The year was 1985. The best team in the National Football League was the Chicago Bears, who were just beginning their Super Bowl winning season under head coach Mike Ditka and quarterback Jim McMahon. The Soviets had just boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics. New Coke had just been introduced and immediately rejected by an entire country. Ronald Reagan was in the White House and nobody was changing the channel.
George Michael with ‘Careless Whisper’ and Madonna with ‘Like A Virgin’ dominated the music charts in 1985, just as the legendary Johnny Carson dominated late night television.
In 1985, Carson was in the midst — really towards the end — of possibly the most accomplished career in television that the industry has ever seen. He had turned the Tonight Show into the marquee television program in the United States. The best interviews, guests, and entertainment were always on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and the ratings showed it. Carson dominated his era, and would even dominate today with the same exact numbers.
Stephen Colbert, the current leader of late night ratings, pulls in about a third of the audience that Mr. Carson and Ed McMahon drew on an average night. At the time, nearly 4% of the nation was tuning in to Johnny Carson on a nightly basis. For a program to have that effect today, they would need a nightly audience of 14 million. Nobody is doing that. Nobody is close.
It could be said that nobody since Johnny Carson has had the cultural effect from the position of a talk show host. And on October 18th, 1985, the King of Late Night welcomed The Great One.
Gleason’s First, and Only, Appearance With Carson
Jackie Gleason had never appeared on The Tonight Show. Not once. Carson had been hosting for 23 years. He had put every major name in American entertainment on that couch. Somehow, in all that time, he had never gotten Gleason. When Carson introduced him that night, he said he couldn’t understand how it had taken this long.
Gleason sat down, lit a cigarette, and explained his absence with the kind of line only Gleason could deliver. He’d been waiting to see if the show would last.
Gleason is among the most beloved television actors of all time. His film work in the 1970s alongside Burt Reynolds in the Smokey and the Bandit series made him a household name to a generation that hadn’t grown up watching The Honeymooners. But it was his work in The Hustler opposite Paul Newman in 1961 — an Academy Award-nominated performance as pool shark Minnesota Fats — that cemented his place among the serious actors of his era. He made every trick shot himself.
Throughout Carson’s interview with Gleason, you get the feeling you are watching a fan interviewing his idol. Carson, who rarely ever appeared to be impressed by anyone, couldn’t hide his admiration. The respect was mutual and visible. Through Gleason’s stories, the audience gets a window into the vast differences between the early days of television and the industry it became — told by a man who was there for all of it.
Three years after that appearance, Gleason was gone.
He didn’t need to come back. He said everything the first time.
Watch Gleason’s full interview with Johnny Carson from the Tonight Show in 1985 in the clip below.
