John William "Johnny" Carson (October 23, 1925 - January 23,2005) was an American television host best known for his iconic status as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for thirty years.

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was a late-night talk show hosted by Johnny Carson under the Tonight Show franchise from 1962 to 1992.

For all but a few months of its first ten years of existence, Carson's Tonight Show was based in New York City. In May 1972, the show moved to Los Angeles, where it remained for the rest of its run. The Tonight Show has continued to this day under a largely identical structure with Jay Leno as host.

Johnny Richard Carson (born January 31, 1930 in Atlanta, Georgia) is a former American football tight end for the Washington Redskins of the National Football League from 1953 to 1959. He also played for the Houston Oilers of the American Football League during their inaugural season in 1960. He played college football at the University of Georgia and was an All-American.

"Tonight Show" programs from September 1980 onward are owned by Carson Productions. Carson got the rights as part of a contract signed following a 1979 battle with NBC president Fred Silverman (I).

From at least the early 1980s onward, rather than bleeping offensive language, gibberish words were usually overdubbed instead. For example, one night when a Carnack the Magnificent sketch bombed, Carson was seen to exclaim "Holy sh*t!" Viewers heard him proclaim "Holy palooga!"

Over the years, a number of traditions were introduced into the opening of the show and Carson's monologue. These included (among many): Ed McMahon's call "Heeeeerrrre's Johnny!", Carson swinging an imaginary golf club at the end of the monologue, Carson pulling down the boom mike to announce "Attention K-Mart shoppers!", and Carson breaking into a soft-shoe dance as the band plays "Tea for Two." These last two examples were usually reserved for use when jokes failed.

One of the few occasions in which the program did not feature an opening monologue happened in January 1986 when guest-host Joan Rivers chose not to deliver one out of respect for the victims of the Challenger disaster, which had occurred that morning.

The longstanding ninety-minute format was shortened to sixty minutes, at Johnny Carson's request, beginning September 16, 1980.

One of the most hilarious and best-remembered (purely unplanned) moments was when guest Ed Ames demonstrated his tomahawk-throwing technique, aiming for a cowboy sketched onto a prop wall. The tomahawk struck the drawing right in its crotch; the whole set broke into pandemonium.

"The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" remained a fixture on NBC through the administrations of seven U.S. Presidents (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush).

Johnny regularly played with pencils at his "Tonight Show" desk. These pencils were specially made with erasers at both ends in order to avoid on set "accidents".

On 28 March 1974 rumors that "The Tonight Show" was to be assaulted by a "streaker" became a reality when show writer Pat McCormick (II) dashed across the stage naked at the end of Carson's monologue. Johnny was completely taken by surprise by the sight of the 300lb McCormick running naked in front of the audience.

Hosts of rival late-night attempting to take the "late night crown" from Johnny Carson (I) include David Susskind, Ross Schaefer, Merv Griffin, Pat Sajak, Dick Cavett, Robert Klein (I), David Brenner (I), Joan Rivers, Jimmy Breslin, Ron Reagan, Steve Allen (I), Chevy Chase, and Arsenio Hall.

After "The Tonight Show" moved from New York to California in May 1972, Carson took Monday nights off and the show would be hosted by a guest performer. Until Joan Rivers became "permanent guest host" in September 1983, the most frequent of these "guest hosts" were: Joey Bishop (177 times) Joan Rivers (93 times) Bob Newhart (87 times) John Davidson (II) (87 times) David Brenner (I) (70 times) McLean Stevenson (58 times) Jerry Lewis (I) (52 times) David Letterman (51 times)

Five years after the final "Tonight Show" broadcast aired, 10,000 "Tonight Show" tapes were transported to a working salt mine in Kansas, 54 stories underground, to protect them from deterioration. The average temperature of the salt mine is 68 degrees, with 40% humidity.

To the right of Carson's desk were the controls to a weather machine that made the back drop rain, snow or cast a bolt of lightning.

When it was first announced that Johnny Carson (I) was joining "The Tonight Show," he was relentlessly pursued by the press for interviews. Carson eventually provided the journalists with the following list of answers that they could use with the questions of their choosing. Yes, I did. Not a bit of truth in that rumor. Only twice in my life, both times on Saturday. I can do either, but prefer the first. NO. Kumquats. I can't answer that question. Toads and tarantulas. Turkestan, Denmark, Chile, and the Komandorskie Islands. As often as possible, but I'm not very good at it yet. I need much more practice. It happened to some old friends of mine, and it's a story I'll never forget.

Around 10am every morning before a show, Carson would call producer Frederick De Cordova and chat for a few minutes about what guests were to appear on the show that night and discuss a sketch rehearsal, if necessary. The telephone conversation would last about ten minutes, and that was the only contact Carson and De Cordova had before each show.

When "The Tonight Show" first aired, virtually everyone - including Johnny Carson (I) - smoked on-camera during the show. Over the years, however, smoking on television became unfashionable. By the mid-80s, smoking openly on television was a thing of the past, but Carson's sentimental cigarette box remained on his desk until his final broadcast.

There was a six month period when Jack Paar left "The Tonight Show" in 1962 and Johnny Carson (I) replaced him as the show's host. In the interim, NBC had various celebrities guest host. It was during this time that musician Tommy Newsom was a hired to play the alto sax in The Tonight Show Band and he remained with the band, occasionally taking over band leader duties when Doc Severinsen was away, until Carson retired in 1992. Therefore, Newsom's tenure on "The Tonight Show" was three months longer than Carson's.

A soundtrack album issued in the 1970s (including highlights with Tom Smothers and Dick Smothers, George Carlin, Pearl Bailey duetting with Johnny, and even former President Richard Nixon appearing on the show) sold over half a million copies.

In 1987, performer Juliet Prowse was mauled by a 80-pound leopard while preparing to go on the show to promote the broadcast of the Circus of the Stars #12 (1987) (TV), requiring 30-40 stitches to reattach part of her left ear. A few months earlier in September 1987, she was mauled by the same animal while rehearsing for the show Circus of the Stars #12 (1987) (TV). This time, she required five stitches.

At exactly one minute before midnight on 1 January 1971, this show broadcast the very last television commercial for cigarettes in the USA (Virginia Slims) before the Federal ban went into effect.

Very few shows prior to 1972 are known to exist, and those that do are low-quality kinescopes. NBC systematically recycled the original tapes after each airing, without Carson's knowledge or approval. It was only once he learned of this that it was stopped.

Many taped episodes (including appearances by Ayn Rand, and John Lennon (I) and Paul McCartney) were lost at NBC's archive, and only clips made for other programs (show "best-of"s, promotion, news) have survived.

Johnny Carson, the legendary "King of Late Night TV" who dominated the medium's nether hours for three decades, was born in Corning, Iowa, but moved with his family to nearby Norfolk, Nebraska when he was eight years old. It was in Norfolk, where he lived until he was inducted into the US Navy in 1943, that he started his show business career. At age 14, Carson began appearing as the magician "The Great Carsoni" at local venues. In 1962, Carson was chosen by NBC to succeed the controversial Jack Paar (I) and his "Jack Paar Tonight Show, The" (1957). Paar had decided to quit the show and begin a once-a-week show for NBC in prime time on Friday nights. Carson would never be controversial like Paar, preferring to good-naturedly skewer politicians and celebrities in his opening monologue and staging stunts such as the on-stage marriage of retro-singer Tiny Tim to his "Miss Vicky" in 1969. His popularity with the late-night audience became so great, and the income from advertising on his show so profitable that, in 1967, NBC had to lure Johnny back to "Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The" (1962) after a walkout with a three-year contract guaranteeing him a minimum of $4 million. In the early 1970s, TV Guide reported that Carson was earning $2 million a year, making him the highest paid TV entertainer ever, a record he repeatedly surpassed, pulling down a then-record $5 million annual salary in the 1980s. Carson created a sense of intimacy with his guests and audiences that made him the unvanquished "King of Nighttime TV". Countless talk shows hosted by the likes of Joey Bishop (I) and Dick Cavett and other non-talk show programs were launched against him year after year only to fail, with the notable exception of "ABC News Nightline" (1980) halfway through his reign. Aside from his loyal audience, Carson was beloved by his guests and the legions of young comics whose careers were launched on "The Tonight Show", colloquially known as "The Johnny Carson Show". His tempestuous love-life, which included two high-profile divorces, became the fodder of such celebrity staples as "The National Enquirer" and later "People Magazine", and he was even the subject of a roman a clef pulp novel in the early 1970s. There have been at least seven published biographies of Carson. After brief stints on radio stations in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska, Carson's career was exclusively in television, starting with work at Nebraska TV stations in the late 1940s which preceded his 1951-53 skit program "Carson's Cellar" (1953) on Los Angeles station KNXT-TV. Attracting the attention of the industry, he was hired as a comedy writer for "Red Skelton Show, The" (1951) which provided him with a career breakthrough when Skelton was injured backstage and Carson substituted for him, delivering his first monologue before a national audience. This led to a stint as the host of the quiz show "Earn Your Vacation" (1954) and the variety showcase "Johnny Carson Show, The" (1955) in 1955-56. The man who would soon become the most famous late-night TV personality in history hosted the daytime game show "Who Do You Trust?" (1958) from 1957-62, teaming up with long-time sidekick Ed McMahon (I) in 1958. Before his triumph on "Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The" (1962), Carson tried his hand at dramatic acting, appearing in "Three Men on a Horse" (episode # 1.29) during the inaugural season of "Playhouse 90" (1956) in 1957. In 1960, he shot a pilot for a prime-time TV series, "Johnny Come Lately", that was not picked up by a network. Carson had sat in for "Tonight Show" host Jack Paar (I) in 1958 and, when Paar left the show four years later, NBC chose Carson as his replacement, taking over the cat bird seat on Oct. 2, 1962. "Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The" (1962) became a major phenomenon in American pop culture in the 1960s and beyond. Sidekick McMahon's "Heeeeere's Johnny!!!" introduction of Carson became a cultural catchphrase, memorably re-prised by Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick's Shining, The (1980), Woody Allen's character in the Best Picture Academy Award-winning Annie Hall (1977), stand-up comic Alvy Singer, is recognized in front of a movie theater by a street tough due to his appearance on "The Tonight Show". Aside from his banter with celebrities, he amused his audience for 30 years with broadly played skit comedy by his "Mighty Carson Players" and his spoof clairvoyant "Carnac the Magnificent". A master at quick repartee, Carson was a relaxed host with a pleasant, ingratiating manner and was quite funny as a skit comedian, but it was the monologue in which Carson's comic genius flourished. He made memorable put-downs of politicians and celebrities, a format still used by his successors Jay Leno and David Letterman and legions of comics who came after him. But it was his ironic self-awareness that made him radically different from such monologists as Bob Hope (I). When a joke bombed during his monologues, Carson would do a wounded double-take as the audience jeered, fully aware of the awfulness of the joke he had just unloaded. Following these bombs with a sly, self-deprecating remark engendered a sense of intimacy between Carson and his fans. Carson typically moved the blame for a groaner onto his joke writers, which created a "We're in this together" camaraderie with his audience that spawned a whole new era of self-referential comedy, perhaps best epitomized by Letterman, the man Carson wanted to succeed him on "The Tonight Show". A liberal in the increasingly liberal age of the 1960s and 1970s, so powerful were his opening monologues that by the early 1970s, he could actually affect society at large outside of the pop culture realm. A joke about a shortage of industrial grade toilet paper caused a national panic and a run on all grades of t.p., with a resulting shortage of the product about which he had kidded. Playing off current events such as the Watergate crisis, his comic evisceration of President Richard Nixon was credited with some critics as exerting such a drag on Nixon's approval rating that it made his resignation possible, if not inevitable. After Carson's reign, it became increasingly de rigueur for politicians to appear on late-night TV talk shows and bear a host's jibes in order to stump for votes. Carson's connection with the American culture was so absolute, it contributed to one of his few failures, the rejection of "The Tonight Show" in the early 1980s by British audiences who could not understand the topical references of his monologues. And his audience's identification of Johnny with the "Tonight Show" effectively stopped him from work in other media. In the mid-1960s, Carson's agents wanted to trade on his vast popularity to position him in motion pictures as the "New Jack Lemmon (I)", but Carson never made the foray outside of television. His connection with the movie industry remained his hosting of three generations of stars and his memorable turns as the host of five Academy Awards telecasts from 1979 to 1984. In that role, he generally is regarded as the best successor to long-time Oscar host Bob Hope (I). He did stretch his wings as a producer, his Carson Productions producing TV pilots and series, TV movies and "Late Night with David Letterman" (1982) in addition to his own talk show. The six-time Emmy-winner considered a follow-up to "The Tonight Show", but nothing caught his interest and he spent the last decade of his life in a quiet retirement in Malibu, California, as befitted his private nature. Thus, it was "The Tonight Show" that remains his creative legacy. Unlike every other TV star, he remained on top until the very end, the show winning its ratings period every year for 30 years. When Carson retired, his last appearance was one of the highest rated late night TV shows ever. "I have an ego like anybody else", Carson told The Washington Post in 1993, "but I don't need to be stoked by going before the public all the time". Frederick De Cordova, the producer of "The Tonight Show" throughout Carson's 30-year run, believed that Johnny never pressured himself to launch a follow-up as he already had achieved unprecedented success on TV. "He is one of a kind, was one of a kind", De Cordova said in 1995. "I don't think there's any reason for him to try something different". Carson, who was suffering from emphysema and had quadruple bypass surgery in 1999, died peacefully at the age of 79 on the morning of Sunday, January 23, 2005, surrounded by his family and friends. In terms of career longevity, popularity, peer respect and impact on the medium, Carson ranks with Lucille Ball and Jackie Gleason (I) as one of the greatest stars of television. Not only will Johnny be sorely missed, he WAS sorely missed by his legions of fans after his retirement.