October 1, 1962: James Meredith Enrolls & Johnny Carson Debuts

October 1, 1962, 60 years ago: James Meredith registers as a full-time student at the University of Mississippi. This is a very big deal, since he is the 1st black student at "Ole Miss."

Governor Ross Barnett had ordered the Mississippi National Guard to prevent this, and pro-segregation demonstrators were ready to beat or even kill Meredith if he tried.

Two days earlier, Ole Miss played the University of Kentucky at Memorial Stadium in Jackson, and won 14-0. Confederate flags were everywhere in the stands. At halftime, a gigantic Confederate flag was unveiled on the field. Fans chanted, "We want Ross!" Barnett went down to the field, took a microphone, and said, "I love Mississippi! I love her people! Our customs! I love and respect our heritage!" And he got a standing ovation.

President John F. Kennedy, on the insistence of his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, federalized the Guard, and ordered them instead to protect Meredith and allow him to enroll. The racists rioted, and threw things at the Guardsmen, who fired back. Two men were killed. But the law prohibiting racial discrimination in enrollment at State-sponsored schools was upheld.

Meredith, whose college credits from the all-black Jackson State University in Mississippi were carried over, received his degree from Ole Miss 10 months later.

The following Spring, the basketball team at Mississippi State University, who had won the Southeastern Conference Championship, was placed in the NCAA Tournament, to play Loyola University of Chicago, an integrated team. Barnett called the State Police, and told them to set up roadblocks to prevent the MSU Bulldogs from leaving the State to play that integrated team.

It didn't work: They snuck out. And lost the game. But won a moral victory. Loyola became the 1st team with more black than white starters to win the National Championship.

At the time, State law prohibited Mississippi's Governors from succeeding themselves, so Barnett had to sit out the 1963 election. He ran again in 1967, and finished a distant 4th in the Democratic Primary, the 1st gubernatorial election in the State following the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He never won another office, and died in 1987 -- absolutely unrepentant, unlike such other civil rights opponents as George Wallace of Alabama, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee.

Today, Meredith is 89, and has spent most of the 60 years since as a Republican. Ole Miss has honored him with a statue, and, like its rival Mississippi State, goes out of its way to recognize its role in civil rights, first as an opponent, then as a supporter.

Ole Miss still calls its teams the Rebels, but Confederate paraphernalia is no longer allowed on campus, and the "Colonel Reb" mascot has been retired.

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October 1, 1962  was also the day that Johnny Carson, not quite 37 years old, debuts as host of The Tonight Show on NBC, broadcasting live from NBC's studio at 30 Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan. The guests on his 1st show: Comedy legend Groucho Marx, 1920s music star Rudy Vallée, acting legend Joan Crawford, comedian (not yet film director) Mel Brooks and singer Tony Bennett.

Carson kept Ed McMahon as his announcer and sidekick for the entire length of the show. In 1966, he replaced Lyle "Skitch" Henderson as leader of the band, The NBC Orchestra, with trumpeter Carl "Doc" Severinsen, famed for his wild suits.

Doc and Johnny

In 1972, Carson took 2 big steps. He formed his own production company, so that he could preserve every show taped after that. Previously, NBC had taped over most of his old shows, due to the high cost of videotape. As a result, his 1st show has only been preserved on audio, and the Ed Ames tomahawk throw of April 27, 1965 is only on a black & white kinescope. Fortunately, the February 19, 1968 "Copper Clapper Caper" with Jack Webb has been saved on color videotape.

The other step was moving the show from New York to Los Angeles -- or, more specifically, to NBC's studio in what Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In had dubbed "Beautiful Downtown Burbank." It was a reflection of the fact that most of the big entertainers had established residence in the L.A. area, and that Hollywood, not Broadway, was now the center of the entertainment world. CBS' cancellation of The Ed Sullivan Show, broadcast from a studio on Broadway itself, the year before was the writing on the wall.

McMahon would introduce him as follows: "From Hollywood: The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. This is Ed McMahon along with Doc Severinsen and the NBC Orchestra, inviting to join Johnny and his guests... " And he would name the guests, and announce, "And now, ladies and gentlemen, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!" It was more drawn-out than later New York Yankees broadcaster John Sterling's "Theeee Yankees win!" And then the show's theme would play, composed by singer Paul Anka. Ed would usually yell, "Hi-yohhhhhhhh!" And the monologue would begin.

Ed and Johnny

The monologue usually ran about 7 minutes, and would begin with a few jokes about whatever was the top story of the day. Usually, the President of the United States, regardless of party or national popularity at the time, would come in for a couple of zingers, even if he hadn't done anything newsworthy that day. Occasionally, Johnny would start a joke by saying, "I've got good news and bad news," and Ed could be heard saying, "Uh-oh!"

If a string of jokes didn't work, Johnny might start tapdancing, and the Orchestra would play "Tea for Two," and the audience would cheer. Sometimes, it wasn't his fault. Thursday audiences, for some reason, weren't very responsive; but Friday audiences, anxious to start the weekend, were usually raucous. Johnny might say, "We've got a good crowd tonight. You should have seen last night's crowd," and then tell a joke about them.

I'm not sure, but Johnny -- or, rather, Ed -- may have invented "How (adjective) is/was (subject)?" jokes. My theory is that, once, Johnny mentioned the weather, saying, "It was so hot in L.A. today!" and Ed said, "How hot was it?" and the audience laughed. So Johnny had to make up a joke on the spot, without help from his writers and the cue cards placed at the bottom of the stage. Some time later, according to this theory, he did it again one night, and someone in the audience, remembering the previous time, yelled out, "How hot was it?"

Johnny was definitely doing it by early 1974. I've seen an episode of Match Game that aired on October 29, 1973, with host Gene Rayburn reading a clue, saying, "Bertha was so fat!" and before he could finish, panelist Bert Convy said, "How fat was she, Gene?" Before long, both shows were using it. But, barring further information, I can't be sure of who did it first.

Ed liked to do commercials, including for Budweiser beer (a product he enjoyed sampling offscreen) and Alpo dog food (which he, presumably, didn't). Johnny hated it, and eventually had his contract renegotiated so that he didn't have to. It was the final blow to sponsor power on TV: After Johnny, every talk-show host wanted that same exemption, and got it.

Often, before the first guest, Johnny would do a sketch, with such characters:

* Carnac the Magnificent: This was a ripoff of first Tonight Show host Steve Allen's Answer Man, with the added shtick of Carnac being a turbaned, caped "strange visitor from the East." Ed would hand him an envelope. He would put the envelope up to the turban. He would give the answer. He would tear the envelope open. And then he would read the question/punchline. Example: Answer: "Sis boom bah." Question: "Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes."

"The winners." Rip. "Who are the Dodgers playing tonight?"

* Art Fern: A ripoff of Jackie Gleason's character Reginald Van Gleason III, Fern who would announce today's "Tea Time Movie," then do a commercial for some whacked-out local business, then show a tangled mess of lines standing in for a map of Los Angeles, giving directions: "Take the L.A. Freeway to the San Diego Freeway to the Harbor Freeway, until you get to the Slauson Cutoff. Get out of your car, and cut off your Slauson!" The second time in the sketch, he would unfold the map to reveal a picture of a fork, and the audience would yell along with him: "Until you get to... the fork in the road!" Along with him would be his well-endowed, squeaky-voiced Matinee Lady, originally Carol Wayne. She died under mysterious circumstances in 1985, and was replaced by Teresa Ganzel.

Johnny and Teresa Ganzel

(Incidentally, in 1974, the musicians' union was on strike, and so Doc couldn't appear on the air. Nor could Tommy Newsom, the saxophonist who led the band when Ed was unavailable and Doc had to do the announcing. And Ed got sick during the strike. So Carol Wayne did the announcing for 2 days, making her the only woman ever to announce, "Heeeere's Johnny!")

* Aunt Blabby: Another ripoff, this time of Jonathan Winters' Maude Frickert, she was a cantankerous old woman dressed in Victorian clothing, the way women would have dressed when she was young.

(If you're thinking that these ripoffs were unfair, let the record show that Allen, Gleason and Winters were all favorite guests of Johnny's.)

* Floyd R. Turbo: An ignorant yokel wearing flannel hunting gear, responding to a local TV news editorial.

Sometimes, he would do unrelated sketches, with actors known as The Mighty Carson Art Players. Betty White would sometimes be involved. During the air-traffic controllers' strike of 1981, she played Jane to Johnny's Tarzan, telling him, "You're late!" and he said, "Not Tarzan's fault: Vine controllers strike!" And "Me Tarzan, King of Jungle!" was followed by Betty as Jane saying, "That wasn't exactly a royal performance you put on last night!" (I was 11. It took me years to get that joke.)

Johnny eventually cut back. On September 15, 1980, after the show had been an hour and a half, 11:30 PM to 1:00 AM, for most of its existence, going back to Steve Allen as host in 1954, it was cut to an hour, 11:30 to 12:30.

Although the show was faster-paced, it meant there would be fewer in-depth interviews. So there would be fewer newsmakers who weren't entertainers, fewer authors discussing their books, and fewer science figures, although astronomer Carl Sagan adapted well to the faster format. (Carson would sometimes impersonate Sagan, emphasizing the word "billions" the way he did.)

As the 1980s wore on, he was no longer taping on Mondays. Then, he wouldn't tape on Tuesdays, either. Twice a week, it was The Best of Carson airing at 11:30 PM. Well, what was NBC going to do, fire their biggest moneymaker? The show was making $60 million a year for NBC. (That's about $180 million in today's money.) It got to the point where, once, he introduced himself by saying, "My name is Johnny Carson. You all know me from The Best of Carson."

He liked to play tennis, and he liked to travel. This combined every Summer when he went to London for Wimbledon. In 1982, around the same time he did an impersonation of President Reagan in a re-working of Abbott & Costello's "Who's On First?" routine, he noted that Reagan had gone on vacation to his ranch outside Santa Barbara, and said, "Ronald Reagan spends more time in California than I do!"

(Reagan did once appear on the show, on January 3, 1975, just after his 2nd term as Governor of California. But while political candidates appeared on the show, no sitting President ever did while Carson was the host. Reagan had an inside man: Fred de Cordova, the show's director, had directed Reagan in the 1951 film Bedtime for Bonzo, about a man who adopts a chimpanzee.)

Whatever Johnny's personal tastes, he was willing to bring pretty much anybody on. Infamously, John Lennon and Paul McCartney of The Beatles (without George Harrison and Ringo Starr) appeared on May 14, 1968, but were very disappointed when baseball player-turned-NBC broadcaster Joe Garagiola, considerably squarer than Johnny, was the guest host. Eventually, all the individual Beatles except Lennon appeared as guests.

Musical guests ranged from classical to jazz to rock. Johnny was particularly fond of Bette Midler, and she became his last real guest, as his last show was basically a clip show.

Comedians knew that if Johnny liked you, you were going to make it. He helped make Joan Rivers a star, then his permanent guest-host and heir presumptive. But when Johnny wasn't ready to retire, Joan made a deal with Fox to do a competing show, and Johnny cut her off. From May 2, 1986, she did not appear on The Tonight Show again until February 17, 2014, shortly before her death, with Jimmy Fallon as host.

David Letterman and Jay Leno also had their 1st national TV appearances on Carson. Each guest-hosted for Johnny many times. Each thought he would succeed Johnny when he retired. Jay got the job. Dave was furious -- not with Johnny, but with Jay. Dave got a small measure of revenge: On the competing show he started on CBS in 1993, he got Johnny and Ed to appear, but Jay never got Johnny. (He did, however, get pre-Carson hosts Steve Allen and Jack Paar to come on.)

Also with their 1st national appearances on Carson: Steve Martin (a favorite of Johnny's, because they both started out as musicians), Jerry Seinfeld, Drew Carey and Robin Williams. Robin would be the last comedian on Johnny's version of the show, and they traded riffs on the 1992 Presidential election and the recent riot in Los Angeles.

Through immense change, from Kennedy to Clinton, from the Martin Luther King to Rodney King, from Sheriff Andy to Tim the Tool Man, from Lenny Bruce to Sam Kinison, from Elvis to Whitney, Carson was "The King of Late Night" for 30 years, winning 6 Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award, retiring on May 22, 1992.

Johnny Carson died in 2005. So did Skitch Henderson. Ed McMahon died in 2009. Groucho Marx and Joan Crawford both died in 1977. Rudy Vallée died in 1986. Fred de Cordova died in 2001. Tommy Newsom died in 2007. Joan Rivers and Robin Williams died in 2014. As of October 1, 2022, Doc Severinsen, Teresa Ganzel, Mel Brooks, Tony Bennett, Bette Midler, Jay Leno and David Letterman are still alive.

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October 1, 1962 was a Monday. It was the day of Game 1 of the National League Playoff, 11 years after the Giants and Dodgers did it in New York. Now, they do it in California, and Billy Pierce pitches a 3-hit shutout. He hardly needs to, as 2 homers by Willie Mays, and 1 each by Orlando Cepeda and Jim Davenport, give the San Francisco Giants an 8-0 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers at Candlestick Park.

May 1, 1972: Johnny Carson Marks Show Business' NY-LA Shift

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. 

Hail the Yankees as They Win in Baltimore

Cliché Alert: In baseball, you never know when you're going to see something you've never seen before.

Last night, in the middle game of a 3-game visiting series for the Yankees at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, I saw something I'd never seen before: A baseball game interrupted by the falling of hailstones.

The Yankees were trailing the Orioles 2-0 with 1 out in the bottom of the 5th. Had the Orioles gotten 2 more outs before this happened, it would have been an official game, and, with the Yankees' luck, it might have been called and the Orioles the official winners.

Anyway, the YES Network cameras picked up what looked, at first, like rain. Then broadcaster Michael Kay suggested that the rain looked "chunky." A moment later, he suggested it was actually hail, and he turned out to be right.

It reminded me of Johnny Carson's Carnac the Magnificent routine on The Tonight Show:

A: Hail, Caesar.

Q: What's that stuff coming out of the sky, Cleopatra?

The umpires halted play, and the Camden Yards grounds crew reacted as if it was rain, getting the mini-tarps onto the pitcher's mound and the home plate area very quickly, with the main tarp to follow.

Up to that point, it looked like it would be another game in which the Yankees simply didn't hit. The Aarons, Hicks and Judge, led off the game with singles, but the Yankees couldn't score. They loaded the bases in the 3rd, and got nothing out of it. Just before the delay, Hicks drew a 1-out walk. Once the delay began, I figured that was it: Any chance of this turning into a rally was gone.

Certainly, given Brian Cashman's idiotic pitching philosophy Aaron Boone's curious pitching predilections, Jameson Taillon would not still be pitching if the game were resumed. He gave up a 2-run home run to Cedric Mullins in the 3rd, but had otherwise pitched well.

The hail turned to rain within 5 minutes, and the delay lasted about 45 minutes. Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, the Yankees came back out smoking: The "rain" had been chunky, and the Yankees got funky.

Judge drew a walk, Anthony Rizzo singled Hicks home, and Giancarlo Stanton hit a double that scored Judge, although Rizzo was thrown out at the plate. (I thought he was out when it happened, but the plate umpire ruled him safe, the Orioles asked for a review, and the call was correctly reversed.) The next man up was Josh Donaldson, and he crushed one into the bleachers, making it 4-2 Yankees.

If Rizzo had stopped at 3rd on Stanton's double, it would have been 5-2. With these Yankees, the thought that such a mistake would come back to haunt us was in the front of the mind.

Taillon was sent out to pitch the bottom of the 5th. He got an out, then allowed a single. He got a 2nd out, then allowed a walk. That's when Boone took him out, denying him the chance to be the winning pitcher. JP Sears -- like CC Sabathia, John Patrick does not use periods for his initials -- in only his 2nd major league appearance, walked the bases loaded, before getting out of the inning without allowing a run.

The Yankees added a run in the 6th, and Sears, Michael King, and Clay Holmes took the worry about Rizzo's failure to score away. Yankees 5, Orioles 2. WP: Sears (1-0, his 1st major league win). SV: Holmes (1). LP: Travis Lakins (0-1).

The series concludes this afternoon, with the first pitch scheduled for 1:05. Nestor Cortes is listed as the Yankees' starter, and Bruce Zimmerman for Baltimore. Happy Easter.