And What a Reign It Was

Darrell Vickers and Andrew Nicholls, head writers for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, are sitting in a cluttered room at the end of a long, nondescript suite of offices at NBC's Burbank headquarters, getting ready to tackle El Moldo. It is noon on Wednesday, and they have already had their morning phone conversation with Carson about tonight's show (he has asked for a few more jokes about Ed McMahon's recent wedding and some on the Michelangelo computer virus), and they have finished a draft of the opening monologue. Theirs is one of six full-length monologues prepared by the show's eight staff writers (including two writing pairs) that Carson will get when he arrives at the office between 2 and 3 p.m. From this bounty, Carson will pick the best 15 or 20 gags, put them in order and deliver them later that day to a studio audience of 500 people and a TV audience of nearly 12 million.

But El Moldo awaits. A few days earlier, Carson had asked his writers to come up with a new bit for the hoary character, a fake psychic, who dubs himself the "master of mentalism." It's just one of several classic Carson routines that are being trotted out for a final appearance as his departure nears. Carnac the Magnificent, the turbaned answer-and-question man, showed up a few weeks ago for the last time. (Carson himself wrote more than half the gags.) Art Fern will introduce his final Tea Time movie in a bit scheduled for this week. There may even be a comeback for lovable old -- old -- Aunt Blabby. But Vickers and Nicholls, a pair of laid-back Canadians in their mid-30s who joined the Carson staff in 1986, barely remember El Moldo. Except for a one- night reprise in 1989, Carson hasn't done him since 1983. But there's one thing Nicholls does remember: "It's Ed's favorite spot."

Of such stuff is the end of TV eras made. It has been nine months since Johnny Carson became America's most famous lame duck by announcing that he would retire from the Tonight show this year, at the end of his 30th season. Now, as the long-awaited finale draws near, a show that has always depended for its appeal on the offhand, the spontaneous and the ephemeral is acquiring an air of great moment. Hollywood stars are clamoring to be on with Johnny for one last time. Elizabeth Taylor appeared last month for the first time ever, thanking Johnny for "30 years of brilliant entertainment." Regular Tonight visitors too seem less interested in plugging their new movie than in paying homage to the departing king. Tom Hanks settled himself next to Johnny a few nights back and observed, "It is still the most exciting moment in show business to walk out from that curtain and sit in this chair."

It will all end on Friday night, May 22, when Johnny will appear without guests and reminisce with a selection of clips from past shows -- "a collage," says executive producer Fred de Cordova, "of what the years have meant to Johnny."

Around the Tonight offices, the sentiment is starting to get thick. "Everyone in the country has been tied together by Johnny Carson," says co-executive producer Peter Lassally, who, along with De Cordova, will depart from the show when Carson does. "A part of Americana is leaving." Says bandleader Doc Severinsen, who started out in the trumpet section of the Tonight show orchestra in 1962: "In a way, it's agonizing. The ending is going on and on. The pain is being extended -- and there is pain."