11 surprising things we learned about johnny carson from his new biography | members only

Johnny Carson used his affable personality and keen gift for comedy to become no less than the King of Late-Night Television and a cultural icon as host of _The Tonight Show_ for nearly

three decades, from 1962 to 1992. But as the new biography _Carson the Magnificent_ by the late Bill Zehme (Nov. 5) details, the private Carson, who died of emphysema in 2005 at age 79, was

inscrutable — relatively shy — and had some very troubled personal relationships. Zehme, a lifelong Carson fan and longtime celebrity journalist, nonetheless spent years working to uncover

the man behind the myth. He’d only written three-quarters of the biography before passing away from cancer last year at 64, however, so Mike Thomas, a former entertainment journalist for the

_Chicago Sun Times_, completed the book. Thomas explains in the prologue why Zehme (and, probably, many other fans) revered Carson: The host offered his audiences the assurance that

“tomorrow will come and we can laugh about what just happened today, and we can get up in the morning, and it’ll be alright, here we go again.”   It would, truly, be hard to overstate the

influence of the Nebraska-bred celebrity. As the _New York Times_ wrote in his obituary, “[Carson] became the biggest, most popular star American television has known…. At his height,

between 10 million and 15 million Americans slept better weeknights because of him.” But who _was_ this cultural icon, offscreen? Here are 11 things we learned about Carson from his new

biography: Johnny Carson’s parents, Homer (1899 - 1983) and Ruth (1901 - 1985). Carson said he struggled throughout his life to please Ruth. Frank Edwards/Fotos International/Getty Images 1.

 HE HAD A COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS MOTHER Ruth Carson was a tough, domineering woman with a sarcastic, biting sense of humor and a short fuse. (She reportedly once broke a whole set

of dishes against the kitchen wall.) Even after Johnny’s success, she largely withheld her praise, and he spent his life trying to please her: in 1980 when he received the coveted Governors

Award from the Television Academy for his body of work, he called to tell her. Her lukewarm response: “I guess they know what they’re doing.” When his mother died, according to Carson

acquaintance Burt Reynolds, Carson declared, “The wicked witch is dead!” As a young man, Johnny Carson billed himself as "The Great Carsoni" while doing magic shows, a form of

entertainment that he was obsessed with. Norfolk Daily News/AP Photo 2. MAGIC WAS HIS EARLY LOVE AND PRIMARY INTEREST Almost pathologically shy all his life (parties made him intensely

uncomfortable), Carson told the _Los Angeles Times_ in 1986, “I think my reading a book at 12 called _Hoffmann’s Book of Magic_ probably changed the course of my life.” From then on, the

Great Carsoni, as the teen called himself, was obsessed, performing every chance he got and practicing on his family. Although he was nearly as reclusive as Howard Hughes when he was off the

air during his _Tonight Show_ years, Carson summoned the leading magicians to his house in Malibu to perform and show him the latest developments in the art. During World War II, Johnny

Carson served as a Navy communications officer. Alamy 3. HE LEARNED THE NECESSITY OF LAUGHTER THE HARD WAY Enlisted in the Navy during WWII, he became a communications officer who decoded

encrypted messages. At one point, he was assigned to go down into a hole in the stern of a bombed ship to supervise the recovery of 20 corpses. “Jesus, that was an awful experience,” he

recounted to _Time_ magazine in an unpublished interview. “They’d been down there 18 days by that time, and I want to tell you, that was a terrible job.” Wrote author Zehme, “He profoundly

came to understand the greater importance of inciting laughter as essential misdirection away from daily human fatigue and lonesome misery.”