George Carlin's 1st Appearance On The Tonight Show w/ Mort Sahl

1962. NBC was trying to find a replacement for Jack Paar, and considered Mort Sahl, but the job went to Johnny Carson unfortunately. This was actually the first time Carlin was on Network TV

 

During the days with Jack Burns, George did Mort and Jack did Lenny Bruce. Exact same line.

 

This?

 

Darn, back when his list was only 3 dirty words you can't say on television......funny to see him in a suit and tie clean shaven.. another 10 years to where we get the real George

 

Ever hear this album released a few months earlier? It's pretty edgy.

 

I have people question whether the Burns/Carlin album was actually released at the time. When George talks about it he says they "recorded" an album within weeks in LA. I have thought perhaps 67/68 when George was solo and Jack was with Avery Schreiber and both had an actual rep. I know I never saw it until the 70s, and ERA had a crummy rep.

 

The album was released a short time before that video.... Carlin just went solo, and Mort helped him get on TV.

 

Unfortunately? Johnny Carson is at least known outside the U.S. where The Tonight Show means very little (it didn't even air here until Fallon came along). Who is Mort Sahl? is all I can say.

 

I like your benny hill quote. I also like his quote " do unto others, then run."

Who is Mort Sahl ? I guess you had be there. No that was Jackie Vernon.
No, he was before my time , but he was arguably the biggest American (well he was actually born in Canada) stand up comedian of the 1950s and 1960s. He was the first stand up comedian to be featured on the cover of Time magazine. He was mainly a political satirist.

 

Yes, unfortunately. Carson was white bread. company man. You could have looked up Mort Sahl just by typing his name like you did onto this thread.

"Being known" doesn't mean "good", either.

 

...and still alive in 2021,and,if Wiki is right,does a Q&A with a live audience via Periscope/Twitter.

So unfortunate that NBC could only squeeze 30 years out of Carson,giving him autonomy to control and own his time on The Tonight Show. Carson,shortened the length of the show,moved it to California and called the shots as to when he would appear on it. NBC got rich,Carson rich and the show exists 30 years after Carson retired. How unfortunate.
My guess is that Sahl would burn out or the network would burn out on Sahl. Every night-biting satire,while viewers basically wanted to be entertained before sleep. Carson was the perfect sleeping pill,slowly putting the viewer to rest with a smile,only to return the next night. Its that hot/cool idea on TV. Sinatra in a tux? Not so much. Como in a sweater? Poifict. And remember that NBC filled in the wait till Carson was free with tons of hosts,usually for a week or two. Though the hosts were led to believe they were auditioning to replace Paar,NBC had Carson in mind from the getgo.

 

talk shows don't seem to translate as easily to foreign markets as comedies and dramas. one reason is that much of the humor tends to more topical and provencial. there is also a lot more episodes.

 

Mort was topical in the extreme. To listen today you need a working knowledge of then current events. Its like Vicuna coat and deep freezer jokes(If you get that you may be alright). He appealed to the intellectual much as Parr had. I have several Sahl albums and even knowing the background it just doesn't age well. He just never really did "routines" or bits. But hand him todays newspaper and he's off.

 

like it or not the tonight show seemed to have changed over the years with the temperament of the hosts.
dave garroway-very low key and gentle
steve allen-hip/with a lot of comedy
jack paar- very verbal and sometimes very intense
johnny carson-very middle America-that's why he was the most successful
jay leno- very PG and audience friendly -that's way he was the second most successful
jimmy fallon-light and unpretentious

 

Conan O Brian- screwed by Leno. (Team Coco)

 

I guess I never rate the talent based on money. I think the hosts keep getting worse, but I think part of that are the guests (or lack of). I think Dick Cavett had the best guests, but I don't know if he would have a great show today.

I actually have about 150+ Carson shows on my DVR, and I used to watch them at night, which is probably why he was nicknamed "Prince Valium"..... I thought Letterman was the last good host, at least for his interviews. I don't remember his show, but if they ever replay his old episodes, I'd check them out, chronologically hopefully to diagram the changes in my head.

 

Talk shows had more interesting guest back in the day. Even guest who weren't A Class Celbs like Orson Bean and Tony Randall were mesmerizing.

 

talk shows tended to be more cerebral, maybe because they were skewed to an older audience. even johnny carson had guests carl sagan and ashley montagu in reruns that I saw from the 1970s.

 

From what I've read, Carson was always going to be the replacement for Parr, but he was under contract to ABC until October 1962. So NBC had to fill the seven-month gap with guest hosts. So Sahl wasn't auditioning for the job, it was already taken.

 

More accurately, screwed by the millions of Americans who stopped watching The Tonight Show after Leno left.

 

Yeah well, I was one of the millions that switched to Letterman, who SHOULD have had the Tonight Show.
Never had a high opinion of Leno going back to his start.

 

I'm not a fan of Leno either. His humor was about as bland and middle-brow as one could imagine. But I also don't buy into the notion of Conan as an innocent victim. His management engineered the original deal wherein Leno was pushed aside. So I can't really blame Leno for his subsequent passive-aggressive actions, or his willingness to come back when Conan's ratings dropped. I mean, is it reasonable for Conan to expect Leno to be gracious toward him when he's the one who got him fired in the first place?

 

wow! that was great! thanks...

 

me neither...

 

That is not exactly true. Conan's management just told NBC in 2005 that they had a firm offer for him to do a new talkshow for ABC at 11:30PM, and he would take it unless his contract was renewed and he would eventually get the Tonight Show when Leno stepped down in 2009. It's not that Leno was "pushed aside" -- it's that after doing the Late Night show, Conan figured he was ready to take on the Tonight Show, and that Leno was sincere when he said he would retire. Leno's manager Helen Kushnick had had similar negotiations with NBC when Carson announced he was going to leave in 1992, so this same kind of story had happened before. Read this:

2010 Tonight Show conflict - Wikipedia

What is true is that Leno's ratings were high when he left, and the Tonight Show ratings went down with Conan. As a result, NBC frantically opted for a solution, which was to bring Leno back for a nightly 10PM show (which was kind of insane), but that, too, did not get good ratings.

It's fair to say it was a big mess, and after Conan opted to leave in 2010, Jay got the Tonight Show back but was looked upon as "damaged goods." I don't think his ratings ever went back to where they were previously. For a lot of reasons, history has looked down on Leno's tenure on the show. I like Jay Leno personally, and dealt with him a few times in my life, and he was always funny and gracious. But I didn't like him much on the show, either.

Bill Carter's book is amazingly accurate and has interviews from both sides:

The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, & the Network Battle for the Night