Johnny Carson

Carson was born in Corning, Iowa, the second of three children of a power-company manager who moved the family through small Midwestern towns before they settled in Norfolk, Nebraska. He found a book of magic tricks at 12 and was charging 3 dollars a show as ''The Great Carsoni'' by 14, an early rehearsal of standing alone in front of strangers and controlling what they felt. The Navy took him in 1943, and he trained as an officer at Columbia and Millsaps College, reaching the battleship USS Pennsylvania the day Japan announced its surrender. At the University of Nebraska he compiled a thesis of taped radio comedy sketches, ''How to Write Comedy for Radio,'' and used the shortcut to graduate in 3 years.

He started in Omaha radio in 1950, hosting a morning show called The Squirrel's Nest, then moved to Los Angeles and worked as a writer and stand-in host for Red Skelton before landing his own game show, Who Do You Trust?, where he met his longtime sidekick Ed McMahon. NBC gave him The Tonight Show on October 1, 1962, despite his own reservations about the schedule. He kept it for 30 years, moved it from Rockefeller Plaza to Burbank in 1972, and by the mid-1970s was the highest-paid performer on American television, at roughly 4 million dollars a year. He stepped down on May 22, 1992, ending the run on his own terms and at a time of his own choosing, which is rarer in television than the 30 years were.

Offstage he was, by nearly every account including his colleagues', a difficult man to know. Dick Cavett said he felt sorry for Carson because he was so socially uncomfortable in rooms where he was not performing. He married 4 times — the second and third divorces cost him roughly 20 million dollars combined in settlements — and was arrested for drunk driving on Beverly Hills' La Cienega Boulevard in February 1982. The worst of it came in 1991, when his son Ricky, from his first marriage, died in a car accident while photographing the California coast — Carson dedicated part of his final broadcasts the following year to him without ever discussing the loss in public detail. The warmth that reached millions a night did not, by his own family's account, reliably reach the people closest to him.

He spent the 13 years after retirement almost entirely out of public view, occasionally faxing unsigned jokes to David Letterman's show for use in the monologue. His one real return to a stage came in May 1994, when he walked onto Letterman's set to a standing ovation and said nothing, sidelined by laryngitis on the one night everyone wanted to hear him talk. Emphysema caused the respiratory failure that killed him on January 23, 2005, in Los Angeles. The tributes since have mostly taken the form of successors — Leno, then Letterman, then a rotating cast of hosts, each measured publicly against a 30-year run nobody has matched, on a genre that no longer resembles the one he built.

Johnny Carson's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Squirrel's Nest television
  His first show, on WOW radio and television in Omaha 1950
• Who Do You Trust? television
  ABC game show where he met Ed McMahon 1957
• The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson television
  Hosted nightly for nearly 30 years, from October 1, 1962 1962
• Carson Productions company
  Formed to produce the show and other projects independent of NBC 1979

• October 23, 1925 aged 0 Born in Corning, Iowa
• 1937 aged ~12 Finds a book of magic tricks and starts performing as 'The Great Carsoni'
• 1943 aged ~18 Joins the U.S. Navy
• 1949 aged ~24 Graduates the University of Nebraska in 3 years
• 1950 aged ~25 Begins hosting The Squirrel's Nest on Omaha radio
• October 1, 1962 aged 36 Takes over as host of The Tonight Show
• 1991 aged ~66 His son Ricky dies in a car accident
• May 22, 1992 aged 66 Retires from The Tonight Show after nearly 30 years
• January 23, 2005 aged 79 Dies in Los Angeles of respiratory failure

• Frank Sinatra 1915–1998
  Crooner and actor whose voice and charisma made him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. frequent guest and friend
• Walter Cronkite 1916–2009
  CBS Evening News anchor known as the most trusted man in America during a pivotal era of broadcast journalism. network news contemporary
• Lucille Ball 1911–1989
  Comedic actress and producer whose I Love Lucy pioneered the sitcom format and changed television. television pioneer he followed
• Ronald Reagan 1911–2004
  40th president whose conservative domestic program and assertive Cold War strategy reshaped American politics. frequent target of his monologue