The Entertainer Who Redefined Late-Night TV and Reshaped American Culture

Carson the Magnificent by Bill Zehme

A much-anticipated biography, Carson the Magnificent — 20 years in the making — has been released this holiday season about the entertainer who redefined late-night television and reshaped American culture.

In 2002, Bill Zehme landed one of the most coveted assignments for a magazine writer: an interview with Johnny Carson — the only one he’d granted since retiring from hosting The Tonight Show a decade earlier. Zehme was tapped for the Esquire feature story thanks to his years of legendary celebrity profiles, and the resulting piece portrayed Carson as more human being than showbiz legend.

Shortly after Carson’s death in 2005 and urged on by many of those closest to Carson, Zehme signed a contract to do an expansive biography. He toiled on the book for nearly a decade — interviewing dozens of Carson’s colleagues and friends and filling up a storage locker with his voluminous research — before a cancer diagnosis and ongoing treatments halted his progress. When he died in 2023, his obituaries mentioned the Carson book, with New York Times comedy critic Jason Zinoman calling it “one of the great unfinished biographies.”

Yet the hundreds of pages Zehme managed to complete are astounding both for the caliber of their writing and how they illuminate one of the most inscrutable figures in entertainment history: a man who brought so much joy and laughter to so many millions but was himself exceedingly shy and private.

An Iconic Figure in Entertainment History

It’s clear that Zehme was obsessed with his subject, mirroring the fascination and curiosity of an American culture that tuned in nightly for a lighthearted and entertaining gut-check on the world around us, communicated in a delicate but well-nuanced style. Carson reflected the tone and temperament of a nation, and his relationship with the American public, in a funny way, was more intimate than his relationship with any human being.

Zehme traces Carson’s rise from a magic-obsessed Nebraska boy to a Navy ensign in World War II to a burgeoning radio and TV personality to, eventually, host of The Tonight Show — which he transformed, along with the entirety of American popular culture, over the next three decades. 

Without Carson, there would be no late-night television as we know it. On a much more intimate level, Zehme also captures the turmoil and anguish that accompanied the success: four marriages, troubles with alcohol, and the devastating loss of a child.

In one passage, Zehme notes that when asked by an interviewer in the mid-80s for the secret to his success, Carson replied simply, “Be yourself and tell the truth.” Completed with help from journalist and Zehme’s former research assistant Mike Thomas, Carson the Magnificent offers just that: an honest assessment of who Johnny Carson really was. Says Library Journal: “For 30 years and seven presidential administrations, Tonight Show host Johnny Carson enlivened our nights with his relaxed style and exquisitely timed humor … Bill Zehme’s truly intimate biography of Carson is the best extant substitute for those 4,530 Tonight Show nights and the pleasure they gave us.’’