Book takes deep look at Carson

CHICAGO — If there are ghosts, the ghost of writer Bill Zehme might be found within the Chicago tavern/restaurant Twin Anchors, where he spent many living days and nights and where his face still stares from photos on the walls and where one recent night his friend Mike Thomas was saying, “I miss Bill.”

When Zehme died on March 26, 2023, he left behind broken hearts and an unfinished book that had bedeviled him for the last two decades of his 64-year life. It was a book about Johnny Carson, the late-night television host of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” for nearly 30 years, until bowing out in 1992. When Zehme died, a New York Times critic referred to the book as “one of the great unfinished biographies.”

Well, it’s finished now.

“And here it is,” Thomas said, handing me “Carson the Magnificent,” 300-some pages of insights and showbiz stories, bold-faced names and long forgotten stars, 20 photos, sparkling writing and just-the-facts prose.

We both knew that this book is the result of Zehme’s “lifelong fascination” with Carson and that it took firm root in Esquire magazine’s June 2002 issue with a story Zehme wrote about Carson, who had granted the writer the only interview he conducted after retiring. In the wake of Carson’s 2005 death, Zehme signed a book deal and began work, never imagining how much that would entail, though he was by then the author of lengthy magazine articles and some books about such complicated types as David Letterman, Jay Leno, Regis Philbin, Andy Kaufman, Tom Hanks, Hugh Hefner, Howard Stern, Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Cindy Crawford, Rod Stewart, Johnny Depp… and more. He wrote about an especially massive and elusive star in his best-selling 1997 book, “The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’.”

But Carson was driving him crazy and in 2013 he told me, “I am trapped in what I call ‘Johnny World,’ where one thing will lead to another, one person to another.”

Then came some good news (a renewed book contract and planned television miniseries) followed shortly by some very bad news (a diagnosis of stage four colorectal cancer, which he would battle with courage and optimism, in the loving care of his partner, actress Jennifer Engstrom, until his death).

Shortly afterward, Thomas was contacted by Jonathan Karp, the president, publisher and CEO of Simon & Schuster who “would not let this book die,” and with the further encouragement of Zehme’s sister Betsy Archer and Zehme’s daughter from a long-ago marriage, Lucy Reeves, Thomas began to finish what Zehme started.

“He had wrapped up about the first three-quarters of the book and had done so, so much of the groundwork for the rest,” he says. “There was a lot of material to sift through and a few follow-up interviews, but Bill had been his meticulous self.”

He is understandably proud of this book. His name is on the cover along with (though smaller than) Zehme’s. In the book, he calls himself Zehme’s “first-ever research assistant” and details their lengthy working relationship, friendship and this final chapter that has kept him “connected to a close pal with whom I can no longer communicate in any traditional sense.”

Twin Anchors is where they first met in 1996, Thomas a young college grad and Zehme an established and successful freelance writer. They would form a professional relationship, with Thomas assisting with Zehme’s book projects. Thomas would later work as a writer for more than a decade at the Sun-Times and then start writing for Chicago magazine and other outlets. He published two books, one about The Second City and a biography of Phil Hartman. He lives a short walk away, in the home he and his wife raised two daughters.

Sitting in Twin Anchors, he echoes words he wrote in the book’s prologue, “I’ve never lost sight of the fact that, despite my contributions, this is Bill’s book.”

Yes it is, and it is in the prologue and epilogue that one can easily discern Thomas’ hand. Most of the rest of the book crackles with Zehme’s distinctively stylish writing, easy to admire and all but impossible to imitate.

For one small instance: “Through seven presidential administrations, his edgy rasp has essayed the perfect pitch of national incredulity, always with subtle phrasing and precise shading.”

Hundreds of people were interviewed for the book and hundreds of other sources were used, from newspaper articles to “Tonight Show” transcripts, as well as Zehme’s personal interactions with Carson, his friends, colleagues and one very talkative ex-wife. It is woven together not in chronological order but in a surprisingly compelling, time-traveling manner.

Thomas neatly details Zehme’s relationship with Carson. And Zehme does not shy away from some of the darker aspects of Carson’s life. But this is no salacious romp. Yes, Carson was a nasty and sometimes violent drunk; Zehme had stopped drinking for the last 20 years of his life. Yes, his first three marriages (or four) were peppered with infidelities. We get to meet the kid magician, the Navy man, the game show host … the whole career path, on and off screen.

You will discover why Ed McMahon wore a suit on air. You will see Carson as a remote father, reflecting the icy emotional relationships his parents, Ruth and Homer, offered to him. We learn why he did not attend either parents’ funeral or that of his son, killed in a traffic accident.

But one should not come to this book looking for the sort of nastiness or rumors that pepper many so-called “celebrity” biographies. During it all, Zehme and Thomas are aware that they are tackling an “oversize life … (that) transcended ordinary fame, no matter how ordinary he wished to be seen.”

He did too, once offering as the reason for his towering success this laughable simplicity, “Be yourself and tell the truth.” You will learn that some 50 million people tuned into Carson’s final show but you will also know that there is a full generation and more that have little idea of Carson’s stature. As writer Bill Carter recently put it, “One could make an argument — a very strong argument — that Johnny Carson was the greatest star in television history.”

Zehme did know him, idolized him too. And he meets many friends, one of whom, Carl Reiner told Zehme, “(John) is the only man who has retired from this business and actually meant it.”

Elsewhere in this terrific book, Zehme writes of Carson in retirement, “During these years of increasing invisibility, I would impossibly find myself in the warm and relaxed presence of J.W. Carson” and he tells us about some of those times and, believe me, it’s worth it.

It’s worth it because he is able to give us a line written by comic Fred Allen in a memoir: “All that the comedian has to show for his years of work and aggravation is the echo of forgotten laughter.”