There’s Suzanne Pleshette, years after The Bob Newhart Show ended, talking about her latest project and intimating that the casting directors may need to recover their couches, a remark that generates much laughter from everyone in the audience, including the women. It’s not unlike the time Marilu Henner appeared at the peak of her Taxi fame wearing a white silk blouse and Carson, staring intently at her chest, remarked that it must have been cold backstage. The audience roared, including the women.
There’s Cloris Leachman, then in her 50s, looking considerably younger and predicting she would live to a ripe old age because she doesn’t eat meat and maintains a healthy lifestyle, long before such things were part of the national health conversation. (Leachman is currently in her 90s.)
There’s Joan Rivers (above, with Carson), in happier times as a guest, flaunting a new fur wrap and making vicious fun of Elizabeth Taylor’s weight gain. Carson would later choose Rivers as his first female guest host, and then his first permanent guest host, an accomplishment at the time for a woman given the show’s status then as the top moneymaker on all of broadcast television. (Years later, when Fox offered to make her the first woman to host a late-night talk show of her own – another huge accomplishment – Carson got pissed, forever banned her from Tonight and never spoke to her again.)
There’s Dick Cavett talking culture with Carson. He was formerly Carson’s smart, sophisticated and struggling time-period talk-show rival and the only one to last a few years opposite such formidable competition.
And there’s the man himself, Johnny Carson, being naughty in those recurring Mighty Carson Art Players sketches, the humor in which often revolved around women with big breasts (see below).
Watching The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for a few nights makes clear that much has changed over the decades – except when certain guests are on who make it seem that nothing much has changed at all. For example, there’s legendary ABC News reporter Sam Donaldson (below) talking about the challenges of covering a president (Ronald Reagan) who used to be in show business and admitting that he sometimes interjects personal opinion into his work, with combustible blowback from viewers and the media alike.