NAMES IN THE NEWS : He-e-e-e-r-e’s Johnny’s Theater

OMAHA —  University of Nebraska officials plan to name a new theater for Johnny Carson, and not just because the talk show host studied radio and speech at the school.

Carson made a “very, very generous” contribution to construction of the $20-million Lied Center for Performing Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus, project director Sheila Griffin said Tuesday.

Griffin said she wrote Carson asking whether a multiuse space at the center that seats about 2,300 people could be named the Johnny Carson Theater. He agreed as long as the amount of his donation was not revealed, she said.

Griffin said Carson had asked that his contribution be anonymous when he made it during a fund-raising campaign that ended in 1986. Since the Lied Center has been completed, names of benefactors who gave $50,000 or more are being placed on various parts of the building and on pieces of the equipment in it, she said.