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A review by komet2020
Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin
dark
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
A few weeks ago, I was watching on YouTube a 2013 interview from radio station WNYC that the comedienne Joan Rivers had with the author about this book. I was much intrigued by the interview, because I had grown up watching The Tonight Show hosted by Johnny Carson on the NBC TV network during the 1970s and 1980s. For those people who didn't grow up in the U.S. at the time there was a 3-channel TV media universe (NBC, CBS, and ABC), they cannot appreciate the considerable influence and respect that Johnny Carson garnered during his 30 years of hosting The Tonight Show (1962-1992). Carson set the standard for all TV hosts to this day. Indeed, for any aspiring musician or comedian invited to appear on his show, a nod from Carson could make his/her career for life.
The interview rekindled my interest in Carson which had gone largely dormant from the time of his death in January 2005, age 79. So, I bought this book and WOW! did I ever learn much more about Johnny Carson the private man than I could've ever imagined while he was alive. His drinking problems and shyness (Carson was an introvert and very much a product of the Midwest where he grew up during the Depression), I knew something about from a rare public interview he gave the journalist Mike Wallace on the national TV program 60 Minutes back in 1979.
Henry Bushkin was a newly minted lawyer in New York City when he first made the acquaintance of Johnny Carson in 1970 through his best friend Arthur Kassel, "[a] security expert/crime photographer/police groupie with slightly grandiose ambitions" who had befriended Carson at a police benefit. The meeting between Bushkin and Carson was a brief one, and all-business. Yet from this meeting would develop over the next 18 years a close relationship between both men in which Bushkin faithfully served Carson's interests as his legal advisor (first in New York and later in Los Angeles after The Tonight Show had relocated to the West Coast), fixer, confidant, and close friend. Yet, it was a friendship wholly on Carson's terms. For Carson liked to be in control and could at turns be extremely generous or cold, abrupt, and unforgiving with people whom he felt betrayed him or failed to adequately serve his interests.
This was a delightful book to read because Bushkin showed in the telling that he has a novelist's eye for detail, making Johnny Carson come alive on the page. Frankly, I was surprised to learn that Carson was a voracious (and talented) womanizer who wasn't above fooling around, even when he was married. "Bushkin [also] explains why Carson felt he always had to be married, why he couldn't visit his son in the hospital and wouldn't attend his mother's funeral [Ruth Carson was very much a cold fish who never showed Carson any affection, no matter what he did for his parents after he had become a megastar], and much more."
Simply put, Johnny Carson is one of the best revelatory, readable, poignant, and uproarious books of its kind that I've ever read. I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about a man who, even after his death, continues to serve as a guiding star for TV hosts today.
The interview rekindled my interest in Carson which had gone largely dormant from the time of his death in January 2005, age 79. So, I bought this book and WOW! did I ever learn much more about Johnny Carson the private man than I could've ever imagined while he was alive. His drinking problems and shyness (Carson was an introvert and very much a product of the Midwest where he grew up during the Depression), I knew something about from a rare public interview he gave the journalist Mike Wallace on the national TV program 60 Minutes back in 1979.
Henry Bushkin was a newly minted lawyer in New York City when he first made the acquaintance of Johnny Carson in 1970 through his best friend Arthur Kassel, "[a] security expert/crime photographer/police groupie with slightly grandiose ambitions" who had befriended Carson at a police benefit. The meeting between Bushkin and Carson was a brief one, and all-business. Yet from this meeting would develop over the next 18 years a close relationship between both men in which Bushkin faithfully served Carson's interests as his legal advisor (first in New York and later in Los Angeles after The Tonight Show had relocated to the West Coast), fixer, confidant, and close friend. Yet, it was a friendship wholly on Carson's terms. For Carson liked to be in control and could at turns be extremely generous or cold, abrupt, and unforgiving with people whom he felt betrayed him or failed to adequately serve his interests.
This was a delightful book to read because Bushkin showed in the telling that he has a novelist's eye for detail, making Johnny Carson come alive on the page. Frankly, I was surprised to learn that Carson was a voracious (and talented) womanizer who wasn't above fooling around, even when he was married. "Bushkin [also] explains why Carson felt he always had to be married, why he couldn't visit his son in the hospital and wouldn't attend his mother's funeral [Ruth Carson was very much a cold fish who never showed Carson any affection, no matter what he did for his parents after he had become a megastar], and much more."
Simply put, Johnny Carson is one of the best revelatory, readable, poignant, and uproarious books of its kind that I've ever read. I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about a man who, even after his death, continues to serve as a guiding star for TV hosts today.