Johnny Carson Returns: Antenna TV to Air Full ‘Tonight Show’ Episodes

Blake is on an amazing amount of episodes. He seems to be Johnny's most frequent guest.

 

My old man absolutely detested Blake for some reason, he probably was against the war. But when Blake brought the bird out, he always watched and laughed.

 

I think Johnny knew that Blake had a rough time growing up, and Blake had that James Dean look and speech. He wore a black leather jacket sometimes and Johnny the Little Rascals too. I think he was a sentimental favorite, plus I think a lot of people tuned in for him ... just to see what outrageous think Blake would say.

 

The Chairman of the Board is on tonight. He performs "I Write the Songs" (rendered here as "I SING the Songs.") Not exactly the Great American Songbook. He's in typical post-"retirement" mid-70s form, which is to say, nowhere near his peak, but still a steady concert draw at this stage of his career. Later, after mixing it up with Don Rickles, Frank performs the Rodgers & Hart standard "Where or When." Now that's more like it...

 

Frank mentioned that he most enjoyed performing at "saloons" as he called it (clubs). Did he mean that literally? Was he still playing small smokey clubs in the 70's? I thought by this point he was playing arenas and large rooms like that. Anyone know his touring habits from the period?

 

I took my family to see him in 1976. It was the same arena that rock bands played in. But the layout for his shoe was laid out differently. It was one of the highlights os my concert going life.

 

No "small smokey clubs," but what he meant was dinner theaters/nightclubs. During 1976 (the year of that Carson show), Sinatra had numerous multi-night engagements in venues such as Caesars Palace in Vegas, the Latin Casino near Philly, Harrah's in Lake Tahoe, the Sabre Room outside Chicago, and Westchester Premier Theater in Tarrytown NY.

There were also large stage shows and tours, of course, such as Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver, War Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo, and many others. One week after that TV appearance, he did a one-nighter at Miami's Jai-Alai Fronton.

 

I was surprised at how short the Rickles appearance was. It seems especially short when the show is in the 90 minute format. I was hoping to see a lot I had never seen before but highlights that have been shown previously included most of it. It was still fun to see it again.

 

I haven't rewatched this episode again yet, but I seem to remember that Rickles wasn't an official guest, but did one of his "walk ons"?

 

What Bob said. By the mid-80's, he began to further enjoy large venues though.

 

Latin Casino where I saw him would be small when compared to the Phila spectrum.
When he went into a saloon song the whole place shrunk. Unfortunately when I saw him, one song was that horrible rearrangement of Send in the Clowns. Costa may not have been perfect, but what he did for that song was right on.

 

Yup, that's right.

 

Tonight's episode was weird. During Teri Garr's rather awkward segment, the lighting went out- and they didn't reshoot it!
The back set went black!
Nowadays, they probably would have stopped and started over.
After the commercial break, things went back to normal.

 

Fun episode. Charles Nelson Reilly was really good on this one. I think it would have been hard to reshoot the Teri Garr segment and recapture her shyness at being interviewed. Hard to believe she became a mainstay on Letterman for many years until they had a falling out.

 

They had a falling out?

 

I don't think they reshot many things if at all. Plus, it didn't look like Johnny was really thrown by it. As usual, he made something out of nothing with it.

 

I'm looking up articles and I probably misspoke. I know she had a lot of health problems but she stopped appearing long before that. I figured she got tired of the way she was treated on the show. She did come back one last time in 2008 and it seemed awkward to me. But, maybe there was no issue there.

 

Speaking of Letterman, he is guest host coming up one night later this week.

 

On Wednesday Letterman is a guest; Johnny is hosting. It appears that Antenna TV is softening their stance against airing musical guests; in addition to Frank the other night, Olivia Newton-John performed - and Barry Manilow is slated to appear on Wednesday.

 

Hopefully they finally were able to get the rights. That's great news if it's true.

 

The listing said "host" David Letterman so I assumed he was guest host but I guess they were just giving his job description.

 

Hey guys, New to the forum.

Would anyone know or remember when Burt Reynolds appeared on the show and he got spooked about a phone in? Johnny cuts to add break then and after Burt doesn't come back?

Wondering if any footage exists?
Thanks

 

...and the rest of Frank's (and Rickles') appearance:

 

Thanks for posting @Bob F this was a real pleasure to see. Didn't get to catch it the other night..