Video: The Magician of 3,328 Midnights

Celebrating 20 years of "Heere 's Johnny "

From a Norfolk, Neb., high school yearbook, 1943: "To one of the finest comedians that has hit school. If you aren't killed in the war, you'll really make good."

The historical hedge is curious. "One of the finest ..." Is it possible that Norfolk produced some other talent that elected to hang around Main Street or stay down on the farm? Can it be that somewhere in the great Midwest there is a native-born comedian who opens a meeting of the Jaycees with seven minutes of stand-up comedy, then brings on the other members of the chamber to sit on a sofa and spin out their schemes and notions for promotion? Is there, somewhere, another Johnny Carson?

Not likely. He has eased America through 3,328 midnights on the Tonight show with wit, some surprises and shrewd, guarded irreverence. It should be clear by now, and from comparison with his legion of imitators and disciples, that he is unique—no longer, perhaps, in what he does, but for how well and how consistently he does it. When the Midwest brought forth Johnny Carson, it produced a bumper crop of one.

Carson will celebrate his 20th anniversary in customary fashion this Sunday, Oct. 3, with a two-hour special (NBC, 9-11 p.m. E.D.S.T.) that will feature the usual complement of comedy, conversation and glitz, along with video-taped glimpses at the family album. If a few things go wrong along the way, so much the better. Carson's comedy thrives on crisis. It is fueled by failure. Carson craves bad jokes. They are the rough sand he turns into pearls.

The nightly monologue has evolved into a sequence of snappy asides that is virtually fail-safe. If the jokes hit home, fine. Carson will smile and bob his head and smooth his tie while the audience laughs. If the joke flies wide or falls flat, the audience will groan and Carson will look wounded, then drop some self-deprecating aside that, like a slow fuse, will finally ignite the gag. Dick Cavett, who worked for Carson as a writer, recalls that Carson "made a point of bombing and making it funny. Sometimes you'd write strictly for that. You'd set up one baddie, just for the saver." A lot of comedians have done this, but none has raised the art to such rococo refinements as Carson, who can now paralyze an audience with one-liners that would get lesser comics boiled in oil.

"Johnny is the best," George Burns remarked recently. "You can't be on television 20 years without being a big talent. It's so intimate that if Johnny weren't so honest and sincere and funny, you'd know it. I wish he had married my sister Goldie." But with all honor to Goldie's memory, this does not address the full question of Carson's appeal. In a fleet and surprisingly touching documentary called Johnny Goes Home, aired last February and well worth repeating, Carson is seen revisiting many of his boyhood haunts, including his high school, and being greeted with a surprise birthday party during half time at a Friday-night football game. Carson wipes away some tears and says to his family, "You're blowing my image here. I'm cruel and aloof, don't you know that?"