Amid Late-Night Wars, ‘Moments’ to Remember

What are talk shows if not collections of fleeting moments--some of which are delectable, most of which run together like a monotone buzz that you listen to without really hearing? Drop the buzz, keep the highlights and you really have something. So. . . .

He-e-e-e-e-re’s “Johnny Carson: His Favorite Moments From ‘The Tonight Show.’ ”

Carson has described his nearly 30 years of bending America’s ear as “just a helluva lot of fun.” That also applies to this four-tape set from Buena Vista Home Video. It goes on sale today, ironically just as Carson’s once-energized competitor--Arsenio Hall--is ending his own, skimpier, run as a late-night host.

Nothing gets more inflated than a eulogy. Celebs have been dropping by the syndicated “Arsenio” in advance of tonight’s finale (at midnight on KCOP-TV Channel 13) to assure him that he’s a giant of entertainment who will be widely missed. Carson heard much the same thing in 1992 during his last days, and, three decades earlier, so did the man Carson succeeded on “The Tonight Show,” Jack Paar.

Judging by his dive in the Nielsen ratings, though, Hall’s departure has been preceded by a fade to anonymity. The “indelible” memory of Paar lasted only as long as it took Carson to launch his first one-liner. And the worshiped Carson himself--despite his enormous impact as a television icon and a thread of continuity during momentous change in the United States--was missed only a little longer. Like television itself, we’re creatures of the moment with short memories. There are just too many distractions.

As TV-driven zombies, most of us are easily diverted by bells, whistles or any other loud noises. Nothing has been noisier of late than the duel of television’s late-night commandos, Jay Leno and David Letterman. On CBS, “Late Show With David Letterman” has been a true phenomenon, and Leno on NBC has at times creatively used “The Tonight Show” to tap sources of humor distinct from the late-night talk and comedy of the Carson era.

Just how distinct is evident from watching the Carson tapes, which, says an accompanying publicity blurb, will be the only video retrospective of his show to be released. The first three tapes can be purchased separately ($15 each), but you have to buy the entire set for $60 to get the fourth tape, which is Carson’s final “Tonight Show,” broadcast two years ago this week.

The tapes--opening with “The Tonight Show” originating from New York in black and white--are a kick on several levels, one of which is historical. In only a few moments you’re returned to an earlier universe in which such names as Ethel Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey surface in Carson’s monologues, and smoking was still the nasty habit of the TV multitudes (Buddy Hackett, Flip Wilson, Dean Martin, George Gobel and the host himself are seen blithely puffing away).

And who is that androgynous falsetto freak that we see a bowled-over, can’t-believe-his-eyes-or-ears Carson greeting in 1968? Why, it’s none other than coquettish sheman Tiny Tim. Yet he looks as quaint as a sweet old aunt and as mainstream as Peoria compared to 1994’s Prince or Michael Jackson--to say nothing of half the guests that file across the screen during daytime’s talk zoo.

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Most of the “moments” are in the still-funny-after-all-these-years category. In one of the most famous accidental sight gags ever (1965), there is dead-eye Ed Ames once again throwing his tomahawk in a cardboard cowboy’s crotch. “Welcome to Frontier Bris,” says Carson, who shrewdly extends the joke by stopping the chagrined Ames from removing the tomahawk.

There is Carson in 1968 face-to-face with Jack Webb in a “Dragnet”-style stone-faced talking-heads dialogue about a “Copper Clapper Caper” that could have been pulled from a contemporary police parody; then a decade later as Mister Rogers, using mommy and daddy dolls to explain the birds and bees. And there he is spoofing George C. Scott’s Gen. Patton, giving a stirring speech in front of an enormous U.S. flag. When the camera pulls back, you see that he’s been speaking to Girl Scouts.

Carson interviews a cerebral myna bird. The potato chip sculptor is here, too, as are other eccentric guests who are either a hoot on their own or become fodder for Carson’s humor and acute sense of the absurd: “Now, about these quail droppings. . . .”

What strikes you, though, is just how little time is devoted to traditional interviews, almost as an admission that the bulk of them were too forgettable to earn a shot at posterity. Instead, Carson affirms here that he not only was a hair-trigger ad-libber but also was someone adept at shaping cleverly written material into hilarious physical comedy, whether as fast-talking movie host Art Fern or as all-knowing, all-seeing Carnac the Magnificent (“Piggly wiggly: Describe Kermit’s wedding night”).

You particularly appreciate just how gifted and instinctive he was as a physical comic when he elasticizes his gangly body when he comes under attack from the various exotic insects and animals brought on the show by Joan Embery, Jim Fowler and others. A marmoset reposes on a nervous Johnny’s head, a larger monkey slugs him in the jaw, and so on and so on.

The tapes also showcase a slew of young stand-ups--including Leno, Letterman and Garry Shandling--before they became major stars. In fact, all of Carson’s hosts-in-waiting are memorialized here. Well, almost all.

Johnny holds a grudge so long. . . .

How long?

So long that former Carson favorite Joan Rivers--who reportedly angered him deeply when she bolted “The Tonight Show” for her own competing late-night series on Fox in 1986--is a non-person on these tapes. Despite her prominence as a very funny guest and substitute host, zilch, zero, invisible, outranked even by the myna bird.

The emotional heart of “His Favorite Moments” is not the sign-off show--a no-guest, anticlimactic sprawl of clips and various bits of nostalgia--but the famous next-to-last show that included a visibly moved Carson being serenaded by Bette Midler. It was a lovely, lingering, moist-eyed instant of television that seemed to belie the fact that, for nearly all its life under Carson, “The Tonight Show” was nothing more than fluff. Which, of course, is why we watched it.