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CNN Live At Daybreak

Look at the Carson Legacy

Aired May 22, 2002 - 06:55   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: If you're into late night talk shows, then you're probably familiar with Jay Leno and David Letterman and Craig Kilborn. But if you're really, really young, you probably don't remember the man who helped establish the standard for late night hosting, and that would be Johnny Carson.

Johnny hung it up 10 years ago. Our Anne McDermott looks at the Carson legacy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNE MCDERMOTT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We had been watching for decades when he decided to call it quits. Steve Martin spoke for all of us, but Johnny Carson went anyway.

JOHNNY CARSON, TALK SHOW HOST: I bid you a very heartfelt goodnight.

MCDERMOTT: And then he disappeared. Oh, not entirely. You can't say "no" to a Kennedy Center honor, for example; especially if Ted Koppel is introducing you.

TED KOPPEL, TALK SHOW HOST: Here's Johnny.

MCDERMOTT: But what else has he been up to? Well, playing poker with Carl Reiner, for one thing.

CARL REINER, WRITER, ACTOR, DIRECTOR: He's doing nothing different except not going to work. His life is still the same.

MCDERMOTT: A life that's private. But that didn't stop a magazine writer from tracking him down.

BILL ZEHME, "ESQUIRE" MAGAZINE: Here is a guy who has comforted us for 30 years, and boy we're in a world now that needs all the comfort it can get.

MCDERMOTT: He found that Carson wants his work to speak for itself, and it still speaks to young comments, like Craig Kilborn, who got some of Carson's old tapes to watch and found they stood the test of time.

CRAIG KILBORN, "THE LATE LATE SHOW": I would do that and watch him, and it got a little depressing because he's that Good. MCDERMOTT: Now this, this is an old home video of a Carson show lovingly preserved by the comic because it's his breakthrough.

ARGUS HAMILTON, COMEDIAN: And we're not as hip as Hollywood. We don't pretend to be. Our pedestrian lights used to flash "mosey" and "don't mosey."

MCDERMOTT: And Argus Hamilton, of L.A.'s Comedy Store, is still on the job today.

HAMILTON: Johnny Carson could actually make a comedian.

MCDERMOTT: "Yeah," says Hamilton, "because if you were seen on Carson, you were seen by everyone."

HAMILTON: Cars were honking their horns and waving at me saying, "Great show. Great last night. You were wonderful, Argus."

MCDERMOTT: Carson was too, surviving challenges over the years from Dick Cavett (ph), Joan Rivers, Pat Sajak, Dennis Miller and so many others. But he never fooled himself.

CARSON: It's just a television show. It's not, you know, the Dead Sea scrolls.

MCDERMOTT: True. But, boy, could he make us laugh. And 10 years later we remember that.

Anne McDermott, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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