Heeeere’s Johnny!
Two shows are in the works about the king of late-night talk, Johnny Carson. One is being developed by the Carson Entertainment Group, a production company that owns and distributes the “Tonight Show” episodes he hosted.
That play — which will feature music from the ’60s and ’70s — is early in development, but sources say it will take place in and around Carson’s Burbank studio and feature such classic characters as Carnac the Magnificent and the Mighty Carson Art Players. Don’t expect it to delve into the darker aspects of the comedian’s personality: This is an officially sanctioned stage bio.
Carson’s demons — alcohol, womanizing, petty vindictiveness — will be dealt with more forthrightly in the other show, which is based on Henry Bushkin’s biography “Johnny Carson.” Bushkin, Carson’s longtime lawyer, is adapting his book and is aiming to have a workshop production this summer.
Bushkin was a young lawyer when he joined Carson’s entourage. His first assignment: accompanying a gun-toting Carson to an apartment he believed his then-wife, Joanne Copeland, kept as a love nest, and breaking into it.
Bushkin was on call all the time, frequently meeting a drunk and lonely Carson in the wee hours of the morning at Jilly’s and Toots Shor’s.
The Carson that emerges in the book, and I hope in the play, is a man who’s fun and engaging on camera but remote and cruel off it. He’s seemingly incapable of love — he had four wives and did battle with them all — and friendship. Bushkin was close to him for several years, but the friendship ended abruptly when Carson thought Bushkin had betrayed him. They wound up in a bruising legal battle.
“Johnny Carson” contains many memorable scenes that should translate easily to the stage. One of my favorites takes place during Ronald Reagan’s inaugural gala, emceed by Carson. Dean Martin showed up so drunk that Frank Sinatra threw him off the stage.
One of the book’s more engaging characters is Joan Rivers. Carson was her biggest champion, until she made the fatal mistake of not telling him she was offered her own show. She was off the “Tonight Show” and out of his life forever.
She’s likely to emerge as an important character in “Carson — The Play” (that’s the working title). She may, in fact, function as narrator and a prism through which the audience views this immensely talented but immensely troubled icon.