April 13, 2025 • 8 mins
Mike Thomas authored the critically acclaimed oral history The Second City Unscripted: Revolution and Revelation at the World-Famous Comedy Theater (Villard, 2009) and is a longtime arts/entertainment staff writer at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he frequently writes about comedy. Over the years he has interviewed numerous renowned comics and comedic actors, including Louis C.K., Stephen Colbert, Bill Cosby, Rodney Dangerfield, Phyllis Diller, Bob Newhart, Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams, Sarah Silverman and Jon Stewart. His national magazine work has appeared in Esquire, Playboy and Smithsonian.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is a podcast from WOR.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Here's Larry Minty with more of the WOOR Saturday morning show.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
No one owned late night TV like Johnny Carson. He
was an extremely talented and an extremely private TV star,
but he did grant one last interview before he died,
and that is the subject of a new book called
Carson the Magnificent. Here is the co author, Mike Thomas. Mike,
(00:30):
thank you so much for being on the show. I
think it's a wonderful topic. I can't wait to read
the book. But your journey to being a part of
the book and being the co author is fascinating as well.
Can you tell us about the interview with Johnny Carson,
how that came about and who was your co author?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Sure? Well, first of all, Hi Larry, and thanks for
having me on the show. I appreciate it. Yeah, I now.
Bill Zamy's the main author of this book, and Bill
was a mentor of mine. Three decades ago, when I
was in my twenties, I had moved to Chicago, you know,
and I had found out that Bill, whom I had
been reading since high school, had moved back to Chicago
(01:12):
from LA So I'd dropped him some of my terrible
freelance clips and asked if I could just meet up
with him to pick his brain and he said sure.
I was delighted, you know, and so we were just
talking about his work and celebrity journalism stuff like that,
and it turned out he needed some help doing a
book he was writing with Jay Leno, just basic transcript stuff.
(01:34):
From there, it just kept snowballing, and eventually I became
his full time assistant. We worked on a Andy Kaufman
book together, on a Frank Sinatra book, on a Regis
Philbin book, and then I left for a long stint
at the Chicago Sun Times as a features writer. Bill
and I stayed close friends that whole time. When Bill
died in twenty twenty three, his editor now publisher CEO
(01:58):
of Simon and Sue called me up and said, I'd
love to find a way to keep this Carson book alive.
Would you consider finishing it? And so that's how I
ended up coming to the Johnny Carson book. And you know,
Bill had been writing it for about twelve years until
he got cancer in twenty thirteen. He just had to
(02:18):
stop everything. But his work all started with a Carson
interview in twenty oh two for Esquire magazine, and that
opened all the doors for everything, and he interviewed hundreds
of people who were close to Carson.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Were there notes, were their tape recordings?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
How did you What did you have to go through?
I had to go through everything. Bill had a huge
storage locker on the North side of Chicago. His daughter
gave me access to it, and she also gave me
access to his whole laptop which had all these digitized
Carson files on it. Yeah, you know, like transcripts, everything else.
And so I took about a month before I said
yes to the book because I had first not read
(02:55):
Bill's manuscript, and I had also I didn't know what
he had collected so far, and so I went through
all of that before I came back and said, yeah,
I have plenty here. But he had everything, I mean,
binders and binders filled with transcripts and all kinds of artifacts.
He had an ugly tie from the Johnny Carson collection.
He had pictures galore, magazine, original magazines like Old Life magazines.
(03:17):
There was nothing Johnny related. It seemed to me that
Bill did not have. So I had more than enough
in his collection. That is just so wonderful.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Mike Thomas is the co author of Carson the Magnificent.
In a way, this would be the same journey that
the reader is going to go through as you're going
through the manuscript, as you're going through all the interviews,
all the memorabilia, what stood out for you because and
that the readers are going to find out about themselves.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Well, I mean mostly Bill's original interviews. He talked with
scores and scores of people who were close to Johnny,
and Bill himself was a terrific interviewer. I mean people
would tell him things that they wouldn't tell other people
because you know, he was a trustworthy guy. It wasn't
any sort of trickery. It was just Bill had this
(04:08):
way of connecting with people, as Johnny did on the show.
That's why Johnny's interviews were so good. There was nothing
was forced with Bill. You felt like he was your
best friend, you know, five minutes after meeting him. And
so I think there's a lot of that from people
who knew Johnny, people who had never talked before are
(04:30):
in the book who were close to him, including his
second and third wives who talked extensively to Bill. Joanna,
the third wife is still alive. She's I believe ninety
three now. Joanne, the second wife, died in twenty fifteen.
But they were so generous and sharing, you know, not
only their memories of Johnny, but Joanne gave him all
(04:51):
kinds of artifacts from their lives, including things from their
divorce and everything else. So you know, he had a
wealth of material to deal with, and yet Bill never
felt he had enough. There was always something he knew
he was missing, and it ate at him.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah, that's every great researcher and every great writer. Did
Johnny Carson, from what you saw reading through the manuscripts
and the interviews, realize the impact he was having on
American culture.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, I don't think. I don't think he could have
failed to realize it. He didn't tout it a lot.
Johnny was not a touder. And you know people called
him a king maker too. He didn't. He downplayed that
as well. In terms of making people famous, especially comedians,
he knew his place in the firmament. I mean, how
(05:43):
can you not know you're the king when you're getting
that kind of His ratings were, I don't know, at
his height, seventeen eighteen million people, the Last Show has
got way more than that. And he had a huge
influence and he knew it on the culture. But as
far as considering himself king or an emperor, maybe inside,
(06:04):
but he would never say that, you know, overtly share.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
With us his story from the book that stood after you.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Oh God, there are so many you know, I always
go back because I didn't know Johnny more than being
an entertainer or you know, sometimes a hothead, or guy
drank too much, or guy could be cold, or wasn't
the greatest father. But I like the more emotional moments
in the book as they relate to you know, family
(06:34):
or friends, or especially his son Rick, who died in
nineteen ninety one. You could tell Johnny was just he
was never the same. And Doc s. Everson said this
after Rick died till the end of his life and
Johnny lived another fourteen years after that. It just crushed him,
not only because Rick was the most like him in
(06:55):
terms of sensibility and humor, but I think Johnny also
he could have been a better father as well as
a husband. But he was always you know, the Tonight
Show was always his most significant other, and so all
those other things fell by the wayside, And I get
the sense that it hit him extra hard when when
Rick died, and he did do a beautiful eulogy for
(07:15):
him on the Tonight Show and he brought his photos
back for the last Tonight Show. But it was those
glimpses into the more emotional Johnny that I really found interesting.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I love the quote that you shared of when he asked,
what is the secret to success?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Could you tell us what that was? Yeah, you're going
to have to remind me here the secret to success?
I Oh, be yourself and tell the truth. Oh, be
yourself and tell the truth. Sure, Sure, that was his mantra.
I mean that went to Johnny's genuineness. And I don't
know if he got that from Jack Benny. He may have,
(07:56):
or he may have just picked on that up and
it picked that up on that and encapsulate it in
a quote. But that was Johnny just you know, be yourself.
Of course, he was always the part of himself that
he wanted us to see on the air. He was
never his full self because his full self was very complicated,
like all of us were. Johnny was both impossibly cool
(08:19):
and this you know, extrovert on the air, drawing these
great things out of his interview subjects. But in life
he was perfectly capable of spending a lot of time
by himself, and he could be introverted, and he liked
to read a lot, or play with his fancy telescopes.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
He was like all of us. He was a complicated
human being. But I cannot wait to read the book,
and I'm going to. Mike Thomas is the co author
of Carson the Magnificent, featuring the Last Interview with Johnny Carson,
the Great One. This has been a podcast from wor
This is a podcast from WOR.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Here's Larry Minty with more of the WOOR Saturday morning show.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
No one owned late night TV like Johnny Carson. He
was an extremely talented and an extremely private TV star,
but he did grant one last interview before he died,
and that is the subject of a new book called
Carson the Magnificent. Here is the co author, Mike Thomas. Mike,
(00:30):
thank you so much for being on the show. I
think it's a wonderful topic. I can't wait to read
the book. But your journey to being a part of
the book and being the co author is fascinating as well.
Can you tell us about the interview with Johnny Carson,
how that came about and who was your co author?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Sure? Well, first of all, Hi Larry, and thanks for
having me on the show. I appreciate it. Yeah, I now.
Bill Zamy's the main author of this book, and Bill
was a mentor of mine. Three decades ago, when I
was in my twenties, I had moved to Chicago, you know,
and I had found out that Bill, whom I had
been reading since high school, had moved back to Chicago
(01:12):
from LA So I'd dropped him some of my terrible
freelance clips and asked if I could just meet up
with him to pick his brain and he said sure.
I was delighted, you know, and so we were just
talking about his work and celebrity journalism stuff like that,
and it turned out he needed some help doing a
book he was writing with Jay Leno, just basic transcript stuff.
(01:34):
From there, it just kept snowballing, and eventually I became
his full time assistant. We worked on a Andy Kaufman
book together, on a Frank Sinatra book, on a Regis
Philbin book, and then I left for a long stint
at the Chicago Sun Times as a features writer. Bill
and I stayed close friends that whole time. When Bill
died in twenty twenty three, his editor now publisher CEO
(01:58):
of Simon and Sue called me up and said, I'd
love to find a way to keep this Carson book alive.
Would you consider finishing it? And so that's how I
ended up coming to the Johnny Carson book. And you know,
Bill had been writing it for about twelve years until
he got cancer in twenty thirteen. He just had to
(02:18):
stop everything. But his work all started with a Carson
interview in twenty oh two for Esquire magazine, and that
opened all the doors for everything, and he interviewed hundreds
of people who were close to Carson.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Were there notes, were their tape recordings?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
How did you What did you have to go through?
I had to go through everything. Bill had a huge
storage locker on the North side of Chicago. His daughter
gave me access to it, and she also gave me
access to his whole laptop which had all these digitized
Carson files on it. Yeah, you know, like transcripts, everything else.
And so I took about a month before I said
yes to the book because I had first not read
(02:55):
Bill's manuscript, and I had also I didn't know what
he had collected so far, and so I went through
all of that before I came back and said, yeah,
I have plenty here. But he had everything, I mean,
binders and binders filled with transcripts and all kinds of artifacts.
He had an ugly tie from the Johnny Carson collection.
He had pictures galore, magazine, original magazines like Old Life magazines.
(03:17):
There was nothing Johnny related. It seemed to me that
Bill did not have. So I had more than enough
in his collection. That is just so wonderful.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Mike Thomas is the co author of Carson the Magnificent.
In a way, this would be the same journey that
the reader is going to go through as you're going
through the manuscript, as you're going through all the interviews,
all the memorabilia, what stood out for you because and
that the readers are going to find out about themselves.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Well, I mean mostly Bill's original interviews. He talked with
scores and scores of people who were close to Johnny,
and Bill himself was a terrific interviewer. I mean people
would tell him things that they wouldn't tell other people
because you know, he was a trustworthy guy. It wasn't
any sort of trickery. It was just Bill had this
(04:08):
way of connecting with people, as Johnny did on the show.
That's why Johnny's interviews were so good. There was nothing
was forced with Bill. You felt like he was your
best friend, you know, five minutes after meeting him. And
so I think there's a lot of that from people
who knew Johnny, people who had never talked before are
(04:30):
in the book who were close to him, including his
second and third wives who talked extensively to Bill. Joanna,
the third wife is still alive. She's I believe ninety
three now. Joanne, the second wife, died in twenty fifteen.
But they were so generous and sharing, you know, not
only their memories of Johnny, but Joanne gave him all
(04:51):
kinds of artifacts from their lives, including things from their
divorce and everything else. So you know, he had a
wealth of material to deal with, and yet Bill never
felt he had enough. There was always something he knew
he was missing, and it ate at him.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah, that's every great researcher and every great writer. Did
Johnny Carson, from what you saw reading through the manuscripts
and the interviews, realize the impact he was having on
American culture.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, I don't think. I don't think he could have
failed to realize it. He didn't tout it a lot.
Johnny was not a touder. And you know people called
him a king maker too. He didn't. He downplayed that
as well. In terms of making people famous, especially comedians,
he knew his place in the firmament. I mean, how
(05:43):
can you not know you're the king when you're getting
that kind of His ratings were, I don't know, at
his height, seventeen eighteen million people, the Last Show has
got way more than that. And he had a huge
influence and he knew it on the culture. But as
far as considering himself king or an emperor, maybe inside,
(06:04):
but he would never say that, you know, overtly share.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
With us his story from the book that stood after you.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Oh God, there are so many you know, I always
go back because I didn't know Johnny more than being
an entertainer or you know, sometimes a hothead, or guy
drank too much, or guy could be cold, or wasn't
the greatest father. But I like the more emotional moments
in the book as they relate to you know, family
(06:34):
or friends, or especially his son Rick, who died in
nineteen ninety one. You could tell Johnny was just he
was never the same. And Doc s. Everson said this
after Rick died till the end of his life and
Johnny lived another fourteen years after that. It just crushed him,
not only because Rick was the most like him in
(06:55):
terms of sensibility and humor, but I think Johnny also
he could have been a better father as well as
a husband. But he was always you know, the Tonight
Show was always his most significant other, and so all
those other things fell by the wayside, And I get
the sense that it hit him extra hard when when
Rick died, and he did do a beautiful eulogy for
(07:15):
him on the Tonight Show and he brought his photos
back for the last Tonight Show. But it was those
glimpses into the more emotional Johnny that I really found interesting.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I love the quote that you shared of when he asked,
what is the secret to success?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Could you tell us what that was? Yeah, you're going
to have to remind me here the secret to success?
I Oh, be yourself and tell the truth. Oh, be
yourself and tell the truth. Sure, Sure, that was his mantra.
I mean that went to Johnny's genuineness. And I don't
know if he got that from Jack Benny. He may have,
(07:56):
or he may have just picked on that up and
it picked that up on that and encapsulate it in
a quote. But that was Johnny just you know, be yourself.
Of course, he was always the part of himself that
he wanted us to see on the air. He was
never his full self because his full self was very complicated,
like all of us were. Johnny was both impossibly cool
(08:19):
and this you know, extrovert on the air, drawing these
great things out of his interview subjects. But in life
he was perfectly capable of spending a lot of time
by himself, and he could be introverted, and he liked
to read a lot, or play with his fancy telescopes.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
He was like all of us. He was a complicated
human being. But I cannot wait to read the book,
and I'm going to. Mike Thomas is the co author
of Carson the Magnificent, featuring the Last Interview with Johnny Carson,
the Great One. This has been a podcast from wor
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