Johnny Carson

If you are one of those millions of people who believe that the Johnny Carson you've watched on TV was representative of the real man, you may need to read this book.Bushkin lived within Carson's life as friend, protector, brother, fixer, financial advisor, business partner, legal consultant, and most of all personal attorney. This man spent an impressive number of years on call to a client who demanded time, and service24/7, 365 days a year!Buskin was there though the Tonight Show's last years in New York and its huge run of success in Burbank throughout the 70s and 80s.This is not a bio, this is the backstory that Bushkin experienced together with, and in the service of, Johnny Carson during those successful years. Bushkin does well in making his case that Carsons personality defects were the result of uneven parenting (he had a cold, dominant mother who withheld any approval).Carson is legendary for being cold, moody, and at times vicious.During Buskin's years he saw Carson live the high life of the middle aged superstar: smoking ( four packs a day), drinking to excess, affairs, cars, money, homes, parties, hobnobbing among the stars, the divorces, the bad and the brilliant business deals.Johnny Carson was a cold, empty, alienated, sometimes vindictive, and often angry man. This was the life he created and chose to live. With Bushkins help much of the bad deals of his past were cleared up, and others made Carson wearily to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.The book is often painful to read. It also deals much with Carson's business (this is authored by his long time lawyer, after all). It also has information about the stories we've all heard about for so many years: The Wayne Newton affair, Joan Rivers, what really caused Johnnys divorces etc.This book may be the only one of its kind to be ever written about such a private man.

Most everyone has already covered on why this book was good. Bushkin was Carson's lawyer and close confidant for about 15 years and saw Carson in his prime as The Tonight Show host. One thing this book really shows is how different a lifestyle someone like Carson has from the normal everyday person. Just something I could never imagine and not sure would completely want either. With Carson's riches came trouble mostly of his doing. With his many affairs that eventually brought down three marriages. Bushkin also vividly points out that his divorce from his third wife Joanna brought the most change to Carson. He became more bitter and much less trusting of people than before and he wasn't very trusting before that either. Bushkin also shows how much Carson's mother made him the way he was. She could never compliment him or show gratitude in the many gifts he gave her. Carson was always trying to please her but never could. That affected his off stage personality very much. Like many entertainers with great fame Johnny could be very good on air but when it came to dealing with people off the air it was usually a different story. If you thoughtyou knew Johnny just by watching his show then you should read this book. Like most people they have two sides to them.Also Bushkin should be commended for being very upfront about his own short comings. By being Carson's close confidant and being at his bekon call for many years it ruined his marriage. Bushkin had affairs with many women too and paid the consequences as time went along. Most authors of books like this won't admit that but Bushkin was very forthcoming.

Perhaps the saddest Hollywood bio in recent memory, Henry Bushkin's "Johnny Carson" paints a vivid picture of a kind of genius savant. Johnny was a brilliant live broadcaster. He was not much good at anything else. Bushkin was Carson's personal attorney and business advisor in the 1970s and 80s and saw every private wart there was to see. With a thoroughness that makes you wonder whatever happened to attorney-client privilege, Bushkin spills everything, and for the reader the cringes outnumber the laughs.We have heard for years that Carson was aloof, demanding, and harsh -- but never read proof like this. As his fame and power grew so did his ego, and his suspicion of everyone around him, from NBC, to friends and family, and eventually Bushkin himself.Carson nursed a terrifying, irrational hair-trigger temper and numberless grudges. It is difficult to square our memories of the genial, gracious late-night star who chatted up tourists playing "Stump the Band" with Bushkin's portrait of the compulsive, drunken womanizer who nearly got himself rubbed out for trying to take a Mob figure's girl to bed. Or the lunatic egomaniac who required a personal apology from President Reagan after his equally out-of-balance wife Joanna dissolved into hysterics over the location of her seat at Reagan's inaugural celebration."He's insane," Bushkin says he muttered to a companion after a Carson outburst ruined a vacation on a luxury yacht in the Mediterranean, and as you read Bushkin's account you will come to think so too. He forces you to reappraise Johnny even if you revered his work on TV.There's a searing view of Carson suffering at the hands of his cruel, critical Midwestern mother -- her refusal to express love or approval explains a lot of his pain and relationship failures. But Carson made things worse with his addictions to alcohol, tobacco, and especially beautiful women. He was married four times but Bushkin shows he had no interest in fidelity; he seems to have acquired wives the way most people buy cars or refrigerators -- as necessary appliances. Bushkin names plenty of Other Women, from Oscar winners to Vegas showgirls.For all the juicy star gossip here there is quite a lot missing. Not a word about Carson's comedic technique, the mannerisms he stole from Jack Benny and Fred Allen, or the day-to-day workings of the little universe he controlled, "The Tonight Show." Nothing about the strangest video document of Carson, the 1982 NBC special "Johnny Goes Home," which followed him back to Nebraska and laid the man bare -- weird and counterintuitive for so private a man. (He dedicated it, no doubt futilely, to his mother and father.) Numbing detail about certain financial deals gone wrong, but only a few breezy sentences about the one everyone wants to hear about -- Johnny's investment in the ill-fated DeLorean car company.Carson not only couldn't pick winning investments, he had no gut for what worked in the entertainment world outside "The Tonight Show" bubble, and no interest in learning. His Carson Productions produced tons of TV duds and Carson hated its one unqualified hit, the movie "The Big Chill." Johnny eventually shut down his production company, like a lot of his ventures, because he couldn't be bothered and hated doing business. Despite his professed disinterest in money, Bushkin's management skills meant he left an estate of $450 million at death.But by Carson's passing in 2005 Bushkin was, of course, long gone from the king's court. Carson eventually dismissed almost everybody in anger; Bushkin should have seen it coming. In their 18 years together Bushkin rose from meek sycophant to Hollywood power in his own right, and Carson liked sycophants. He mimicked too many of Carson's self-destructive tendencies, divorcing his wife to gad about the south of France with Johnny with stars like Joyce DeWitt or Mary Hart on his arm, billing everything back to NBC. (He seems remorseful now, though not about the millions Johnny put in his pocket.)Fascinating and highly readable, "Johnny Carson" is not just a show business memoir but a Shakespearean tragedy: a Boswellian view of a tragic hero of our culture, a genius beloved by millions who made himself unlovable. It will make you reconsider not only Carson but many a star you think you know, especially those who "wear well," as the saying goes, in TV. My goodness, the price that is paid for keeping the show going -- by them and those around them.

Really interesting portrait of a complex late night genius. The man is a back of contradictions and certainly could have been a better father. Maybe that is because the American public were in a way his children, he cared about them and spent most of his adult life trying to make them happy.

Fascinating perspective on the Chat Show icon by the guy who acted as Johnny Carson's lawyer for many years. Came across to me as a reasonably truthful account by a highly ambitious intelligent individual. Being human, his greed and self-interest eventually got the better of him and poisoned his relationship with Carson, who like millions of others, I greatly admired. I visited the Tonight Show many times and had business dealings with the late Mike Weinblatt (mentioned in the book) when he was President of NBC Entertainment. So brought back some good memories.

Excellent, fascinating stuff

Warts and warmth. A gripping account!

Great read - some very detailed insights in to the workings, perhaps better to say creation,of Johnny and his time through the Tonight Show that involved his Lawyer / Confidante / bestfriend, writer of the book, Henry Bushkin.While it would be easy to pass most of the writing off to Bushkin pushing an agenda that benefitsonly himself, i think / believe to his credit that that was not the case in most of the book.I found it interesting, and once picked up and started, unable to put down.I am a huge admirer of Johnny, and like to read anything that is about him, and whether goodbad or indifferent, it does not, nor ever has, changed my feelings or opinion's of the man.He will remain as 1 of my 2 all time favorite personality's / entertainer's / people, of all time.( the other being Paul Newman - a real, modern day American hero in every regard of the word )What is interesting to know, from watching Johnny every night for decade's, is that when he made thosejoke's in his monologue about "Bombastic Bushkin", it was indeed a real person, and actually his closestpersonal friend and manager for so many years, before, as most relationships did, it went sour.