Nearly every moment on modern late-night television is meticulously planned and fast-paced. There’s far too much competing for our attention to allow for much of a lull. Which is part of what makes the latest stop in our trusty late-night DeLorean—at The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on the night of December 20, 1979—such a time capsule-worthy moment.
The show had a strong lineup that night, including one guest who would later become a late-night legend himself, but what stands out most looking back at the episode today are the three segments following Carson’s monologue (prime late night real estate if there ever was any) that feature nothing more than the host, his sidekick Ed McMahon, and a table full of new products.
By then it had become ritual for Carson and McMahon to review some of the past year’s more unusual new products on the show together sometime in December, ostensibly to give viewers some holiday gift ideas.
Aside from a few jokes that haven’t aged particularly well, there’s nothing outwardly remarkable about the 1979 installment, which sails by on the relationship viewers had with Carson and McMahon (and them with each other). Still, taken as a whole, it’s a triumph of comedic minimalism.
Nothing beyond each product’s name, price, and manufacturer is scripted. At various moments, Carson voices playful confusion, unable to locate a toy on the table or baffled by what he reads on the index card that accompanies each item. Occasionally he’ll ask a producer, stationed out of view on the other side of the camera, for assistance and she calls back with instructions.
McMahon famously said that Carson was more comfortable in front of twenty-million people than he was twenty. Recall a moment in the portrait of Carson written by his longtime attorney, Henry Bushkin. The two are at a party of Hollywood A-listers, with Carson as the most anticipated guest. After some obligatory mingling, Carson retreats to a small corner, where he pulls out coins and cards and begins to perform the magic tricks he honed as a youth: his comfort zone.
Magic is about time. And, in the case of coin and card magic, the synchronicity between hand and mouth, talking with both in order to produce the intended effect for the audience, to hold their attention and do with it whatever the performer pleases. The same is true here, where Johnny handles the items for maximum comedic effect, playing with his audience’s expectations.
He begins with the toys. After going through a few of the year’s new dolls, he picks up a Green alien-looking figure from Mattel, called “Suckerman.” Carson can barely get the name out before he and McMahon start laughing. The figure, which now fetches a pretty penny on eBay, is covered in suction cups. It’s too easy.
Carson begins to manhandle the doll, trying to get it to stick to his hands. But then he pivots to a more elegant holding. He grabs Suckerman from the head and allows his lanky body to fully drape towards the floor. He begins to pinch and feel each of the suckers, looking down at the batch of dolls he has just shown. “I suppose you wet these,” he says, placing his full hand up against the figure, “and Suckerman will stick to Barbie or any of these other dolls.”
It gets a laugh, but Johnny is better than that. Just as he seems ready to move on to the next item, he pivots back to Suckerman. He gives the index card another look and notices something.
“That’s by Mattel. They get seven dollars and fifty cents,” Johnny says.
“For that!?” McMahon exclaims with an incredulous chuckle.
“Don’t say it that way!” Carson replies. But he knows exactly what he’s doing: time to pick on Mattel and poor Suckerman. You can see the boyish mischief in his eyes. Carson, able to pivot into the straight man role more seamlessly than any other, has just teed up a few good lines for his partner.
“Well worth it!” McMahon facetiously declares.
“Seven dollars and fifty cents,” Carson repeats.
“That’s about fifty cents a sucker,” McMahon says without missing a beat, to the delight of the audience and Carson, who cracks a smile knowing he has, yet again, triumphed.
“That make you the suckee!” he replies.
After a commercial break, Carson and McMahon return with a set of more adult-oriented products, including an automated arm that pours a shot of liquor, a miniature electric chair, and an olive pitter. One of the segment’s best moments comes when the pair try to figure out how to work a mechanical, supposedly humane mouse trap: a clear box that traps the mouse until the homeowner decides what to do next. Everything about what follows has the feel of a public access television show. This not an orchestrated bit, just the cast and crew of The Tonight Show, in real time, trying to figure out what lies before them. And Johnny, this time, opts to shock, rather than delight his audience.
Johnny handles the contraption with care, noting that he was told not to move it too much. “How’s that, Bob?” he asks longtime show director, Bobby Quinn, who was with Carson from 1968 until the end.
“That’s good,” Quinn replies over the PA on this night in 1979. Carson handles the machine, which looks like a child’s science fair project, as if he were early man discovering fire. The unpolished nature of the segment gives the bit a cozy feel, as if we are there on Christmas morning opening presents with the Tonight Show cast and crew.
That feeling intensifies as Carson struggles to figure out how the machine works. He calls out for assistance and the disembodied producer’s voice replies yet again. This time Carson asks her to join them on stage. Out walks Marcy Vosburgh, who helps Johnny get the contraption started. No commercial break, no editing in post to try and make the segment more “smooth.”
Vosburgh, who went on to become a successful TV writer, working on television shows like The Jeffersons and Modern Family, gets the mechanical trap doors working. The audience and Ed cheer her on, in no rush to continue. Everyone seems to understand that the beauty of the segment is not the items themselves, but how Carson reacts to them, and how McMahon, in turn, reacts to Carson. Anticipation builds.
Carson begins to wind up a toy mouse to demonstrate the trapdoor. “So the mouse comes in there,” he says, as the mechanical creature begins to wheel into the trap, only to immediately stop once it enters, thus not triggering the door. “And says, ‘Hey this looks like a trap.’” Big laughs.
Carson tries again, this time successfully. Now, to set the scene: “You come home at night and see the mouse there,” he says. Next, the big reveal: “And this is the gas,” he says, pressing down on a villainous spray can that releases a fog of chemicals into the chamber. The audience and McMahon groan. “That’s terrible,” McMahon says, “Terrible.” The groans turn into boos. Carson loves it. He begins to smirk and shrugs, playing into the evil role into which he has cast himself. “I don’t understand this crowd,” he says with a wink. “Suppose I said a rat?” The crowd cheers. It never takes much for him to win them back.
Carson and McMahon take one more commercial break and return with an additional batch of products, including several worth thousands of dollars. “These are kind of crazy,” Carson says.
He goes to one box and pulls out a mink teddy bear with a price tag of $600. “Feel that,” Johnny says, gently handing the bear to McMahon, who immediately begins to cuddle the teddy like a big Papa Bear. “Awwww,” he says.
But Carson soon wants in on the fun. They begin to fight over the bear, Carson trying to pull it from McMahon’s hands. “Come on,” Carson says, pretending to bite his nails. “You had the hat on,” McMahon responds, referring to a silly hat with retractable ears that Carson Johnny had played with at the beginning of the segment. “You held it last year! Give me the teddy bear,” Carson replies. “Big man.” What would Christmas day be without a fight over toys?
Making this episode extra special is that a third, even younger brother waits out in the wings. Following the toy bit, Johnny interviews Bruce Dern. But then out walks thirty-two-year-old David Letterman, who, just over a year prior, on November 24, 1978, had made his first appearance on The Tonight Show, quickly becoming one of the program’s favorite guest hosts. Carson’s new product segments are exactly the kind of bit that Letterman himself would come to elevate, offering his own more modern spin on the exact premise. (For more Christmas fun, see this segment from 2009, where Letteman crashes a motorized cupcake into a Christmas tree on set.)
It’s during such gags where one so clearly sees why Letterman was, if not the actual successor to Carson, at least the spiritual one. On the December 1979 episode, Letterman walks out, and before even fully sitting down, proclaims:
“I like toys. This is a great time of year. You know my favorite kind of toy?”
“What is your favorite kind of toy?” Carson asks, adding, “You know, you might have said hello David before you get into stuff.”
“Ronco,” he says, the infomercial company. “They have the new electric showcap, stuff like that.”
A deadpan, subtle dig. And Carson loves it.
