The Carson Collection - His Favorite Moments from The Tonight Show (1962-1992) - Culled from 30 years of material, this...

Customer Reviews:

This is nothing more than the VHS Johnny Carson collection that they put out back in the '90s
I was hoping when I bought this collection that I woould see alot of new content. Turns out this is the old VHS collection remastered with a couple new bonus features.

Also I wish there were more clips of him doing his skits and or interviewing all the intresting non-celebrities/animals. In my oppion the celebrities were the most boring aspect of this collection not to mention anybody under the age of 30 probably won't even remember who half the people on their were, which brings up another problem. Alot of the jokes haven't held up that well (don't get me wrong there are some really classic moments in this collection) for example on the very first B&W clip where Johnny goes into Kennedy having her 10th baby and the punchline being that there is only one bathroom in the White House leaves this critic a little flat (My grandma told me that was a really racy joke back in the day). Also alot of the skits revolved around current events and commercials that very few people remember. Like I said if you are under the age of 30 there is a good chance that you'll be left scratching your head.

The bonus features are intresting. One takes you behind the scenes of the show and you learned how everything worked, also one show Johnny doing some cool stuff like racing cars and sky diving. Also there is the rare NBC special called "Johnny Goes Home" where he goes back to Nebraska to see his old home. I could be wrong but I could that they edited this show. I remember it being alot longer.

All and all if you are fan of Carson I think this is a must buy if you can get it for under $20 otherwise you'll be disapointed.
--2006-12-17

I Love Johnny
I only paid $25 for it (Sam's Club), so that wasn't too bad, but I sure wouldn't pay $50 for it.

The content is PRICELESS (of course), however the DVD producers shredded these shows into confetti. The final show has the ENTIRE MUSIC SEGMENT DELETED. Also, of the great clips included, such as the one where Ed has just a couple of toddies before work, and the one where Doc took his full share of pills for the day---they were also cropped---AS MUCH AS COULD POSSIBLY GET AWAY WITH.

I actually considered it another wasted $25 until I saw the show where Johnny went back home for a visit. With that, I thought $25 was an OK price.

It is a shame that such great shows have their guts sliced out of them for God only knows what. This process has made me extrememly leary of DVD purchases.

--2006-12-16

Best of Carson
Although entertaining, it omitted some of the funniest moments from the show.
--2006-11-03

From a sometime viewer and lukewarm fan A kind of Holden Caulfield review
Sometimes I start to review a certain item, and caution myself against it. Why? Because I know that there are other people who care about the book, movie, music, television show, in question in a way I do not. They are passionate about it. They know it from inside. Consider the excellent review of J. Grabowski of the 'The Ultimate Carson Collection' on this Amazon site. It is outstanding, and cannot be matched by anything I, a very occasional watcher of Carson through the years, can say.
Nonetheless I'll just do what I often do in these reviews, simply write what I think. I watched Carson in and out, occasionally for many years. I never became addicted to it like some people I know. These were the ones who simply had to watch the 'Tonight' show every night. My guess is America had millions of these.
I think for most of the years I underappreciated Carson. I thought of him as kind of corny.And as I am not a special fan of what might be called 'physical humor ' I just did not care for some of the stuff. Also the various tics and repetitions, the whole hokum which goes with these shows, the various chitchat with Ed and Doc never really got me.
In latter years though I thought of the matter again, and became a bit nostalgic watching the show. He was quick- minded certainly and fast he had something else I really liked, great curiosity. He would bring someone like Carl Sagan on the show because he wanted to understand the stuff Sagan was talking about. He of course kidded and made fun of many guests but he did it without depriving them of their dignity. He gave them a chance , as far as I could tell, to get on whatever they wanted to say or promote.
Moreover he stuck it out for a long time. And what happens is when someone becomes familiar, even if you don't particularly like them at first , they sort of grow on you, and you get to feel you know them, and sort of like them. Old Johnny was like that.
When you think of it really , all these people who were so young once and so full in life, and who it seemed would last forever, and you understand that they are old or most likely, dead, it makes you kind of sad.
It's funny. The twentieth century invented this business of film and now you can see people actually acting, speaking moving as if they were alive. It's uncanny really. There is Johnny out there young as ever when you know he's somewhere else six - feet under. It's strange and it makes you sad.
This man probably entertained more Americans than any other person in history. Got more laughs. Made more people smile when they went to bed.
He deserves a lot of credit and recognition for that. And he certainly got it in buckets in his lifetime.
This does not however stop him from being , I guess what he always was, a kind of lonely quirky guy all troubled in himself.
Thank you Johnny. As some other guy said in the best years of television you were the best late night guy we ever had.

--2006-06-21

The once and future king of late night
In a free-association test, if you said "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" I think most people would respond with "Classy." Carson's show was always a class act that aimed high rather than low, and there was never a better interviewer than Johnny. Whether the guest was a Hollywood heavyweight or the winner of a spelling bee, Carson found the right questions, elicited surprising reaction (as opposed to Leno, who is a master only at stating and restating the obvious), and kept audiences laughing. Yet, like everyone else who was born to do what they do, he made it look effortless. And apparently for him it was. Carson was famous for arriving at the studio very late and doing very little in the form of rehearsals. But who could knock what worked?

Carson was an enigma. He wanted to entertain crowds, yet he was reclusive, with few close relationships. He was charming yet distant. He could be petulant, but also a gentleman. He had a midwest "aw-shucks" personality coupled with an ego the size of Manhattan. He was known around NBC for being difficult as well as lazy--after the 1970s, he took off two nights a week, turning over Monday's show to a string of guest hosts and running repeats on Tuesdays. Yet he could get away with it, because he delivered the goods. All other late night entertainers were also-rans, and the list of performers who sank trying to take his crown is long and varied.

When you watch these DVDs, you realize how class and civility in the land of television has all but disappeared. And how much humor has been dumbed down. Not that Carson invited all Nobel Laureates to his show, but compared to Leno's guests--and Leno himself--they seem just about that! It's instructive to see, in one of the bonus features on this DVD set, a shot of the audience on his last show. They were much older than the audience that comes to a Leno taping. The emphasis has shifted to teens and early college-students, and boy does it show. As Homer Simpson once observed in a different context, Is there no place for a man with a 105 IQ?

The three discs contain much material from Carson's three decades on the air, but honestly, not enough, and that's one reason why I'm only giving it four stars. While the stuff is excellent, each disc is only filled to about half-capacity. Also, some of the extras are a little lame. For example, we're promised a gallery of magazine covers and the "More To Come" artwork. We don't get many of either (there were probably thousands of the "More To Come" graphics made over the years) and they're displayed very small on the screen--and I'm watching on a 46" TV. I can only imagine what you see on a more modest television set. There's no reason these items can't take up the full screen. Also, some of the behind-the-scenes features look like they were cut down from longer features. Why not just use the longer features?

But the material that's there is terrific. Guests include Elizabeth Taylor, Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, Dean Martin, Eva Gabor, Steve Martin, Alan King, David Letterman, George Carlin, Jimmy Stewart, Gregory Peck, Albert Brooks, Tiny Tim, Pearl Bailey, Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, and so many others, too numerous to mention. There's even a young, curly-haired Jay Leno, wearing a green suit that has to be seen to be believed. But the best guests are the animals. I don't know if Carson was the first to book animal acts, but no one interacted with the creatures better. Particularly noteworthy is a bird that can imitate other animals, and seems to actually understand Carson and answer his questions. This sort of material is far more entertaining than the beach-and-bikini-type antics that Jay Leno seems to uncover in skits such as "Jaywalking."

Let's not leave out Carson's supporting cast. McMahon seemingly did little more than announce the opening with a burly voice and laugh like a drunken Santa Claus at Johnny's jokes, yet he was still lightyears more effective in his job than Leno's John Melendez or Edd Hall. But it's Doc Severson's swinging, zinging Tonight Show Band that really gave the show its signature. The catchy theme (penned by Paul Anka and Carson himself) was a guarantee for 30 years that you were about to have a good time, and honestly it still gets me excited to hear it. And some of that bridge music during commercials was so good that you almost wanted them to continue playing for the next ten minutes. Compare this to the awful Kevin Eubanks band and the shrill screams of the frizzy-haired vocalist Vicky behind him, on today's Tonight Show. And who can even *hum* the current Tonight Show theme? Think it will ever become the icon that Johnny's Daa-da-daa-duuum-duum is?

The first two discs are highlights from the 60s through the 90s. As I said, they could have been a lot longer: despite a fire in the NBC vaults that destroyed most of the early 60s material (including, sadly, the pilot show), there's still enough Carson episodes to fill a hundred DVDs. But what's there is a real treasure, and a master class for aspiring comedians. There's also a faded print of Carson's only prime-time special, wherein he returns to his home town in Nebraska. It's interesting, but not essential. Another extra is called "Danger Johnny" and consists of footage of stunts Carson performed for another show he hosted prior to The Tonight Show. It's mildy entertaining, but most Tonight Show fans probably won't care much. The last disc contains, complete, the final two shows--the last with guests (Robin Williams and Bette Midler in a now-famous performance saluting Carson) and finally the big goodbye, with Johnny alone on a stool. I saw them both back in 1992 and they are still a blast.

Once again, I seem to be stuck in the rut of saying things aren't as good as they used to be. (See most of my other reviews!) But watch these DVDs and you'll see how true it is. I realize this is a "best of" compilation and so it's going to have the cream. Still, Leno's been on the air more than 13 years now, and as far as I've seen he hasn't had one moment as good as any of those here. The other late night hosts--even Letterman--seem to be just weird for the sake of being weird, and don't really seem interested in their guests. No, there was only one Johnny Carson, and once he was gone, there was nothing left for any of his "heirs" to do.
--2006-06-19