Johnny Carson Couldn’t Take His Eyes Off Her

>> You’ve got a nice face and a a lovely figure, and things are even going better for you now than they were a year ago, right? >> Yeah. A lot of things are happening. >> Yeah. >> Most guests would have said thank you and moved on. Christy had stories, the kind the magazines never printed. >> I went running in standing up straight and bam, I got this spiderweb right across my face and I went and start I was >> a good normal reaction.

[laughter] >> And I saw something in my hair over here, big and black, and I turned to the photographer said, “Ah, get it out. Get it out.” And the photographer went, “Ew.” >> She could laugh at herself. And on national television, that’s harder than it looks. Then she told Johnny how she’d spent a day off. >> You know, skydiving is like one of these things where you think, “Someday I’ll do it, you know, before I die.

” Then you get there and they say, “Well, today you’re either going to have the best six minutes of your life.” >> It is thrilling. >> Or Yeah. They told me you did it. >> You did. I did. It’s wonderful. >> Yeah. I kept thinking, “Well, if Johnny’s done it, I can DO IT.” NOBODY. >> SHE just made the unflapable host sound [music] like the timid one.

But the jump itself didn’t go to plan. >> Tell my boyfriend got out on this little teeny step while the plane is 3,000 ft up and you have to like push yourself out on a little bar >> stretch. >> Yes. And I started thinking, why am I going to jump out of this perfectly good airplane and I saw him doing it and he let go and suddenly I heard bam at the end [music] of the plane and I thought, “Oh my god, there goes my boyfriend bumping into the end of the plane.

” >> Christy didn’t just charm [music] him. She made him look like the adventurous one. The next guest brought out something quieter, and she wasn’t a stranger. Johnny had met her years before when nobody knew her name. It’s 1980 and Lonnie Anderson is one of the biggest stars on TV. The breakout star of W KRP in Cincinnati.

But Johnny doesn’t greet her like a celebrity. He looks at her like he’s trying to place her and then it clicks. The two of them go back further than the audience knows. >> We worked together before. >> In 1976, I was a slave girl and you were a fool. [laughter] >> That that sounds about about right. Back then, she was just starting out.

A small part in a sketch years before anyone knew her name. Plenty of hosts wouldn’t [music] have remembered. Johnny did. She had a gift for telling a story at her own expense. And the next one took the studio somewhere freezing. >> And everybody said, “Ju, look at you. You just look like you’re just wonderful. You’re just perfect.

Your hair didn’t move.” Well, it was frozen. >> The hairspray had frozen. >> Well, [laughter] you know, it it had melted on my hair and it was frozen. And I was there for about a half an hour and all of a sudden I was just like a drown rat. All this water came streaming. >> Yeah, I defrosted it. >> She could make herself the punchline and the laugh only got warmer.

But the next thing she talked about, she didn’t joke about it at all. That spring, Lonnie was about to play Jane Mansfield, a woman the public thought it understood. The film hadn’t aired yet, and her co-star was still mostly known as a bodybuilder, Arnold Schwarzenegger, two years before Conan made him a star.

and she wasn’t at all. She was quite bright and she knew exactly the role she was playing and she played it beautifully. >> You can see both sides. Now we’re going to see Jane the woman and Jane the person she put on to the public and then you do find out that it was uh just all a facade. >> Lonnie didn’t dazzle him.

She reminded him there was a real person behind the image. The next guest [music] didn’t turn his head with looks either. She beat him to the punchline. By the autumn of 1990, Katherine O’Hara was everywhere. She just played the mother in Home Alone, the movie about to become the biggest comedy of the year. But the Catherine who sat down with Johnny had nothing to do with the worried mom from the movie. Watch what Johnny does here.

He stops trying to steer the conversation and just lets her run. >> What when I was a kid, I used to I started like when I was 11 or 12, started doing them, but I would impersonate, you know, impersonators. So, and they were mostly men. So, all I did was men. Well, that’s >> when I was like 11 or 12.

I [laughter] >> James Mason. >> James Mason. >> James Mason. [laughter] James. >> He didn’t even try to keep up. He just sat back and enjoyed it like the rest of us. Then came the holiday story. A quiet beach that turned into a small disaster on a beach whose name should have been the warning. [music] >> The most obscure beaches.

We finally got to this one with nobody on it except some donkeys who kept corning us up, cornering us up against [laughter] the car. get the doggies away from me. And and uh the beach was called Shipwreck, so we should have known. >> Catherine didn’t beat Johnny with glamour. She beat him with timing. So quick that for once, he looked like the audience.

If you enjoy these old Carson moments, subscribe. There’s a new one every week. Speed was one way past him. Warmth was another. The next guest was an old friend, and Johnny lit up the second she stepped through that curtain. [music] By 1980, Diane Cannon wasn’t just a glamorous star anymore. She had an Oscar nomination for Heaven Can Wait and had started making films herself.

So, when she came back to Johnny’s couch, she wasn’t arriving as a stranger. She was returning [music] as an old friend. [applause] Come on, contain yourself. This is a lady. This is no fluy that walked off the street here. [laughter] >> Oh, you’re not going to start with that already. >> Oh, Johnny, I’m so glad to see you.

Thank you. I haven’t seen you for a long time. >> With Diane, [music] he wasn’t hosting at all. He was just glad an old friend was back. She had a new film coming with a co-star the whole country adored. The only one who’d needed convincing about him was her. >> I am such a fan of his. Not only of you, but his.

He’s great talent, isn’t he? >> Yeah, he’s I had never heard of him. Johnny >> Willie Nelson. >> I had never heard of him. >> She wasn’t about to pretend she knew something [music] she didn’t. So she went and found out for herself and then she made him an offer. >> So I said, “Well, if I put on my boots and sing country western, will you take off your boots and act with me?” And he did. And we we did.

And >> I hope the music we made was pretty. >> By now, Johnny had been surprised, charmed, [music] and outpaced. But the next guest did something none of the others had. She didn’t just get past his guard. [music] She made him forget he was running a show at all. Most of America first met Goldie Han as the giggling girl on Laughin.

Bright, bubbly, and easy to underestimate. What they didn’t always remember was that this giggly [music] girl had already won an Academy Award. By 1975, she was a genuine movie star. But the moment she bounced onto Johnny’s stage, she still played it like the rules didn’t quite apply to her.

And within seconds, a man who was never short of a comeback had nothing ready. He was just trying to keep up with her. She says, “Hey baby, come on in.” She says, “We are gonna get it on tonight.” I said, “Hey, I came here to dance. I’m here to dance. I make $25 a night and I’m, you know, where do I change?” >> He usually had a comeback for anything.

With Goldie, he just laughed [music] and stopped trying to land one. Then he asked her the same question he’d asked a hundred guests before. He should have known better than to expect a normal answer. >> Are you contemplating marriage again? I don’t mean mean this to sound like a fan magazine interview.

People always ask questions like this. >> Yeah. No, I’m not contemplating marriage. I don’t understand it. >> Well, none of us do. [applause] >> We don’t we don’t even know why salmon go upstream, but there they are. >> You get married because it’s there. >> Like mountain climbers say. >> For once, Johnny wasn’t running the show.

He was just happy to be along for it. And then it went somewhere no interview was ever meant to go. He asked her one simple question and got back an answer that made perfect sense only to Goldie, which is exactly why it worked. >> So you know what I’m talking about. >> Yes, we have a [laughter] >> Could you explain that to us? >> What? >> Could you explain that to us? >> Aluminum siding plays a great part in our [laughter] dreams. Aluminum siding.

>> Aluminum siding plays a great part. We We do strange things with aluminum siding. [laughter] >> Goldie didn’t follow the interview. She made Johnny give it up completely. And he looked happier for it than he had all night. And by the end, he came right out and said it, which for a man who kept almost everything to himself was about as open as Johnny ever got.

>> Would you come back again with us tonight? Yes, sir. >> Anytime you want. Really, cuz you’re a delight. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Every woman so far had earned that reaction over a whole conversation. And then came the one we promised at the start. [music] The woman who got it before the conversation even began.

Everyone else in this story arrived with a reputation. Robin Hilton arrived with none. No hit show, no Oscar, no magazine cover. a farm girl from Idaho unknown to everyone watching and to Johnny who’d never met her. But before she’d even walked out, he told the room this one was different.

Th this is a lady for sure. And I want you to treat her with dignity. And would you welcome Robin Hilton? [applause] [applause] And then she walked out and Johnny’s face gave the whole thing away before she’d answered a single question. Nobody in that studio knew it yet, but the unknown girl from Idaho [music] was 3 weeks away from a movie people would never stop quoting.

>> I decided when I was 3 years old to become an actress. I really, >> right, I decided I’d be a star. >> By her own account, the night made her nervous, but it never touched the one thing she was sure of. She’d known what she wanted since she [music] was three, and she said it without blinking. Nothing else about her quite added up.

The poise didn’t match the story she told about where she came from. >> My folks, um, >> your parents? >> Yes, my parents. >> My father is an experimental engineer. He was a farmer. >> Did you ever live on a farm? >> Oh, yes. I was raised on a farm. >> Really? >> Oh, yes. >> When you tell people that, they got to say, “Oh, come on.” Right.

Cuz you don’t look like the typical farm girl. >> No, I did. That’s uh Yes. I was raised on a farm. >> She barely pushed. That was the strange [music] part. Everyone leaned in anyway. And then she told Johnny how she landed that Mel Brooks part. And it wasn’t some long fight to get in the room. At least the way she told it.

She walked in and Mel made up his mind almost on the spot. He didn’t hear you read any lines or >> I read two lines. >> Two lines. >> Cool. What word? I don’t know whether I want to ask you what those lines were. like where is wardrobe and how are you Mel? Uh [clears throat] just made his decision like that. >> Right. It was very fast.

Before I knew it, I was up in wardrobe. >> Before you knew it, you’re up in wardrobe. >> Right. [laughter] >> That’s what made those old interviews feel different. The best moments seem to happen in the space between [music] the question and the answer. Just a few honest seconds from a man who almost never let them show.

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