King of the Night: The Life of Johnny Carson

Description

Laurence Leamer - King of the Night: The Life of Johnny Carson Johnny Carson retired from The Tonight Show in 1992, to be succeeded first by Jay Leno, and then by Jimmy Fallon. The twenty-first century Tonight Show, though, is nothing like the original, first hosted by Steve Allen, then Jack Paar, then Johnny Carson. First, there are more choices than we Baby Boomers had; all we had to watch were ABC, NBC and CBS (PBS didn't come along until the late 1960s, and Fox began in the 1980s), so Carson had a larger audience. Second, the hosts are different--Carson was first and foremost a broadcaster, while Leno and Fallon are stand-up comedians with a very different style. To Boomers and Gen-Xers, Carson owned America's late nights, and King of the Night gives us a look behind the studio curtain, a look at the real Johnny Carson. Goodreads wrote: Johnny Carson was a phenomenon, the most successful performer in the history of television. For the better part of three decades, the enormously popular host of The Tonight Show was welcomed into millions of American homes--as a friend, an entertainer, and an inexhaustibly sage and witty commentator on our lives and times. But there was a dark side to this charming and inscrutable enigma that only those closest to Carson ever saw--a sadness, mistrust, and cruelty behind the glitter and glamour, intensified by a lifelong pursuit of power, wealth, and fame. Based on more than two years of intensive research including more than 700 personal interviews with ex-wives, ex-friends, colleagues, and celebrities--with all-new, never-before-published material on Johnny's post-Tonight Show life, from his retirement through his final days--Laurence Learner's King of the Night is an intimate and powerful portrait of an unforgettable personality, at once a tribute and a revelation. Format: EPUB Length: 496 pages Published: 2011 by HarperCollins e-books (first published 1989) ISBN: 0062037471