Flies are pesky creatures, especially on television.
Former Vice President Mike Pence found that out the hard way, as the world watched one land on his head during a live televised debate in 2020. And who could forget the viral newscaster who braved a fly zooming into her mouth mid-broadcast? Even Walter White had to endure the creature flying around his meth lab.
Given the sheer number of hours he logged as host of The Tonight Show, it shouldn’t surprise that Johnny Carson would also have a televised run in with a fly. But unlike the encounters above, Carson’s was a savior, not a pest—a straight man bailing out the host of the nation’s most popular television program.
The fleeting moment came on Valentines Day, 1979.
Carson’s monologue that night seemed doomed almost from the start. “I will apologize for the sneaky way we got you in here tonight,” Carson said as he began his first joke. “It helped to hang that sign outside that said, ‘Gasoline. 50 cents a gallon.’” Only a few laughs. Too soon to joke about the Iranian Revolution leading to an oil crisis? Carson gives a sly glance to the audience; he knows he’s in trouble. Even through the camera, decades later, the vibes seem off.
“Look, I want you to be kind to me tonight,” he says. “One massacre on this date was enough.” Another few laughs. Carson looks like he’s just seen Al Capone in the flesh.
Comparing a Carson monologue to today’s work on late-night television is to see many differences in style and substance. But the audiences are different, too.
The writer Fran Lebowitz once said that contemporary audiences are too friendly. “Everything gets a standing ovation,” she said. “What is the audience applauding? Themselves. And where did they learn this? Oprah Winfrey.”
We’ll leave the blame game to Lebowitz. But the phenomenon she describes is certainly true on late-night television. And that’s too bad. Such friction—of not always pretending to be enamored with every bit of entertainment—can only make art better. Carson’s audiences were more discerning, both harsher and more appreciative. There were higher highs and lower lows, no cheering for the sake of it.
Carson himself, as one of the great spotters of talents, clearly understood this. It’s why when he was bombing, he couldn’t help but smile and laugh at himself. You can’t hide from the truth, especially when the monologue keeps pushes you further and further back against the wall.
After a few jokes about love that only partially land, Carson returns to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, noting that it was, in 1979, the 50th anniversary. “In remembrance of that date, NBC lined up all the members of its program department up against the wall today and machine gunned them,” Carson said.
Mostly crickets.
“Kind of an in-house joke,” Carson says. “And I think we should probably keep that in the house.”
The audience had no idea. At the time, Carson was growing ever more frustrated with the network, which, during the 1978-79 season, didn’t have a single program among Nielsen’s top ten-rated shows. They were getting crushed not just by their longtime rival, CBS, but by perennial last place finisher ABC, which had the top six highest-rated shows: Laverne & Shirley, Three’s Company, Mork & Mindy, Happy Days, Angie, and The Ropers.
Little did they (and the higher-ups at NBC) know that Carson himself was also making plans to leave the network. By April, he would inform NBC that he intended to break his contract, setting off a legal dispute that would ultimately end with Carson staying on with the network. He would also get more involved in network decisions, including, in 1982, producing a new show, Late Night with David Letterman.
But on this night, he was a man in limbo, in more ways than one. He pivots to a joke about Jerry Brown, then in his first stint as governor of California, and his then-girlfriend, singer Linda Ronstadt. As he starts the joke, you can tell that not even Johnny thinks this is going anywhere. Then comes his savior.
“A little Valentine’s Day poem …” he begins to say, before his eyes dart forward and stare down his nose. “There’s a fly buzzing around,” he says, his posture tightening, his eyes frantically following it about, staring at nothing—no high-definition cameras here, we must take him at his word for it. Were it not for the clear change in his body language, one might think Carson was engaging in a bit of improvisation, pivoting away from the script in a last-ditch effort to save the monologue.
“This monologue is starting to spoil,” Carson jokes, waving his hand around, trying to grab the fly. Ed McMahon bellows out a hearty laugh, and so too does the audience, genuinely. They begin to cheer for their man as he waves his hand around a few times in a final effort to shoo away the fly. “It’s turning bad here,” he adds.
Carson returns to the Brown-Ronstadt joke, which doesn’t work. The monologue continues, uneven and not too funny. And with help from the fly, Carson made clear that he knew that fact better than anyone. It was that honesty, that commitment to knowing the good from the bad, that kept him fresh, and kept audiences returning for more.
