TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/061791/0617460.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.4 KB | 118 lines

                                                                                SHOW BUSINESS, Page 70

Passing the Late-Night Crown


In picking Leno over Letterman for The Tonight Show, NBC goes
for youthful drive tempered by jut-jawed likability

By RICHARD CORLISS -- Reported by William Tynan/New York


    Late night comedy: On the day Jay Leno has been announced
as host of NBC's The Tonight Show beginning next May, Johnny
Carson confides to his audience, "I want to tell young Jay Leno
I've changed my mind; I'm gonna stay." And then Carson, the
program's star since Jack Kennedy was President, barks out his
brittle laugh and purports to lose himself in merriment.

    Late night melodrama: An hour or so later, David Letterman
says, "Before we continue, I think we should congratulate our
friend Jay Leno for being selected as the host of The Tonight
Show. And the good news for us is, we get Stump the Band." This
hoariest of Carson time fillers is no silver medal for
Letterman, in his 10th year as star of his own NBC chatfest. The
world had long known that the anvil-jawed Leno, Tonight's
exclusive guest host since 1987, was bound to succeed Carson.
But press tattle hinted that Letterman, who gave Leno his first
sustained TV exposure, was furious at not being offered the job.
One source told the Washington Post that Letterman planned to
sue NBC to break his contract, making him available for offers
from CBS and ABC. Once upon a time, the ringmaster of Stupid Pet
Tricks was indeed Carson's heir apparent, Bonnie Prince Dave.
But now Leno will assume command over the United Kingdom of Late
Night. Letterman gets to keep Wales.

    For NBC the decision was nothing but common sense. The
cash-register-drawer-jawed new host not only projects a likable,
intimate video presence, but he will also bring in more money
for Tonight: his audience tends to be younger than Carson's,
thus more appealing to advertisers. He is also a plow horse of
stand-up comedy. Currently he does concerts in three or four
cities a week in addition to his subbing duties. For The Tonight
Show Starring Jay Leno, he will appear in 250 new episodes a
year, more than twice the number Carson now does. And no slot
is planned for a substitute host. Leno will not have a Leno.

    Leno sees his anointing as a reward to be judiciously
savored. "I consider myself a good soldier," he says. "You go
to work, you do the job -- write joke, tell joke, get check --
and the world will pretty much take care of itself." After
establishing himself as a Johnny wannabe, the glockenspiel-jawed
comic was offered other talk-show slots, but, he says, "I wisely
turned them down. To me, this is the only job in television. I'm
kind of coming in as the new CEO. You don't really own it, you
just hold it and try not to drop the ball when you hand it to
the next guy. I like the history of The Tonight Show, being
able to look back over the years and think, gee! Steve Allen!
Jack Paar! Johnny Carson! You get to hang your picture on the
same wall."

    Allen built the wall in 1954, establishing Tonight as a
bedtime slot for zany comedy and snappy conversation. For five
years beginning in 1957, Paar turned it into a wailing wall; he
made Tonight into Event TV by tangling with politicians and
crackpots, discussing his young daughter's training bra, walking
off the show one night after the censors clipped a joke. And
Carson, unquestionably the longest lived power player in TV,
bought the wall. Or rather, as his popularity and contract
demands escalated, NBC bought it for him.

    With his sangfroid and Swiss-watch timing, Carson brought
a temperate temperature to Tonight after the Paar boil. But he
did more: in his nightly monologue he helped set the nation's
political and social agenda. When Johnny made jokes about
Vietnam, Watergate, errant Senators or TV evangelists, he
enabled the audience to laugh the problem away. "Nobody can
figure out Johnny's politics," Leno says. "The joke comes
first." The trouble is that Carson's monologues have stayed hip,
while his studio audiences have grown duller, less attuned to
the issues he makes fun of. The star now gets his biggest cheers
when he walks onstage; the crowd has come not for comedy but for
celebrity spectacle. Carson makes a state visit, and the
audience responds like tourists at Buckingham Palace.

    Now they can watch the changing of the guard. "I'll
continue to do a monologue about the topics of the day," the
hydrofoil-jawed host-in-waiting says. "I enjoy doing the
political stuff" -- though his old stance of ironically outraged
liberalism has been tempered as he segued from guest to host.
Leno will also retain that charming anachronism, the studio
orchestra. Bandleader Doc Severinsen will retire, though, as
will Carson's faithful retainer, Ed McMahon.

    Other changes will have to wait. After all, Johnny has 105
more shows to do before he bows out, and Jay has 74 more guest
spots. "This is probably the only job in the world," the
peninsula-jawed Leno wryly notes, "where you get the job and
they go, `O.K., good! You'll be starting . . . in a year.' " At
least Leno knows the job will be his. Letterman, in his later
slot, must stew. The other night, he made a mistake, then
groused, "That's why I don't get 11:30!" He must be content with
what he has: the best talk-show on TV.