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.
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.
(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."
(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.
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.
