Those intrigued by Billy Crystal’s trip down memory lane at Sunday night’s Emmy Awards can now take the journey for themselves.
While presenting the award for Outstanding Talk Series, Crystal noted that the category is “a very special one to me, because I realized the other day it’s almost 50 years since I went on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson for the very first time.”
Remembering it as an “amazing experience,” Crystal described the moments before Carson introduced him. “I’m standing behind the curtain. I’m so nervous. My heart was pounding. I was feeling like a bull rider in the rodeo before they open the gate, praying if I can just stay on my monologue for five minutes without being thrown off, that I’d be fine.”
Crystal went on to recount how a stage manager told him he’d get one of two signals when he finished his standup act: one to take a bow and leave, the other to take a seat on the couch to chat with Carson.
To Crystal, those two possibilities meant two very different outcomes for his comedy career. “What I heard was: ‘If I point to the desk, you sit next to Johnny and maybe you’ll have a career,’” he explained. While not getting such a signal meant “you go back to your job at Radio Shack.”
Thanks to the good folks at Carson Entertainment, the entirety of Crystal’s January 22, 1976 Tonight Show debut is available for online viewing. In the clip, Carson introduces the comedian—then known as Bill Crystal—as “a new young performer from New York.”
“What Bill does is not particularly easy to describe,” Carson says in the clip. “I admire new young talent that takes a little bit different direction.”
Following the comic’s six-minute routine, Crystal indeed gets the nod to join Johnny at the desk. “I hope you come back with us some night,” Carson tells him before the break.
This isn’t the only glimpse of Crystal’s origins that viewers will see this year. His Tonight Show debut came just three months before he made his first appearance on Saturday Night Live, but he was initially slated to be a part of the sketch show’s October 1975 series premiere. His appearance was cut for time after dress rehearsal, which plays out as a plot point in the Jason Reitman’s upcoming SNL biopic Saturday Night. Actor Nicholas Podany portrays Crystal.
