The Carson Connection: Heeeeeeeere’s Funny

Andy Warhol proclaimed that everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. But if you were a stand-up comedian between 1962 and 1992, only six really mattered: the time allotted for your debut appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

A successful first shot could make a career, but more, it represented for young comics a professional coming of age. It meant joining a select fraternity that included the legends they avidly watched as children. To appear on “The Tonight Show” with Carson was the penultimate. To make Johnny laugh was the ultimate.

“The Comedians: ‘Good Stuff!’ “--a new Buena Vista Home Video release--is a time-capsule glimpse at this bygone era. It captures the auspicious “Tonight Show” debuts of nine performers who made the most of their big break: Roseanne, Jerry Seinfeld, Garry Shandling, Victoria Jackson, Steven Wright, Louie Anderson, Rita Rudner, Bob Nelson and Drew Carey.

The video, which retails for $14.99, is a companion volume to Buena Vista’s “Johnny Carson Collection,” which included the stand-up debuts of such personages as David Letterman and Jay Leno. “Good Stuff!” was compiled by Jeff Sotzing, a 16-year “Tonight Show” veteran.

“It was tough to decide,” he says of the task of selecting comedians for inclusion on the video. “My biggest problem was I was going to have to leave out so many people who had great first appearances. I wanted a cross section of personalities and tried to pick people who are successful now so audiences would be familiar with their work. These are just examples of performers who gave it a shot and were very, very funny.”

It was Jim McCawley’s job to find very, very funny. He served for nine years as talent coordinator for “The Tonight Show.”

“My purpose was to find people who could make Johnny really laugh, who could knock his socks off,” he says. “It was like shooting for the moon every night. Here was a man who had heard every joke, who knew every setup and punch line. There was no way to get to him with mundane material. We looked for original thinking, someone special who saw the world [through a unique perspective].”

The comedians featured on “Good Stuff!” succeeded famously. Carson bestows on Seinfeld the “OK” sign, the equivalent, it has been said, of receiving one’s diploma or passing the bar exam. He calls Jackson’s gymnastic poetry reading “wonderfully inventive stuff.” Of Nelson’s routine as addled boxer Jiffy Jeff, Carson states, “You won’t laugh any harder for five or six minutes than you laugh at that guy.”

To Carey’s apparent astonishment, he is invited at the end of his set to join Carson on the panel. “You can’t do any better than that on your first shot, no way,” Carson tells him. “You’re funny as hell.” “You too,” the ebullient Carey responds.

Like baseball players who years later can recall the type of pitch they hit for a home run, the comedians remember the experience as if it were yesterday.

“Nothing will ever top that,” Carey says. “I saved my set sheet from that night. I have it framed. I spent $1,000 returning phone calls [after the appearance]. The very next day, I was in show business.”

“I could do my routine from the opening line to the last,” says Louie Anderson. “I knew I was home free when I heard Johnny hit the desk with his hands and I heard his laugh. He was probably the biggest fan of comics. He knew the next day people would say, ‘Did you see that comic on Johnny’s show?’ That’s why it was so important.”

Another reason was that a fledgling comedian had more at stake than did other entertainers plugging their latest projects. “The Tonight Show,” in effect, introduced them to a mass audience that would take 20 years of club dates to reach.

“It absolutely made my career,” Anderson says. “I went from making $500 a week to $500 a night. It’s been 12 years, and I still have people coming up to me to say that they saw my first ‘Tonight Show.’ ”

“I knew it would change my life,” Victoria Jackson says. “If Johnny liked me, I would probably have a career.”

Career considerations aside, Carson’s “Tonight Show” represented for comedians a necessary rite of passage. For Carey, it meant not only joining “that fraternity” but also taking part in a time-honored tradition at the Improv comedy club in which the jukebox is unplugged, Champagne is served and the comedian and friends watch his or her appearance in the club’s dining room.

Although Bob Nelson had appeared on cable and toured with Rodney Dangerfield, he would not have felt complete without a Carson-hosted “Tonight Show” appearance to his credit.

“It was just a mind-set from the beginning,” he says. “It started with Jerry Seinfeld, George Wallace and other New York comedians who I came up with. They would always say Carson this and Carson that. That’s all these guys talked about.”

For Anderson, his appearance seemed like destiny fulfilled: “I remember [growing up in Minnesota] staying up to watch the comic on ‘The Tonight Show.’ I remember seeing Phyllis Diller, Jackie Vernon, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor, all these great comics. I had no idea I was being prepared, so that when I did that show, it was almost like coming full circle in my life.

“My main goals were to get my name on the wall of the Comedy Store or perform at the Improv and to do ‘The Tonight Show.’ I didn’t think much past that, because at that time it wasn’t about getting a sitcom or movie deal. Stand-up was an art in itself, and we were proud of what we did.”

One of the reasons comedians loved appearing with Carson was that he was a gracious host who allowed his guests to shine, Jackson notes. She had been discovered by John Shrum, a former NBC art director who frequented the Variety Arts Club in Los Angeles, where she took souvenir photos of patrons and honed her act, which consisted in part of reading a poem while performing a prolonged handstand.

“We had this great chemistry,” she says of Carson. “He turned us into George and Gracie. I thought I was really funny, and I would go on other talk shows and not be funny at all.”

The “Tonight Show” doors did not immediately swing open for Rita Rudner. She had been on “Late Night With David Letterman” for five years before getting her first shot. She credited Alixandria Friedman, wife of Improv owner Budd Friedman, with compelling McCawley to take another look at her act.

Even then, Rudner says, “it wasn’t smooth sailing.”

“After waiting all those years,” she recalls, “I got bumped twice. You get all prepared, you sit there, and then you have to go home [without getting to perform]. It was like ‘I’m never getting on, am I?’ ”

“The Tonight Show” continues to thrive with Jay Leno as host, but some say it does not have the same influence, in part because the audience is more fragmented than in the days before cable, when there were just three major networks.

One thing hasn’t changed. A successful debut on “The Tonight Show” provides comedians with long-sought validation and vindication.

“What a lonely job it is,” McCawley says of stand-up comedy. “People think you’re throwing your life away. Your family doesn’t approve. It’s a job that creates the most insecurity. Appearing on ‘The Tonight Show,’ especially with Johnny Carson, was tangible recognition that you were not a fool, that you had something of value and you were ready to show it to the world.”

But that, of course, is only the beginning.

“I did my best and tried to be as funny as I could,” Rudner says. “Then it was back to the clubs to start working on the next six minutes.”