Johnny Carson Left ‘The Tonight Show’ Set to Exact Revenge on Don Rickles

Doc Severinsen was a snitch.

After a night off, Johnny Carson was back in his Tonight Show chair, and it didn’t take him long to notice something was off. A cigarette box that had been a mainstay on his desk for years was broken. “What the hell happened to this?” Carson asked the bandleader. “You know how long I’ve had this cigarette box? I brought this out from New York. What on earth?”

“Rickles!” came the shouts from offstage, either from the audience, stagehands or both. “Don Rickles,” Doc clarified in case Carson thought some other Rickles was the perpetrator. 

Carson wasn’t happy. “What the hell did he do with it?” he wondered. “The wood is broken! That’s an heirloom!”

It was an easy explanation. He was screwing around (“having a fit,” according to Doc) with guest host Bob Newhart, banging Johnny’s desk and accidentally busting Carson’s box.

This indignity would not stand. Carson had seen Rickles earlier that afternoon in the makeup chair, getting ready to tape his sitcom C.P.O. Sharkey. Severinsen confirmed that the show was filming across the hall from Carson’s studio. “Can I get over there?” he asked an off-camera authority, menace in his eyes. When he got an affirmative, he told Doc to stay seated while he went to take care of some business.

A camera followed Carson, his broken box and a wired microphone as he abandoned his studio audience. Soon he was in front of closed double doors with flashing red lights above them. “Are they taping?” Carson asked before barging through. “I don’t care if they’re on the air.”

“Stop the taping!” Carson shouted as he entered the set. “Someone broke my cigarette box!”

Rickles was doubled over in nervous laughter, sweat shining on his forehead as Carson made his accusation. “They told me you broke it on the show last night!” 

“Well, I… I… I…,” stammered Rickles.

“You big dummy!” shouted Carson. After an awkward moment when Carson recognized Black actor Harrison Page on set and slapped him some skin, he started in again on Rickles. “Did you break this box?”

Rickles apologized nervously, trying to make a joke about gifting the broken case to Tony Randall as a wedding gift, but Carson didn’t play along. “I want to know what you’re going to do about this.”

Rickles refused to be contrite, leading Carson to insult his flailing sitcom. He doubled down on the awkward racial humor, telling Page, “I hope you kept that cotton mill down south. If this show goes like the others, you’re out of work come January.”

Finally, Rickles apologized again, promising he’d come up with something to make things right. “Well, I hope so,” said Carson, who admitted he was “incensed.” “I want something back.”

That was almost the end of it. Except Rickles found himself sitting in for Carson two years later with guest Carroll O’Connor. In another manic comic fit, Rickles began banging the desk before realizing he was once again smacking Carson’s box (either repaired or replaced in the intervening years).

That stopped Rickles in his tracks. He held the box up reverently and recited a religious chant to protect it from harm. “When (Carson) dies,” he told O’Connor, “I’m going to put him in this.”