Steve Allen on The Tonight Show
Since I am sometimes referred to as “the father of late night television,” the record on the point must be corrected. I invented neither nighttime and lateness nor TV comedy. By 1950 stations in many parts of the country were telecasting late-night fare, though mostly on a small-time, local basis. One was likely to see, on most stations, long forgotten b- and c-grade films for which television had provided a fresh market. Pat Weaver, NBC’s chief programmer in the early 1950s, first saw an opportunity for late-night variety entertainment. The network considered a number of budding comics and finally offered the assignment of hosting Broadway Open House (a forerunner of The Tonight Show) to Jerry Lester, a relatively unknown nightclub comedian possessed of an extroverted antic energy. Perhaps not entirely certain of Lester’s staying power, Weaver featured him only three nights a week, with the warmer Morey Amsterdam hosting the remaining two nights. Other members of the program’s cast were announcer Wayne Howell, orchestra leader Milton deLugg, dancer Ray Malone, and a young woman named Dagmar, a deadpan comedienne best known for an almost comically voluptuous figure. Because Amsterdam was a joke-specialist, Lester dominated the series which, in any event, had a relatively short life.
(Read Britannica’s biography of Steve Allen.)
Actually, NBC’s first choice as host of the show had been a young, clever unknown Los Angeles comic named Don “Creesh” Hornsby. During that primitive period, two kinds of comedians were often referred to as “natural for television.” Oddly enough, they were two contradictory types: the low-key, ultra-natural nonperformers (such as Dave Garroway, Arthur Godfrey, and Robert Q. Lewis), and the high-pressure, extroverted comics (such as Milton Berle, Jack Carter, and Jerry Lester). Hornsby fell between the two extremes but worked with tremendous energy.
In May 1950 Hornsby flew to New York to sign a contract with NBC. An item in The New York Times said:
The network thinks so highly of its new acquisition that it has sold him to [glass company] Anchor-Hocking as master of ceremonies for its nightly series of hour-long variety shows scheduled to start May 16 in the 11 p.m. to midnight time.
In a tragic twist of fate, Hornsby was stricken with polio on the day he was to have auditioned for his new assignment. He died two days later.
What explains the remarkable longevity and popularity of television talk shows? There is no one answer. The basic ingredients of a typical talk show are, obviously (1) the host and (2) his or her guests. There’s nothing particularly mysterious about the popularity of the latter factor—people, especially Americans, have long been fascinated by military leaders, film stars, singers, comedians, authors, musicians, sports heroes, political figures, and other celebrities. Indeed, were it not for this popular, if bizarre appetite for celebrity, massive publishing empires would go out of business overnight.
The reasons for the popularity of talk-show hosts, however, are more elusive. What is the magic factor that separates successful hosts from the rest of their colleagues? First, it apparently has nothing whatever to do with talent. Talent, as the word has traditionally been understood in the arts, refers to the ability to perform a creative task with excellence. There’s no such thing as talent in the abstract. When we employ the term we refer to acting, doing comedy, singing, dancing, or playing a musical instrument. But for hosting talk shows such abilities have no necessary connection at all.
This is not to say that talk-show hosts have no talent. Some do; most do not. What’s fascinating is that there have been success stories and failures in both categories. There have been cases where highly gifted entertainers proved to be poorly suited as talk-show hosts. Jerry Lewis, as funny a comedian as our culture has produced, was miscast interviewing other entertainers. The great Jackie Gleason, too, briefly attempted a talk-show formula, with no success. You can’t be more talented than was Sammy Davis, Jr., but he, too, proved inept at a talk-show assignment, as did another of my personal favorites, the gifted and lovable entertainer-dancer-actor-singer Donald O’Connor.
But if it’s not talent that accounts for success in the talk-show field, what is it? Well, until recently anyway, it seemed to involve having an easy-to-take personality, being generally soft-spoken rather than pushy, not noticeably eccentric, and not so socially dominating as to overshadow the guests.
A slightly naive quality seems to help a talk-show host succeed. It’s not that a literal boyishness or immaturity is required—or the eternally boyish Regis Philbin would have been more successful than Johnny Carson—but a freshness of outlook must be retained. An oversophisticated, jaded, bored talk-show host would not last long. The host, in a sense, represents the audience, and, like the audience, he must actually be—or pretend to be—entranced with his guests. Merv Griffin was excellent at retaining the “Gosh, really?” freshness of his responses, even after more than 20 years at the game.
Talk-show hosts have to be at least moderately articulate, though not much more so than the average disc jockey or afternoon game-show emcee. Having myself served early in my career as announcer and record-player, I do not intend to disparage those two worthy professions. Some of the nicest people I have ever met have been radio announcers. In fact, if we apply the old would-you-want-your-daughter-to-marry-one test, it could easily be argued that a good, sensible announcer is preferable to the average stand-up comedian.
Those talk-show hosts who have been most successful over the years—Jack Paar, Mike Douglas, Johnny Carson, Merv Griffn, your obedient servant, et al.—were not only trained in radio but also had the advantage of prior experience as entertainers, which is to say we were accustomed to working with audiences as well as with guests. And we had the ability to engage in easy relaxed banter with those who came to view our shows in the studio.
Another factor explaining the success of talk-show people is simply their nightly appearance rubbing shoulders with famous actors, singers, politicians, and other celebrities. TV talk-show hosts are like radio disc jockeys in this connection. While a few artistically talented individuals briefly spent time introducing recordings early in their careers, no one would otherwise dream of relating talent to the work of disc jockeys. A disc jockey, again, is simply a radio announcer; and a radio announcer is just someone with a pleasing voice, which may be interpreted as a winning personality by the audience. The major comedians of 1930s and ’40s radio—Jack Benny, Fred Allen, George Burns, Edgar Bergen, Eddie Cantor, Bob Hope, Red Skelton—all had as announcers genial gentlemen who themselves became famous simply because they appeared, week after week, with the gifted stars featured on their programs.
When I developed The Tonight Show, the original example of the genre, it was not a creative act of the traditional sort. The Tonight Show’s formula emerged out of a personal “workshop” process, discovering which entertainment forms were most effective for me and gradually constructing a new type of program based on those strengths. The low-key opening monologue, the jokes about the orchestra leader, the home-base chatter with the announcer sidekick, the kidding with the studio audience, the celebrity interviews—all of these were selected for personal convenience but in time came to seem the “natural” talk-show formula.
Inventing the talk program was, frankly, rather like inventing the paper towel. The result is useful, a source of enormous profits, and the world is somewhat better off for it. But it’s hardly to be compared with doing a successful weekly prime-time comedy series, painting an unforgettable portrait, composing a beautiful musical score, or discovering a cure for a crippling disease.
I assume that a million years ago there was a man sitting on a tree stump in some jungle or forest idly exchanging pleasantries with two men to his right, seated on a fallen log.
“You guys catch any fish this morning?” he probably said.
“Well,” one of his companions might have responded, “I caught a pretty big one, but it got away.”
And that, ladies and germs, is really all there is to a talk show.