robert Blake whether he enjoyed doing the “Tonight Show,” he gave a vivid account of how it feels to face Carson. He began by confessing that “there’s a certain enjoyment in facing death, periodically.” He went on:

There’s no experience I can describe to you that would compare with doing the “Tonight Show” when he’s on it. It is so wired, and so hyped, and so up. It’s like Broadway on opening night. There’s nothing casual about it. And it’s not a talk show. It’s some other kind of show. I mean, he has such energy, you got like six minutes to do your thing. . . . And you better be good. Or they’ll go to the commercial after two minutes. . . . They are highly professional, highly successful, highly dedicated people. . . . The producer, all the federales are sittin’ like six feet away from that couch. And they’re right on top of you, man, just watchin’ ya. And when they go to a break, they get on the phone. They talk upstairs, they talk to—Christ, who knows? They talk all over the place about how this person’s going over, how that person’s going over. They whisper in John’s ear. John gets on the phone and he talks. And you’re sittin’ there watchin’, thinkin’, What, are they gonna hang somebody? . . . And then the camera comes back again. And John will ask you somethin’ else or he’ll say, “Our next guest is. . .”

Carson’s office Suite at Burbank is above the studio in which, between 5:30 and 7 p.m., the show is taped. Except for his secretary, the rest of the production team occupies a crowded bungalow more than two hundred yards away, outside the main building. “In the past couple of months,” a receptionist in the bungalow said to me not long ago, “I’ve seen Mr. Carson in here just once.” Thus the king keeps his distance—not merely from his colleagues but from his guests, with whom he never fraternizes either before or after the taping. Or hardly ever: he may decide, if a major celebrity is on hand, to bend the rule and grant him or her the supreme privilege of prior contact. But such occasions are rare. As Orson Welles said to me, “he’s the only invisible talk host.” A Carson guest of long standing, Welles continued, “Once, before the show, he put his head into my dressing room and said hello. The effect was cataclysmic. The production staff behaved the way the stagehands did at the St. James’s Theatre in London twenty-five years ago when Princess Margaret came backstage to visit me. They were in awe! One of Carson’s people stared at me and said, ‘He actually came to see you!’ “ (Gust of Wellesian laughter.) Newcomers like me are interviewed several days in advance by one of Carson’s “talent coördinators,” who makes a list of the subjects on which you are likely to be eloquent or funny. This list is in Carson’s head as you plunge through the rainbow-hued curtains, take a sharp right turn, and just avoid tripping over the cunningly placed step that leads up to the desk where you meet, for the first time, your host, interrogator, and judge. The studio is his native habitat. Like a character in a Harold Pinter play, or any living creature in a Robert Ardrey book, you have invaded his territory. Once you are on Carson’s turf, the onus is on you to demonstrate your right to stay there; if you fail, you will decorously get the boot. You feel like the tourist who on entering the Uffizi Gallery, in Florence, was greeted by a guide with the minatory remark “Remember, Signore, that here it is not the pictures that are on trial.” Other talk hosts flatter their visitors with artificial guffaws; Carson laughs only when he is amused. All I recall of my first exposure to the Carson ordeal is that (a) I had come to discuss a controversial play about Winston Churchill, (b) the act I had to follow was the TV début of Tiny Tim, who sang “Tip Toe Through the Tulips,” (c) Carson froze my marrow by suddenly asking my opinion not of Churchill but of General de Gaulle, and (d) from that moment on, fear robbed me of saliva, so that my lips clove to my gums, rendering coherent speech impossible. The fault was mine, for not being the sort of person who can rise to Carson’s challenge—i.e., a professional performer. There is abundant evidence that comedians, when they are spurred by Carson, take off and fly as they cannot in any other company. David Brenner, who has been a regular Carson guest since 1971, speaks for many young entertainers when he says, “Nowhere is where I’d be without the ‘Tonight Show.’ It’s a necessary ingredient. . . . TV excels in two areas—sports and Carson. The show made my career.”