Editor’s Note: Andrew Buss served as Bill Zehme’s chief editorial assistant/right-hand man from March 2016 until his death in March 2023. With Zehme’s final (and most personally treasured) book Carson The Magnificent hitting bookshelves Tuesday November 5, we asked Andrew to share what Carson—and late-night in general—meant to the late writer, and how he approached his long-gestating book in his final years.
One would be hard-pressed to find someone who felt more drawn to the world of late-night television than the author and journalist Bill Zehme. He revered the format in every way and had a profound admiration and respect for those who were able to do it—particularly those who did it well. Like so many others of his generation, that all started in his youth with one man: Johnny Carson.
Yes, of course, late-night TV existed pre-Carson, by way of Steve Allen and Jack Paar. Both men sat behind the desk at NBC’s Tonight show while Carson was busy making a name for himself as the host of the game show Who Do You Trust? But Carson wasn’t just another late-night host who took the reins from someone else. He came to embody what it meant to be a late-night host: a charming conversationalist with the effortless ease necessary to tuck us in at night—and to make us laugh while doing it. He became synonymous with what it meant to be a late-night host, a distinction that continues, even as we near two decades since his passing in January 2005. That’s just how good he was.
So if Johnny Carson was the ultimate late-night host, Bill Zehme was the ultimate Johnny Carson fan. In his early years, he would sit there—transfixed—hanging on every word that came out of Carson’s mouth. Watching Johnny weeknights at 10:30 PM Central Time became a near-nightly ritual for the young future journalist. Once he got into the business—working up the ranks at Vanity Fair, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and Esquire—Carson was always the white whale that he hoped to someday conquer. He began his quest in earnest in 1991, after Carson announced that he would be vacating The Tonight Show the following year. Zehme and Rolling Stone were determined to do the final interview with Carson as he was leaving his long-held post. Sadly, despite their best efforts, it would not come to pass. At least not yet.
By 2002, Zehme was a prolific author of books about Frank Sinatra and Andy Kaufman who had helped Regis Philbin and Jay Leno–who got the job of hosting The Tonight Show after Carson left–write their books. He had also profiled almost every major celebrity of the time, including Madonna, Warren Beatty, Sharon Stone, Eddie Murphy, Johnny Depp, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Barry Manilow, and Howard Stern. But still, no Johnny Carson.
As the ten year anniversary of Carson leaving The Tonight Show approached, Zehme found himself wondering what so many wondered at the time: What was the man who had once been TV’s most familiar presence doing since he dropped out of public sight? So he told Johnny Carson—did not ask him—that he would be writing a profile for Esquire, and of course, he wanted his involvement. To Zehme’s astonishment, the king of late night said yes. He got his interview. Zehme figured that his Midwest roots—he lived in Chicago almost all of his life—might have had something to do with it. He felt that small tidbit appealed to the Nebraska native.
The resulting profile, “Johnny Carson: The Man Who Retired,” ran in 2002. After its publication, Zehme received what was, for him, the greatest compliment he could ever receive: a hand-written letter from Johnny himself, in which Carson told him that his profile greatest thing he’d seen written about him in his 60 years in show business.
Not too long after Carson passed away in 2005 from complications of emphysema, Zehme signed a deal with Simon & Schuster to write a book on Carson. In the years that followed, his life—as well as the walls of his apartment and his multiple storage units—would be filled to the brim with Johnny. Zehme eventually realized just what kind of a mountain he was scaling. While Carson was known to millions on TV, off-screen he was an extraordinarily guarded man. Zehme spent the better part of eight years trying to crack the code that was Johnny Carson, following every lead that came his way. When that was done, he’d find another. On and on and on it went…
March of 2016 was the first time I crossed paths with Bill Zehme. I had been a longtime fan of his, having first read his biography of Andy Kaufman in high school, and was just entering the world of journalism myself. I was invited to have dinner with Zehme and Mike Thomas—whom Zehme had brought into his orbit in the 90’s, and with whom he’d worked on a variety of his projects including the biographies on Frank Sinatra and Andy Kaufman. The dinner was at the home of Kaufman’s sister, Carol, with her husband Rick and their son, Jason, also joining us. Within seconds of meeting Bill, I understood what it was that drew every celebrity he’d ever profiled—from David Letterman to Sharon Stone to Barry Manilow to Carson himself—to Bill, and why they found themselves letting down the guards that they’d spent their careers building up and trusting him.
He had this uncanny ability to make you feel like you were the most important person in the world. It was sheer enthusiasm for whomever he was talking to—be it Madonna, a local politician, Sigfried and Roy, or a notable Chicago drag queen. Each was greeted with the same level of respect and passion. It’s a trait that few people possess, especially in an industry where everyone can be so self-obsessed with their own career woes. With Bill, you couldn’t help but feel like there was a genuine interest in whatever you were talking about.
From 2016 until his death in 2023, I was Bill Zehme’s Chief Editorial Assistant. That is the title that he insisted that I give myself on my resume. The Bill Zehme I met in 2016, however, was at a different place in his life. That’s because in December 2013, he was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. What followed was a 118-day stay at the Presence Saint Joseph Hospital—from April 22nd until August 18th, 2014. His room there overlooked Lake Michigan, and he would later go on to joke, “I went in for the cancer and stayed for the view!” By the time I met him in 2016, he was only a few months into public re-emergence and was still trying to figure out what was next. He hadn’t worked on anything since 2013. Certainly not the Carson book.
Over the course of the next seven years, I got to learn directly from the master. Within the first few months of knowing him, his career was back on the rise. The first thing I did for him was transcribe conversations that he’d have with a veteran Chicago publicist for a private project that never materialized. Following that, he wound up at Chicago Magazine, where they gave him a backpage to talk to notable Chicagoians. I got to sit in for some of these interviews, and feel fortunate enough to have had a front row seat to a masterclass in interviewing notable figures, and how to make the people you’re talking with feel comfortable. During this period, I also got to watch Bill give some interviews for documentaries on the topics he knew best: late-night television, and of course, Johnny Carson.
“When is the Carson book coming out?” That was an oft-repeated query that Bill had endured for years. As his right-hand guy, I also heard it from time to time. Truth be told, there was never a concrete answer. At the end of the day, Bill was not going to crack the book back open until he felt that he could do it justice. He told me he needed to roughly get himself back to “at least 85 percent” before he got back into working on Carson. Sadly, he just never seemed to get to that place.
Throughout that time, however, he never stopped being a Johnny Carson devotee, immersing himself in “Johnnyland.” Carson still took up a large percentage of his office, with boxes upon boxes of materials dedicated to the late-night giant. When you’d go to his place, chances were high that Johnny Carson would be on his TV—thanks to AntennaTV airing classic Carson episodes every night. In an era when the late-night landscape was evolving in ways we hadn’t seen before, one could still take comfort in the reliability of a pro like Johnny Carson.
I knew that someday—somehow—Bill’s magnum opus to Carson would finally hit bookshelves, and that it would be celebrated just in the way that it always should’ve been. Of course, I hoped that Bill would be here to bask in the joy of this moment. The public finally being able to hold in their hands what one man toiled away at for so many years, staring at the road that lay ahead.
A large percentage of the book was already completed before Bill Zehme passed away on March 26th, 2023. For me, there was never a doubt that it would see the light of day. That Mike Thomas came on board to finish the book couldn’t be more perfect. When Bill mentioned the possibility of maybe having someone else help him finish the book—something that only came up in conversation once or twice —Mike’s name was always at the top of that list.
Mike took on the daunting task with ease, and utilized all of the resources Bill had kept on Johnny to ensure that the book was completed just as Bill would have wanted. Now the resulting book—Carson the Magnificent—is finally hitting bookstores on November 5th. I’ve had the opportunity to read it, and the nearly twenty-year journey was worth it. What we have before us brings us closer to knowing the man we all thought we knew for all those years, but of course, never actually did. At the end of the day, it is nothing short of a beautiful tribute to both Johnny Carson, and to my mentor, Bill Zehme.