I have about run out of questions. I have about six or seven left that I have never ever asked on the show. To the public, Johnny Carson was the ultimate late-night companion. Charming, witty, and completely in control. But in June 1991, the curtain pulled back to reveal a devastating private tragedy.
When his 39-year-old son, Richard, was killed in a horrific car accident. Yet, when the family gathered to say their final goodbyes, >> >> the king of late night was nowhere to be found. While critics quickly labeled his absence as cold and detached, the heartbreaking reality was entirely different.
So, why did he not attend his son’s funeral? Join us as we uncover the heartbreaking truth behind the king of late night’s most misunderstood and painful decision. How a small-town magician became the king of late night. Long before he was the king of late-night television, Johnny Carson was just a regular kid born in a tiny town in Iowa on October 23rd, 1925.
His parents, Ruth and Kit, raised Johnny alongside his older sister and his little brother, Dick. Because his dad worked for a big power company, the family moved around a lot to different towns before finally settling down in Norfolk, Nebraska, when Johnny was only 8 years old. It was right there in Nebraska that Johnny discovered his secret superpower.
He loved making people laugh and smile. When he was 12, he found a magical book at a friend’s house that changed everything, prompting him to order a special magician’s kit through the mail. Johnny became totally obsessed, practicing card tricks all day long and following his family around the house while repeating the classic line, “Pick a card, any card.
” His supportive mom even sewed him a real magician’s cape. And at just 14 years old, he proudly wore it to put on his very first official show for a local club. He called himself the Great Carsoni and earned three whole dollars for the performance, which felt like an absolute fortune back then. As soon as he graduated high school, Johnny was so eager for adventure that he hitchhiked all the way to Hollywood, Los Angeles.
He even got into a bit of silly trouble there when he was caught pretending to be a naval officer, resulting in a $50 fine. Though some people think that wild story might just be a legend. Soon enough, Johnny actually did join the real United States Navy in 1943 during World War II. And the military sent him to colleges in New York and Mississippi to learn how to be a proper officer.
Eventually, he was assigned to a massive battleship called the USS Pennsylvania out in the Pacific Ocean. Amazingly, Johnny stepped onto the ship on August 14th, 1945, which was the exact same day Japan surrendered and the war finally ended. But his job wasn’t easy as the ship had been badly broken by a torpedo attack right before he arrived.
Johnny was put in charge of a very sad and scary task, supervising the removal of the bodies of 20 brave sailors who had been trapped inside the damaged ship for 18 days. Johnny later admitted that it was an absolutely awful, terrible experience that he would never forget. Thankfully, brighter days lay ahead during his time at sea.
The absolute best part of Johnny’s entire military career happened when he got to perform a magic trick for the top boss of the whole navy, Secretary James Forrestal. When the serious boss asked Johnny if he wanted to stay in the navy forever, Johnny bravely said no because he wanted to be a magician.
And then he pulled out a deck of cards to prove his skills. Johnny was thrilled to discover that he could make someone so grumpy and powerful crack a smile, which gave him a huge boost of confidence. On top of his magic tricks, Johnny also spent his free time on the ship boxing in amateur matches against other sailors.
Once the war was completely over, Johnny used his navy scholarship money to go to college at the University of Nebraska, where he joined a fun fraternity and kept doing magic shows for $25 a pop. At first, he studied journalism to become a comedy writer, but he quickly changed his mind and switched to speech and drama because his real dream was to be a star on the radio.
He was so smart and focused that he finished college in just three years by writing a super funny graduation project filled with taped radio jokes, officially graduating in 1949 with a degree in radio and speech, ready to take over the world. The road to Hollywood. Back in 1950, a young and completely energetic Johnny Carson officially kicked off his magnificent broadcasting career in Omaha, Nebraska, working for local radio and television stations.
Johnny was naturally funny and completely full of bright ideas, so he soon became the brilliant host of a silly morning television program called The Squirrel’s Nest. Johnny absolutely loved to make people laugh by doing goofy routines, and one of his favorite bits involved interviewing the local pigeons hanging out on the roof of the city courthouse.
He would pretend the birds were talking to him, reporting on all the funny and sneaky political corruption they had witnessed from high up in the sky. To make some extra pocket money, Johnny also worked as the master of ceremonies for local church dinners. Hilariously, these exact same dinners were often attended by the very same politicians and city leaders he had just poked fun at on his radio show earlier that morning.
Eventually, Johnny’s clever wit opened up a massive opportunity for him. One of the Omaha political figures that Johnny had playfully teased on the air had a wife who owned stock in a radio station all the way out in Los Angeles, California. In 1951, she decided to tell her influential brother about Johnny’s incredible talent, which helped Johnny land an exciting new job with a CBS-owned television station in sunny Southern California.
This big move brought him closer to the entertainment world, where other famous comedians began to notice just how special he was. In 1953, a legendary comic named Red Skelton became a huge fan of Johnny’s low-budget comedy sketch show, Carson’s Cellar, and asked Johnny to join his own popular show as a writer.
Then, a wild stroke of luck happened in 1954, when Red Skelton accidentally knocked himself completely unconscious during a rehearsal, just one single hour before his live show was supposed to start. Johnny bravely stepped up to fill in for the unconscious star, and he did such an amazing job that everyone was blown away.
Soon after, another comedy legend named Jack Benny invited Johnny to appear on his show. Johnny playfully imitated Jack right to his face, and Jack was so impressed by the young man’s talent that he boldly predicted Johnny would have a massively successful career as a famous comedian. Johnny kept working hard and hosted several different television programs, including a game show called Earn Your Vacation and a variety show called The Johnny Carson Show.
He even became a popular regular panelist on a guessing game show called To Tell the Truth. After his primetime variety show came to an end, Johnny packed his bags and moved to New York City to host a daytime game show called Who Do You Trust? This move turned out to be a total game-changer because that is exactly where Johnny met his future lifelong sidekick and best TV buddy, Ed McMahon.
At first, Johnny was really worried that moving to daytime television would completely ruin his career, but the show turned out to be a massive booming success. It was the very first place where Johnny was allowed to interview guests and make up hilarious jokes right on the spot without a script. Because of his lightning-fast on-camera wit, the show quickly became the absolute hottest, most popular item on daytime television during his six wonderful years with the network.
The Late Night King Because Johnny was doing so incredibly well, the big bosses at NBC noticed his spectacular charm and invited him to take over their legendary late-night program, The Tonight Show, because the old host was leaving. Surprisingly, Johnny actually turned down the job at first. He was absolutely terrified that it would be way too difficult to interview famous celebrities for a whopping 105 minutes every single day.
A bunch of other famous stars turned down the job, too, but NBC kept begging Johnny until they finally convinced him to sign a contract in early 1962. Because he still had 6 months left on his old contract, NBC had to use a bunch of different guest hosts to fill in until Johnny was officially free to take over.
Even though he still had some nervous doubts about his big new job, Johnny officially became the host on October 1st, 1962. After a bit of a bumpy and difficult first year, Johnny completely overcame his fears, and his version of the show became an absolute monster hit in the ratings, making him a household name across the entire country.
A famous movie director named Billy Wilder once explained that Johnny was simply the absolute best entertainer alive because he had a magical way of enchanting everyone, from sick people resting in bed to folks who couldn’t sleep at night. He described Johnny as a soothing, comforting presence for the entire nation because no matter how boring or uninteresting a guest might be, Johnny always found a way to make them look completely funny, exciting, and full of life.
Johnny never acted conceited or full of himself. He always showed up to work completely prepared, reading every single book written by the authors he interviewed. Even his carefully rehearsed comedy routines sounded like he was just making them up on the spot. He had a special way of captivating everyday American families without ever upsetting the extra serious or highly educated viewers.
Every single night in front of millions of flashing television screens, Johnny had to perform a difficult comedic high-wire act without any safety net. Meaning there were absolutely no rewrites and no do-overs if a joke failed. The jokes simply had to work perfectly the very first time. To make the show even more magical, Johnny brought his trusty pal Ed McMahon along with him to be his loyal announcer and sidekick.
Every single night, the show would kick off with Ed yelling his legendary booming introduction, “Here’s Johnny!” Which always made the studio audience go completely wild with cheers. Johnny would then walk out from behind the curtains, deliver a hilarious opening monologue filled with topical jokes, and finish it off with his signature trademark, a smooth fake golf swing aimed right toward the studio orchestra.
If an opening joke ever flopped and nobody laughed, Johnny had a brilliant way of fixing it instantly. The band would quickly start playing a silly song called Tea for Two, and Johnny would do a goofy little dance on stage to turn the silence into big laughs. Or he would pull the microphone close to his face and joke around like a grocery store announcer.
The show also had a beautiful theme song >> >> written by the famous singer Paul Anka. And because Johnny wrote lyrics for it, he got to keep half of the money the song made, even though his words were never actually sung on television. For the first 10 years, the spectacular show was produced at the grand NBC headquarters in New York City.
But, on May 1st, 1972, Johnny decided to move the entire production across the country to sunny Burbank, California, so they could be much closer to all the biggest Hollywood movie stars. As the years rolled on, Johnny became so incredibly famous and successful that he was officially the highest-paid personality on all of television, earning a staggering $4 million a year, which is like making nearly $20 million today.
>> >> He was so happy with his late-night kingdom that he turned down massive offers to star in big Hollywood movies. The show was such an important part of American culture that Johnny was even given a prestigious Peabody Award for his 25th anniversary, with the committee calling him a true American institution and a household word.
Johnny was also a very smart man who didn’t like people trying to trick the public. In 1973, a man named Uri Geller, who claimed he had magical psychic powers, came on to The Tonight Show. Because Johnny used to be a real magician himself, he was very skeptical of these magical claims, so he secretly asked a famous magician friend to help him prepare special props for the show without telling the guest.
When the psychic stepped onto the stage, he was shocked to find out that instead of a normal interview, Johnny expected him to prove his magical powers right then and there using the show’s own props. Because the guest couldn’t use his usual tricks, his powers completely failed him on live television, leaving him totally humiliated for 22 minutes straight.
Johnny stayed the undisputed king of late night for three amazing decades, reducing his schedule to three nights a week later in life, while rotating other funny guest hosts until he finally retired in 1992, leaving behind a legacy of laughter that changed television forever. The real reason Johnny Carson got divorced three times.
Even though Johnny Carson was the absolute king of late night television, making millions of people laugh every single evening, his real life behind the camera was filled with a lot of sadness and struggle when it came to love. In fact, Johnny once made a big joke about his relationship problems, blaming his television show for everything.
He honestly admitted that if he had given as much time and hard work to his marriages as he gave to the Tonight Show, he probably would have had a totally wonderful and happy marriage. Because he was so completely busy trying to be the funniest man on television, he ended up getting married four different times, trying to find true happiness while dealing with the intense pressures of being a giant Hollywood superstar.
Long before anyone knew his name, way back when he was just a regular student at the University of Nebraska, Johnny met a nice girl named Joan Wolcott. Jody was a popular member of a fun college sorority, and the young couple fell deeply in love, getting officially married on October 3rd, 1949. Together, Johnny and Jody welcomed three sweet baby boys into the world named Richard, Christopher, and Cory.
But as Johnny started getting super famous and took over his massive late night TV show in 1962, things at home became very difficult and unhappy. People who wrote books about Johnny’s life discovered that their marriage was super stormy, meaning they had a lot of loud, boozy arguments, sometimes even right in front of their friends, or they would just sit in angry, silent resentment for a very long time.
After 14 long years of trying to make it work, Johnny and Jody finally got a divorce in 1963, right as Johnny was becoming the biggest star in America. Tragically, many years later, their oldest son, Richard, who grew up to be a wonderful photographer, was killed in a terrible car accident in California when he was only 39 years old, which broke Johnny’s heart into a million pieces.
Right around the time his first marriage was falling apart, Johnny met a beautiful model and TV host named Joanne Copeland. They had their very first date in 1960 after Joanne’s dad met Johnny in a cool jazz club >> >> and tried to set them up. At first, Joanne was super skeptical about dating Johnny because she worked for a completely different television network and joked that she didn’t want to hang out with someone on daytime TV.
But pretty soon, the pair became totally inseparable and they got married in 1963. Joanne was incredibly supportive of Johnny and when he was super nervous about taking the big job on The Tonight Show because he was scared he might lose her, she sweetly told him he was crazy and that he could never lose her.
She loved watching his early tapes and gave him the confidence to take the job full-time. But unfortunately, the massive show ended up hurting their marriage anyway. Johnny expected Joanne to act as a helper between him and his big staff, which put a ton of stress on her. And she also had to deal with Johnny’s difficult struggles with drinking too much alcohol.
They sadly divorced in 1972, and Johnny later joked that she left him with nothing but a hairnet. But Joanne actually walked away with the precious early tapes of his show, which she later turned into a special DVD for fans to enjoy before she became a therapist and passed away in 2015. The exact same year he divorced his second wife, Johnny fell in love all over again with one of New York’s highest-paid models named Joanna Holland.
They met at a fancy club in 1971, where Johnny admitted he was flirting like a silly high schooler. And he ended up calling her every single day at 4:30 p.m. for a whole year. But the couple ran into major trouble when the big TV bosses decided to move The Tonight Show >> >> from New York City all the way to California.
Joanna was a die-hard New Yorker who did not want to move her small family across the country. But Johnny demanded it, telling her she was coming to California so they could be married. They moved into a nice home in Burbank, where they threw fun dinner parties for their friends. But Joanna didn’t really care to talk about Johnny’s TV work at all.
Just like his previous wives, Joanna had a really hard time dealing with Johnny’s bad relationship with alcohol. Johnny even admitted on a big news show that when he drank, instead of becoming fun-loving and happy, he became the exact opposite, turning very grumpy and short-tempered in an instant, which caused their marriage to completely break down until they finally divorced in 1985.
A few years later, Johnny met a lovely woman named Alexis Maas on a beautiful beach in Malibu, California. And she became his fourth and final wife in 1987. Unlike his other marriages, Johnny wanted this wedding to be a super quiet and secret affair to completely avoid the loud paparazzi.
So, they got married right outside his home overlooking the Pacific Ocean with only his brother, Dick, and a judge present while the bride’s parents listened happily over a speakerphone. Johnny didn’t mess up any of his wedding lines, and they shared a beautiful kiss to start their new life together. A famous television producer later shared that even though Johnny deeply loved his jokes and his famous late-night show, the absolute real love of his whole life was his sweet wife, Alex.
They loved to travel the world together, and Johnny even learned how to speak a whole new language called Swahili so they could have fun adventures on trips to Africa. Johnny officially retired from his big television show in May of 1992, and he spent his final 20 years living very quietly and peacefully with Alex until he sadly passed away from a lung illness called emphysema at the age of 79, finally finding the true love and quiet peace he had searched for his entire life.
Johnny Carson’s shocking arrest and secret behind-the-scenes fights. Even though Johnny Carson loved to make the whole country laugh every single night, his sharp jokes sometimes made other big Hollywood stars completely furious, leading to some legendary super angry fights. One of his absolute biggest feuds happened in 1980 because of a massive casino in Las Vegas called the Aladdin.
Johnny wanted to buy the casino, but he backed out of the deal at the last minute, allowing a rival group led by a famous singer named Wayne Newton to buy it instead. When the news made it look like Johnny had lost the big deal, Johnny got super annoyed and started telling mean jokes about Wayne Newton on his television show.
Wayne was so mad that he eventually barged right into Johnny’s private TV office and threatened to beat him up if he didn’t stop. Years later, Wayne went on television and told everyone that Johnny was a mean-spirited person who hurt a lot of people behind the scenes. Johnny also got into big trouble with the law because of his drinking.
On February 27th, 1982, the police pulled him over and arrested him for drunk driving near Beverly Hills. Johnny didn’t fight the charges in court, so a judge sentenced him to 3 years of probation, made him pay a $600 fine, and forced him to attend a special school to learn about the dangers of alcohol.
For 90 whole days, Johnny’s driving rules were so strict that he was only allowed to drive his car back and forth to work and to his alcohol classes. Another famous actor named Raymond Burr, who starred in a popular detective show, also got deeply offended because Johnny wouldn’t stop making fun of how heavy he was, which made him so mad that he refused to visit Johnny’s show for years.
Johnny even launched a big, angry attack on a major newspaper called the New York Times because they wrote an article claiming he made a whopping $75,000 a week, which made Johnny shout that the news was completely unfair. Johnny also absolutely hated when he felt his friends were being disloyal to him. He became completely furious when his close friend and frequent guest host, Joan Rivers, decided to start her own rival late-night talk show to compete directly against him.
Johnny felt so betrayed by this move that he completely blocked her out and refused to ever speak a single word to her again for the rest of his life. Even though Joan tried to apologize over and over. But Johnny didn’t just cause drama with other celebrities. He accidentally caused a massive panic across the entire United States.
In December 1973, Johnny told a silly joke on his show about a fake shortage of toilet paper. Millions of everyday viewers believed the story was completely real, causing families to panic, run to the grocery store, and buy up all the toilet paper until the shelves were totally empty. This created a real shortage >> >> that lasted for weeks, forcing stores to ration the paper until Johnny finally had to say sorry to the whole nation for the big mess.
Johnny was also super protective of his show’s famous catchphrase, >> >> successfully suing a company that wanted to name their portable toilets “Here’s Johnny”. He even had to apologize to the beloved children’s TV host, Mr. Rogers, after making a silly parody that made the sweet host look far too wimpy on television.
Proving that the king of late night’s jokes could cause serious trouble both on and off the air. The fatal accident that shattered Johnny Carson’s world. While Johnny Carson was in millions of cozy homes every single night acting like a super funny and friendly talk show host. His real life off camera was filled with a lot of heavy sadness, especially with his three sons, Chris, Rick, and Cory.
Johnny’s youngest son, Cory, later explained that work was always super easy for his famous dad, but family was not. Johnny was the absolute perfect man for his television job at the right time in history. But because he gave all his energy to becoming a superstar, he left his kids behind as a consequence.
This made life incredibly difficult for his children, who had to sit back and watch all the television magic unfold from a distance without ever getting to experience that warmth with him at home. Johnny met his very first wife, Jody, while they were young students at the University of Nebraska, marrying her in 1949 and quickly welcoming their three boys.
Even though Johnny loved to share quick, happy glimpses of his family on television, he was actually a deeply private and quiet man who kept his home life totally hidden behind closed doors. Sadly, Johnny and Jody had a very stormy and unhappy marriage that was made much worse by Johnny’s bad struggles with drinking too much alcohol, leading them to get a divorce in May 1963 when the boys were still very small.
Johnny truly believed that a clean divorce was much better for the kids than staying in an unhappy home, but after the split, the boys lived mostly with Johnny and his new wives, eventually stopping all communication with their birth mother. Like their famous father, all three boys inherited a super strong privacy gene and spent their entire lives hiding away from the bright spotlights of Hollywood.
Johnny’s oldest son, Chris, was born in 1950 and grew up to become a professional golf instructor down in sunny Florida. Even though he was an adult, the court system later revealed that Chris’s primary financial support actually came from his wealthy father, who gave him $35,000 every single year and even bought him his cars and a nice home.
Johnny’s second son, Rick, was born in 1952 and after serving bravely in the United States Navy, he decided to follow his big artistic passion to become a professional photographer. Tragically, when Rick was only 39 years old, he died in a horrific car accident while taking beautiful photos along a scenic California highway.
Rick had parked his car to snap pictures when he accidentally fell down a steep embankment by the side of the road and the police found his camera equipment sitting right there by the highway. To avoid turning his son’s tragic death into a wild media circus filled with aggressive paparazzi, Johnny made the heartbreaking decision to skip the memorial service entirely, telling people he didn’t want to turn the sad day into a public show.
Even though people thought he was being cold, the loss of his son completely shattered Johnny’s world and he lamented the fact that he hadn’t been closer to his boys while he was married to his television show. When Johnny finally returned to The Tonight Show 3 weeks later, he bravely dedicated the very last minutes of the broadcast to a beautiful tribute for Rick, calling him an exuberant and fun young man who always made people smile with his contagious laugh.
Johnny even showed a series of Rick’s gorgeous photographs on the screen while a famous rock band played a touching song keeping his son’s marvelous memories alive for the whole world to see. Johnny’s youngest son, Corey, was born in 1953 and grew up to become a talented classical guitarist. Corey admitted that it was deeply painful to watch his dad interact with little child guests on The Tonight Show because Johnny would look completely captivated by every single word those television kids said.
Corey and his brothers used to wonder what those random kids had that they didn’t and realized years later that the TV kids just had 10 minutes of funny material. During Johnny’s very last broadcast in 1992, he proudly brought his remaining sons and his wife onto the stage looking them right in the eyes to tell them he loved them and hoped his massive fame hadn’t caused them too much discomfort.
Johnny sweetly noted that the evening would have been absolutely perfect if their late brother Rick could have been there with them, but he acknowledged that you have to accept what life does and find a way to carry on. Were you a fan of Johnny Carson? Let us know in the comments below. Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
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