May 1, 1972, 50 years ago: For the 1st time, at 11:30 PM Eastern Time on NBC, this announcement is made: "From Hollywood: The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. This is Ed McMahon along with Doc Severinsen and the NBC Orchestra, inviting you to join Johnny and his guests... "
In this case, the guests were, in order: Comedian Bob Newhart, whose sitcom, The Bob Newhart Show, would debut on CBS the following September 16; Cal Worthington, the biggest car dealer in Southern California, whose persona and TV commercials would become the target of many jokes in Carson's monologue over the next 20 years; Darlene Conley, an actress best known for her soap opera roles; Don Rickles, one of the top comedians of the era; Nancy Reagan, then the First Lady of California, as her husband Ronald was then Governor, and both were former actors; and actress Shelley Winters, then filming The Poseidon Adventure. (Newhart turned out to be the last survivor.)
McMahon, Carson's announcer and sidekick since he became host of The Tonight Show in 1962, said, "From Hollywood," but it wasn't quite true. Hollywood is a neighborhood of the City of Los Angeles. But, at the time, most of the TV shows produced by NBC were actually taped, or filmed, in the adjoining city of Burbank.
This led to jokes about "Beautiful Downtown Burbank" on the variety show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" from 1968 to 1973, and Carson picked up on it, poking fun at "Burbank's legendary Restaurant Row," which included "Vinnie Abruzze's Little Touch of Newark." (Being from Newark, my parents took offense at this, but they still watched Johnny.)
For most of the 20th Century, New York, particularly Midtown Manhattan, had been the center of the American entertainment industry. The musical theater industry, based on Broadway (the street giving the industry its name, much as "Hollywood" would come to mean the film industry as a whole), led to Midtown becoming the center of the songwriting world. The radio networks, and the TV networks they founded, operated out of there, because that's where the writers, singers and actors were.
After World War II, television boomed, and its writers and producers filmed most of their shows in New York. But the desire to film outdoors, and the corresponding need to have good weather, made filming in New York problematic. By the 1950s, many TV shows were being made in Los Angeles, even if they were said to take place in New York. This is still the case today: There are some shows that do New York location shots, but do their main filming in L.A.
TV variety shows tended to be done in New York, including at NBC's studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza at Rockefeller Center. The Tonight Show had begun in 1954, hosted by Steve Allen, at the Hudson Theatre at 139 West 44th Street, just off Times Square and the actual Broadway. Jack Paar became the host in 1957. When Carson took over in 1962, production was moved to the NBC studios at "30 Rock."
And there they remained for 10 years. And variety shows like The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS, and talk shows like The Tonight Show on NBC, would have Broadway stars on their show, doing scenes from their plays, whether dramatic scenes, comedic scenes, or songs.
But in the 1950s, record companies began realizing that recording soundtracks to films and TV shows would be easier if the records were made where the shows and films were made. So record companies began moving west. The Capitol Records Tower opened in 1956. By the 1960s, nearly every recording company had a Los Angeles-area studio, including the 3 major networks: NBC through RCA Victor, CBS through Columbia Records, and ABC through ABC-Paramount. (Paramount Pictures had nothing to do with it.)
Ed Sullivan had gotten his start as the Broadway columnist for the New York Daily News, and he loved bringing Broadway stars onto his show. He was always mixing up names, much like baseball manager Casey Stengel. But as the 1960s wore on, it was happening more often. Finally, CBS recognized that he was in cognitive decline, and The Ed Sullivan Show was canceled in 1971, after 23 years.
Carson saw the writing on the wall, and realized that Broadway was no longer the center of the entertainment world, Hollywood was. So he moved lock, stock and Carnac the Magnificent, and headed west. He remained there until he retired in 1992, still "the King of Late Night."
The move to Burbank came with another big change for Carson. Most of his shows that had been taped in New York had already been lost, due to the high cost of videotape: Some of the master copies had simply been taped over. He formed Carson Productions, so that every Tonight Show he hosted from 1972 to 1992 would be preserved.
Carson's successor as Tonight Show host was Jay Leno. While he did most of the tapings in Burbank, he would take it elsewhere, as befitting his already-long lifestyle as a traveling comedian. He would do a week in Las Vegas, a week in Chicago, a week in Washington to mine material from the federal government, and, occasionally, back at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
In 1994, he went back to New York for the first time. Jack Paar, who had been a guest of Carson's only twice, in 1986 and 1987 (and once with Joe Garagiola as guest host in 1968), was a guest of Leno's. Before sitting down in the chair closest to Leno's desk, Jack told Jay, "Mrs. Roosevelt sat in this chair. John F. Kennedy sat in this chair. Martin Luther King sat in this chair. Never let Madonna sit in this chair."
The next night, Madonna was a guest on the show. I hope Jay at least put her in a different chair.
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