October 1, 1962-May 22, 1992.
Johnny Carson returns to The Tonight Show after a hiatus of 9 days due to a pinched nerve. Carson makes light of his ailaman during his opening monologue which includes jabs at the 25th Anniversary of Queen Elizabeth, Watergate happenings, Civil Rights gay people legislation, and the new Neutron Bomb which kills only people and not infrastructure
Guest Suzanne Pleshette talks about her recent accident, dislike for cooking, meeting her in-laws for the first time in 12 years,
Tom Snyder and Johnny do one ups with each other and remember fondly New York where both have done their TV shows in the past. Tom Snyder has many anecdotes to share and they include commentary on Johnny and the false rumors that have been written by journalists making he and Johnny enemies. Not True.
Johnny mentions Tom Snyder's premiere back on the West Coast show last night with guest Jerry Brown and asks Tom if he can get a videocassette of the show. Johnny also comments on The Tomorrow Show coming up after the Tonight Show and the News which will have Candy Barr as guest.
Kelly Garrett sings "Something's Coming up."
NOTE:
Not complete. Commercials deleted.
Johnny Carson, host of NBC's network late-night "Tonight Show" reigned for 30 unprecedented years...five times the combined tenure of Steve Allen, and Jack Paar. Carson was impervious to competition, including efforts to dethrone him by Les Crane, Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett, Jack Paar, Pat Sajak, Joan Rivers, and Arsenio Hall. Sadly, very few complete "Tonight Show" broadcasts survive during Johnny Carson's first ten years of broadcasting. Around 1965, through the early 1970s, oldest tapes were first erased systematically by orders from myopic NBC executives, to be recycled for purposes of saving money. Ironically, in many cases, these older master tapes were too brittle and portended probable drop-outs for re-use after being erased. Subsequently blank after being erased, these older questionable master 2" Quad tapes were either sparingly used or never used again for recording new programming and eventually were discarded. Saving thousands of dollars at the time (wiping master tapes for potential re-use) resulted in losing millions of dollars by NBC in today's marketplace, and more importantly wiping thousands of historic TONIGHT SHOW broadcasts, which contain precious personal anecdotes from political, show business, and sports icons of the past.