Johnny Carson Thought It Was A ‘’Real Danger’ for Late-Night to Tackle Serious Issues
60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace was known for his hard-hitting interviews, never letting his subjects off the hook no matter how much they squirmed. It wasn’t any different when Wallace put late-night legend Johnny Carson in the hot seat. In fact, Carson pulled the plug during 60 Minutes’ first attempt at a profile, only to relent and try again two years later in 1979.
Even then, the comedian couldn’t understand why an investigative journalist would want to interview him. “Why are you doing this?” he asked Wallace. “I’m not running a boiler room operation. I have no phony real estate scam. I’m not taking any kickbacks. I did steal a ring from Woolworths once when I was 12 years old.”
While Wallace insisted that Carson was chosen because he was a national treasure (or at least, “that’s what they tell me”), the interviewer still found ways to make the Tonight Show comic uncomfortable. He confronted Carson with “stereotypes” associated with him — shy, defensive, ice water in his veins. Carson laughed them off. “I had that (ice water) taken out years ago,” he joked. “I went to Denmark.”
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But Wallace hit closer to home with another question: “Do you get sensitive about the fact that people say he’ll never (joke about) a serious controversy?”
“Well, I have an answer to that,” Carson said, indeed a little sensitive about the subject. “Tell me the last time that Jack Benny, Red Skelton or any comedian used his show to do serious issues. That’s not what I’m there for. Can’t they see that?”
“But you’re not…,” Wallace began before Carson cut him off, irritation growing as he went on.
“Why do they think just because you have a Tonight Show that you must deal in serious issues?” he asked. “It’s a danger. It’s a real danger once you start that. You start to get that self-important feeling that what you say has great import. And you know, strangely enough, you could use that show as a forum. You could sway people, and I don’t think you should as an entertainer.”
Today’s late-night talk show hosts wouldn’t agree, with Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Greg Gutfeld and John Oliver all too happy to weigh in and, yes, attempt to sway people. Carson likely wasn’t far off when he noted that some of those hosts might get a “self-important feeling” about their influence.
The closest thing to a spiritual successor to Carson, at least in terms of approaching serious topics, is his Tonight Show descendent, Jimmy Fallon. Like Carson, Fallon jokes around political subjects but rarely takes a hard stance. When Carson would do an impression of Rich Little’s Ronald Reagan impression, it wasn’t to criticize the president’s policies but to spoof an old Abbott and Costello routine.
Similarly, when Fallon does his impression of Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump impression, he brings in Jiminy Glick for jokes about the president’s hair and the way he pronounces “China.” Fallon does little in terms of criticism, leaving any of that heavy lifting to Martin Short hiding in a fat suit.
Would Fallon be Carson’s favorite among today’s late-night comics? Hard to say, but at least he’d appreciate Fallon’s stay-away approach to swaying opinions.
