KING OF THE NIGHT: The Life of Johnny Carson

by Laurence Leamer ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 20, 1989

The biggest, chilliest bio on the Carson bio shelf, by the author of the definitive Ingrid Bergman bio, As Time Goes By (1986). This may well stand as the most authoritative of the unauthorized Carson surveys until Carson himself writes his long-hinted-at autobiography. Among those works already written, Learner's is less intimate than some, scanting on the full range of Carson's philandering, and yet is the strongest, most deeply researched. The new revelations are few but tasty, including: first wife Jody's hard physical abuse by then hard-drinking Johnny (Jody is gagged by an alimony agreement from speaking about their marriage); Johnny's nine-year affair with production-assistant Mary Jane ""Emm-Jay"" Trokel throughout his long third marriage to Joanna Holland; Johnny's cheating of Joanna with a mere $22 million settlement when he was probably worth $100 million (even the $22M left Joanna permanently humiliated by gaga news reports of how she was bilking Johnny); suggestions that fourth wife Alex Mass engineered Johnny's icy breakup with his only friend, longtime money-manager Henry Bushkin, following which the vault door swung closed on his loneliness; Johnny's megalozombie demeanor at the big bash he threw on the Queen Mary after taping the 25th Anniversary of his stint on The Tonight Show; the ""injustices"" Johnny suffered when various staffers defected from or failed him; his longstanding, rich bile toward Joan Rivers after her shot at becoming a rival host on her own show; and the oceanic distances of his ties with his three sons. Carson's steel-walled inner man, a mirroring of the coldness cruelly visited upon him by his mother, is now at his most undentable and remains unmelted by his new, already troubled marriage. A weighing freighted with many poisonous moments, not pointedly destructive on Learner's part, but unlikely to lift Johnny to dance and jollity.

Pub Date: July 20, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1989

Categories: NONFICTION