TELEVISION : COMMENTARY : Grand Illusionist : Johnny Carson’s sleight of hand disguised ‘The Tonight Show’s’ flaws for 30 years; he departs with his reputation secure

There’s nowhere you can turn right now, short of an airdrop into the Tasmanian outback, to escape the blizzard of media-tribute descending on our heads in the name of Johnny Carson, who--as everyone who hasn’t booked passage for Hobart must know--leaves the airwaves Friday night.

“Tonight Show” guests are fawning with more than the usual obeisance. Audiences are cheering the nearly departed with added gusto. Even the crisp edges of the Host Supreme are softening with sentiment.

The torrent of this misty acknowledgment would be unbearable if it were not so richly deserved. Think of it: nearly 30 years as the host, superintendent, maximum leader and chief engineer for NBC’s greatest gold mine, and perhaps the greatest revenue-producer in the history of television. Thirty years coolly withstanding the television camera’s ruby laser that so democratically sears its way through mere mortal defense (Dick Cavett, in describing the energy required to host a single talk show, says, “You get up and walk 10 feet and you feel as though you’ve been shot”).

We tend to use numbers now as a national vulgate in lieu of aesthetic criteria. But by any standard, the length of time that Carson has been America’s night-light is phenomenal. He has gone through seven Presidents, the assassinations of John F. and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., several recessions, two wars (not counting the invasions of Grenada and Panama), urban riot and the collapse of the Soviet empire. Carson can claim for “The Tonight Show” what George Burns claims for himself when he says, “I’m older than a lot of countries.” He has been the unsinkable cork bobbing along on good and calamitous seas.

How has he done it? Consider first what the show is not: innovative, substantially varied, imaginative, cutting edge--unless you consider the onstage marriage of Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki a historic confluence of the currents of camp and the mainstream of pop culture. Or being peed on by a frightened lemur a precursor to inter-species performance art.

Carson took over “The Tonight Show” on Oct. 1, 1962, several months after Jack Paar had gathered up his weeping longueurs and swept off into a final operatic exeunt. Shortly thereafter, the show settled into its cement foundations. A few bars of “The Tonight Show” theme from the house orchestra. Ed McMahon’s heraldic whiskey baritone announcing the lineup before singing, “And now! He-e-e-e-re’s Johnny!!! “

Curtain splits, dapper figure steps out with Cheshire grin, cool as a knife blade, his eyes tiny triangles of bemused perplexity. Music curlicues up in a shave-and-a-haircut finale laced with the general cry, “ Hey-o-o-o-o !!” Johnny looks right and nods to Ed’s genuflective bow, then left to bandleader Skitch Henderson’s acknowledgment (the baton is later passed to Doc Severinsen, who dresses as though he’s collided with a spinnaker and who offers hand-rolling tribute in greeting).

Monologue ensues. Then on to first commercial break. Then business at the desk with Ed, or a sketch. Then another commercial. First guest. Commercial. Then musician or comedian. Commercial. Then next guest. Commercial. Then sign-off.

That’s it, the canonical scheme, with variations only in sequence, and internal, minor adjustments in length of interview, depending on how well the guest is going over. If the format weren’t predictable enough, Carson’s character sketches, such as Art Fern, Aunt Blabby or Carnac the Magnificent, have almost always been a trial--flat, derivative, predictable, overdrawn and precisely lacking in one of his incomparable assets: lightness of touch.

Add to this the standard recycling of the same 40 celebrities who happen to be out on the chat circuit at any given moment flogging a movie, an album or a TV special; mix them in with aging show-biz veterans awaiting re-employment or working the career twilight zone of Las Vegas, and you have the sealed missive, the formula for failure--if “The Tonight Show” had not yet been invented and this were the blueprint for a new program.

If you don’t think so, ask the small platoon or gaggle of other talk-show hosts, including Ron Reagan, Dick Cavett, Joey Bishop, Pat Sajak, Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas, Joan Rivers, Jimmy Breslin, David Brenner, Robert Klein, Les Crane, Della Reese, Hy Gardner, John Davidson and Alan Thicke--all of whom have failed at the format.

Despite all this evidence of faulty design, here we are, lauding an institution, calling a comedian a king. How has he beaten the odds?

First, “The Tonight Show” has been ably served by staff, especially producer Fred de Cordova (who came aboard in 1970), who left Harvard Law School to become Broadway stage manager for the Shuberts in 1933 and a television and movie director later on (he’s forgiven “Bedtime for Bonzo” by bringing us “The Jack Benny Show” and, as far as “The Tonight Show” is concerned, for having a foot in both the old and new, or newer, worlds of show business).

Then, of course, there’s the band. You rarely hear it beyond the show’s open and close, except for the tentative orchestral murmuring that suggests a guest has lived out his or her allotted time slot, or that show’s end is upon us. As a rule, you have to rely on a guest’s frequent note after commercial, “Hey, the band sounds great.” It usually does, in addition to offering both musical punctuation and comic foil--even down to the third-string leader, Shelly Cohen, who when once asked, “Where’s Tommy Newsom?” replied, “He’s at a brown-suit convention.”

But aside from bright production values, a brilliant band, vogue-ish guests and a snappy format the likes of which have been adopted by virtually every other entertainment and talk-show host or hostess, Carson has always been the Franchise, even when he’s occasionally nodded in the doldrums of early middle age. Even when he’s been declared--always temporarily--passe.

The last serious question about that came in 1979, when then NBC President Fred Silverman tried to rein Carson in by suggesting that he work a longer schedule, whereupon Carson said he was calling it quits. Instantly NBC saw 17% of its revenue base tremble in the throes of collapse--parent company RCA’s stock dropped on Wall Street. When the dust settled, not only did Carson graciously accede to the contrite Silverman’s plea to return, he drew the concession of cutting the show’s 90-minute running time to a less punishing hour. And oh yes, his salary was doubled, to $5 million a year.

Afterward, that shrewdest of show-biz capitalists, Bob Hope, grinned at Carson across a Friars Club ceremonial dais and said, “I admire a man who can do what John has done to his network--as many times, as many ways and in as many positions.” To say at that point that Carson was a mere comedian and talk-show lightweight was to say that Vito Corleone was a mere olive oil distributor.

Except for a tour in the Navy (he was a midshipman on the Pacific-based battleship Pennsylvania during World War II) and his student career at the University of Nebraska, Carson has been a showman ever since he began perfecting the tricks he learned from “Hoffman’s Book of Magic” at age 12 (he made his pro debut at the Norfolk Rotary Club for $3--big money for a 14-year-old Nebraskan in those days). The capacity for illusion has never left him. At 66, he’s still as fresh as a breath mint. Age has benefited him handsomely--he’s well rid of that dorky, credulous Dobie Gillis look of his “Who Do You Trust?” and early “Tonight Show” years. What was once boyish perkiness has eventually served the rhythm of his mature wit.

The illusion is so deft and tightly held in place that what was said in Kenneth Tynan’s definitive 1978 New Yorker magazine essay on Carson remains just as true today. Then, in response to the question “What makes television different from theater and cinema?,” a Manhattan journalist told Tynan, “For good or ill, Carson.”

If Carson’s precision-engineered demeanor, with its magician’s collection of physically articulate devices, fits the TV screen so well, his role on “The Tonight Show” as the nation’s emotional weatherman has fitted it even better.

“He’s made for the medium in some way,” says Cavett. “The sound of his voice, the accent, or lack of an accent--which is a Midwestern accent--his look, his personality, that comic gift. He has just the right tone, the right appeal. With the set, the band, the desk, he’s just in his groove there.”

No one has summed up Carson better than director Billy Wilder, who told Tynan, “By the simple law of survival, Carson is the best. He enchants the invalids and the insomniacs, as well as the people who have to get up at dawn. He is the Valium and Nembutal of a nation. No matter what kind of dead-asses are on the show, he has to make them funny and exciting. He has to be their nurse and their surgeon. He has no conceit. He comes to work prepared. If he’s talking to an author, he’s read the book. Even his rehearsed routines seem improvised. He’s the cream of middle-class elegance, yet he’s not a mannequin. He has captivated the American bourgoisie without offending the highbrows, and he has never said anything that wasn’t liberal or progressive.”

Considerably fewer authors are invited on the show (Wilder’s remarks were made before the shorter format), and no politicians anymore. Now that all of American culture tends to rise in the vortex of entertainment, that’s what the show features--except for the few occasions when Carson invites a “civilian,” either a very young person or a very old person, or someone with a rare specialty, like scientist-author Carl Sagan.

Carson is renowned for how swiftly he can strike small venomous punctures into a guest’s vaunting ego (once he stopped the garrulous Zsa Zsa Gabor by looking out and saying, “The Stage Deli just called. They want to nail up your tongue in the window”). But with vulnerable people from everyday life, Carson’s decency is as evident as his deftness in gently handling them. That touch also extends to his show-biz guests; no one outthinks him on his feet. He’s a perfect dance partner, encouraging his older guests, polishing his younger ones when they need it, lending all of them the cherished light of feeling, at least for a few minutes, important and welcome.

But it’s the monologue that pays the rent, as nightly 12 million viewers cozy in to watch Carson emcee a day in the life of the world. “The Tonight Show” acts as the last buffer between the murder and mayhem that is the stuff of nightly news--however cutesy much of it is becoming--and the tranquillity of sleep.

The monologue is the dream-threshold, sorting things out, zapping the baleful, the preposterous, the unfortunate, with an atomizing zinger. It’s the psychological coda for the day, delivered over a field of raspberries with such an uncanny sense of nuance and temperature that reruns come back to us sounding like stale elevator music. (What will it be like for us to hear, a year from now, the line “Imelda’s in real trouble. She’s fallen three points behind Paul Tsongas”?)

It’s an entertainment and a summing-up, particularly when it comes to the last word on the day’s developments. Any political adviser knows that a three-day sniper raid from Carson means big trouble for his boss. The monologue congeals the conventional wisdom, as when Carson recently said, “Ross Perot told reporters he wants a week off so he can work out his positions on the issues. I’d give it to him. Hell, we’ve been waiting four years for George Bush to work out his.”

What Carson and “The Tonight Show” have offered over the years is, in a word, reassurance. Why he’s chosen to step down now is anybody’s guess; one of the tabloids has come out with the story that he is already gripped in the hangover of regret. De Cordova denies this (though the tabloid quote, “I feel I’m headed out to Leisure World,” sounds like a Carson line). “He feels it’s time,” De Cordova said.

Perhaps those satirical Scuds launched across the generation gap by “Saturday Night Live’s” Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman (as Johnny and Ed) are at last finding their mark (one of the definitions of satire is that you can never look at its object with a straight face again). Maybe Carson senses that the hegemony of the networks is truly collapsing and this is a good time to get out while he’s still on top (as late as March of 1991, a Gallup poll showed that Carson had a 62% to 34% general rate of preference over Jay Leno, the man appointed to replace him, and a 59% to 42% preference among 18-to-29-year-old viewers).

Maybe his uncanny ear has picked up the message that the illusion of reassurance, in this chaotic, post-Reagan, multicultural, sexually and economically contentious era, has become too threadbare to sustain.

The odds are inconceivable that anyone will duplicate his peculiar success. His personality and the medium and the history they’ve shared are too much of a piece, and it’s breaking down now into a kind of new electronic factionalism, ceding territories to cable, insurgent independents, and the hermetic choice of videocassette release.

NBC is not about to give up the format without a fight, however, and now awaits the fortunes of Carson’s successor, Jay Leno, the network’s only logical choice to shore up the interests of the sought-after younger viewers. Like Carson, Leno’s first impulse is toward the decent gesture, he has an agile mind, and he’s dedicated to what he’s doing. And he may even get himself into physical shape for the job--right now he looks like a departing hotel guest who’s dressed himself over purloined towels. But so far Leno hasn’t been going with what got him here, namely language and personal history. A lot of his jokes are already clunky and predictable, and unlike Carson, who has a number of outside interests, Leno has only his burgeoning fleet of classic cars to tend to when he’s not at work. Carl Sagan is a natural guest to share Carson’s interest in astronomy. Who would be comparable for Leno now--the Pep Boys?

What’s left? Behind Leno, there’s Arsenio Hall, who has no demonstrable talent beyond raw sycophancy--he’s Merv Griffin’s show-biz heir-apparent--and has profited from the public confusion over the truly hip versus the stylistically aggressive. He won’t survive if America ever outgrows its current diversionary obsession with entertainment figures. At last count, “The Dennis Miller Show” was on the ratings ropes.

And beyond them? Chevy Chase is going to host a talk show on Fox next year. Whoopi Goldberg tackles one this fall. And as a perfect epilogue to the lingering effect of the gaudy, solipsistic ‘80s: Donald and Ivana Trump--each rumored to be feeling out the possibility of talk shows of their own. Why shouldn’t Carson quit now? His reputation has never been more secure.

A final note: No reportage that claims to probe the Carson persona has failed to mention what a cold, aloof, defensive, insular and even heartless man he is when disengaged from the camera. The closest of his friends would no doubt disagree while, like Cavett, making this concession: “Personally,” Cavett said, “he’s what psychiatrists would call ‘defended.’ This is the greatest generalization about him. But somewhere it seems he received a psychic wound which made him feel mercilessly betrayed. I don’t know what it’s about. I’ve heard psychologists say he’s been hurt somewhere back in time. He likes to be liked, but he’s wary. He’s been screwed many times.”

An astute biographer might say “Hoffman’s Book of Magic” was Carson’s Rosebud, because it endowed him with the simultaneous capacity to charm and elude for as long as he lived. And it may in part explain the astonishing degree of affection and tribute his retirement is calling up, because we can suspect what the veneer is about without understanding the psychic moonscape it’s alleged to conceal.

Carson has had the good sense never to refer to himself as the king of anything, even though it’s been the adjective most attributed to him by TV reporters. He was a host who made us feel that we were at least as important as the guests who sat on his couch. He was the wittiest man in entertainment accessible to us, and he owed no visible allegiance to anyone, religious, political or even commercial (remember when, after a McDonald’s spot announcing “Over 20 million burgers sold,” he said, “Gee, that’s 50 pounds of meat”?).

The worst you could say about him is that he was an extraordinary figure in the history of modern American culture. And if he fades like a negative in sunlight the day after he leaves, that’s part of it too. He charmed us, and beyond that all we are sure of is that once he made his choice, however narrow and however long ago, he gave us everything he had.