American TV personality who began as the host of The Tonight Show on 1 October 1962, reportedly for $100,000 a year, retiring on 22 May 1992 at a $25 million per year salary. In 1979 he bought into 17% of NBC’s earnings, which insured his billionaire status. With his nonchalant, inventive wit, he was one of the most popular and enduring figures on American TV, a household icon for millions of Americans. He was reliable, respected, reassuring – and funny, a familiar figure who was part of many lives. Keeping his finger on the common pulse, he instinctively knew when to pull back to avoid hurting anyone. On 11 December 1992, then-President George H. W. Bush conferred on him the Medal of Freedom. A year later, Carson was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Kennedy Center.
The son of a power company district manager and a homemaker, Carson grew up in a typical Midwestern four-bedroom white frame house with a brother and sister in the town of Norfolk, Nebraska. He and his brother Dick skinny-dipped and fished in the Elk Horn River. Growing up, he worked as movie theater usher and a soda jerk. Learning mail-order magic tricks at 14, he performed his first magic gig, earning three dollars. In the Navy, he entertained every chance he got. While attending the University of Nebraska he got his start in local radio.
He was known as an ambitious disc jockey and talk show host in Omaha in 1949. In 1951 he moved his wife and first son, Chris, to Los Angeles where he worked as an announcer at a local CBS affiliate. In 1957 Carson became the host of ABC’s Who Do You Trust? game show gaining notice for his quick wit and repartee. Carson was selected to replace popular Jack Paar as host of the The Tonight Show in 1962. In over 30 years as its host, Carson interviewed thousands of guests from royalty to the ordinary, introduced dozens of new personalities to the public, and will always be known as America’s humorous late-night friend, a mid-Western boy not afraid to poke fun at himself as well as the powerful. He easily outlasted an array of competition. Dubbed the “naughty but good-natured son,” Middle America liked him. When arrested for drunk driving he said on The Tonight Show, “I regret the incident, and I’ll tell you one thing: You’ll never see me do that again.”
Carson married his first wife, Jody Wolcott Buckley, during his senior year at the University of Nebraska in 1949. They had three sons: Chris, Richard and Cory. Carson’s second son, Richard, born on 18 June 1952, was killed when his car ran off the road down an embankment on 21 June 1991. Carson and Jody divorced in 1963 after a four-year separation. The relationship was difficult and his early marriages were reputed to have suffered from his abuse, alcoholism, and neglect. Carson’s second marriage was to Joanne Copeland (1963-1972); his third to Joanna Holland (1972-1983) and his fourth to Alexis Maas (1987-his death). His divorces were fuel for his late-night humor and he commented, “If I had given as much to marriage as I gave to The Tonight Show, I’d probably have a hell of a marriage.”
Despite a few off-hand remarks about his divorces, Carson was a private man, generally quiet about himself. His many friends from all walks of life hold his confidence and trust, attesting that Carson is a loyal and generous friend. Without publicity, Carson contributed to humane causes and amassed an impressive art collection. Many comedians credit Carson for their first big break. After his retirement on 22 May 1992, when he gracefully bowed out after a 30-year reign, Carson remained a recluse from the public eye. He and Alexis lived in their 16-room cliff-side Malibu, California home from where he enjoyed his hobbies of tennis, astronomy and drums, read voraciously and played cards with old cronies. He occasionally wrote jokes and dashed them off to David Letterman. In the early morning of 19 March 1999, Carson was awakened by severe chest pains. He and Alexis reached the hospital in nearby Santa Monica by ambulance at 3:30 AM. By 7:00 AM he was in the operating room for a quadruple-bypass surgery. In mid-September 2002, he released the information that he had emphysema.
Johnny Carson died on 23 January 2005. Initial reports claimed that he died at his Malibu, California home early in the morning, but an Associated Press report issued two weeks later differed. The Associated Press, citing Carson?s death certificate, said that Carson died at 6:50 AM on the 23rd at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. According to the same report, ?The immediate cause of death was 10 minutes of ?respiratory arrest? with the underlying cause 20 years of emphysema.? Carson was 79.
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