Why did Johnny Carson harbor so much personal hate toward Joan Rivers

Joan molested him.

His reaction always did seem…extreme. But then by most accounts he was an asshole off screen.

I vaguely remember seeing a show featuring Joan Rivers' career a couple of years ago and it covered the Tonight Show situation. I had always assumed that Johnny Carson was too rough on her and pretty unfair about it all. But, since I didn't pay attention back then, I didn't know that Joan had publicly made a really big deal out of trying to get higher ratings than the Tonight Show, and she played it out nightly as a contest while getting her studio audiences hyped up about it in a tacky, daytime talk show way. It was surprising to see how far she went in trying to make it a competition. Johnny probably felt above all of that (understandably) and didn't appreciate her relegating late-night to such cheap antics.

I think R3 hits at something important. Rivers portrayed herself as poor innocent victim of Carson (again and again and again), but she tried (and not a little bit) to outshine the boss, aware no doubt of Carson's views. She tried to outwit him and circumvent him and he responded in kind.

Johnny could have taken the high road.

Joan's show was 11 to 12 on Fox -- which was just starting out.

Johnny's was 11:30 to 12:30; he wasn't going to lose ratings to her.

He could have said Joan, I wish you well. and taken the high road, publicly, while having his bookers play hardball.

Joan's show would have lasted a few years. Johnny would have continued as king.

But the reality is she was much funnier and more popular.

That's probably what he hated.

It was kind of sleazy for Joan to not even tell him she was leaving until moments before the press conference announcing the new show.

The good times. I loved her appearances with Johnny. Their chemistry together was a great loss.

She probably couldn't tell him until the deal was done.

Was Joan going to be put in Carson's spot after he retired?

She was eight years younger than he was. That matters when Johnny was hitting retirement age.

I'm glad she got back on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon before she died.

[quote]She probably couldn't tell him until the deal was done.

The deal was done. The press and Carson all knew about it. That morning of the press conference she/Edgar decided they better tell him personally what he already knew. She called, Carson hung up on her.

The week before the announcement she had hosted The Tonight Show.

Johnny was a comedian, they are miserable people.

I wonder if part of it was money too. Johnny probably felt he should have First Right of Refusal when it came to producing a show for Joan Rivers.

R5, do you actually believe what you wrote? Just curious...

R7 The Tonight Show Staring Johnny Carson seems like just yesterday. I used to stay up as a kid to watch the monolog. I never really watched the show much after he left, but I would watch Letterman.

[quote][bold]Johnny was a comedian,[/bold]they are miserable people.

So was Joan, R10.

Your point?

Because he hated women.

R12, yes, I believe what I wrote. The time slots. Johnny could have taken the high road. All true.

Was Joan more popular? To her fans, yes. Granted to Johnny's, he was more popular.

But the start-up of Fox showed that there was a new player in town. TV was beginning to get more competitive.

Johnny was threatened for some reason.

If he wasn't, he wouldn't have reacted the way he did.

I was a kid at the time, but I recall something about Joan being told that there was no way she would get the permanent hosting gig when Johnny retired, despite her guest host stints being well-received and highly rated. I think that made her mad, and started the ball rolling. I don't think she was a victim, but Johnny took it too far.

[quote] But the reality is she was much funnier and more popular.

You wrote that knowing full well that if that had been true, then her show would have received higher ratings than his.

But of course it didn't. It flopped.

So why would you have posted such a patently false thing?

Joan was certainly bitter afterwards. I can't countenance this.

Joan Rivers visits Johnny Carson's grave

[quote]It flopped.

There may be some extenuating circumstances associated with that. You're right, the show flopped, but... Fox was a relatively new network at the time and was not available nationwide. The first half hour was up against local news, and then the last half hour was up against The Tonight Show. Plus, Johnny made calls to keep people from being guests on her show. She didn't have a fair playing field.

R19 again. I hadn't watched the full clip when I posted it (Sorry). It's actually very touching. I miss Joan so much.

R18 - Fox was still new at the time and had limited reach. It wasn't fully national and was only on UHF stations in a lot of markets. They didn't even have a prime-time line-up of shows until the next year. And that was only for one night, IIRC. They didn't have a 7 day a week prime-time schedule for several years.

Joan's show was first. And besides ratings, the reason why it was cancelled is because they wanted to fire her husband, which led to arguments, and then they fired both of them.

It was not an apples-to-apples comparison by any means. Joan was saddled with creating a lot of buzz and viewership for basically her show alone - no intro shows before it.

That's not talked about enough. Most advertisers need 80% of national market to buy a national TV ad spot - and they BARELY had that, but on small independent stations with low viewership.

The Fox channel of today was nowhere near what it was then. I recall them coming out the following year with Duets, 21 Jump Street, Tracy Ullman Show, etc - but they didn't have much of any programming when Joan signed on.

[quote]You're right, the show flopped, but...

No "but." It flopped.

Fox's "The Simpsons" was an enormous success and is still with us.

R18, I will give you that Johnny and Joan were DIFFERENT kinds of funny. He was the straight man who had great deadpan reactions.

Joan was funny with great delivery. She didn't just react to the joke she TOLD the joke.

Her ratings were higher than his on The Tonight Show at times.

It's not Joan's fault that there was backstage drama with Fox or that Johnny's producers played hardball with guest bookings all of which led to her show failing.

Joan's comedy is seen on social today everywhere. It holds up.

I'm okay if I never see Johnny, Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise throw pies at each other again.

This isn't about who a person prefers -- Johnny or Joan. It's about how Johnny reacted in such an angry fashion to Joan. He could have taken her call and said, "Listen, kid, I wish you the best." He could have waited for the show to fail. And then, welcomed her back.

Joan was never going to get the Tonight Show. Johnny wanted it both ways. He wanted her to be okay with that and not go off and get her own show.

I think Arsenio Hall and Jay Leno made up after the former said he was going to kick Jay's ass.

Johnny, the aw shucks host we all tuned into for years and years, was pissed at Joan. He never denied what Joan accused him of. It was hard to watch him after he was so abrupt with her.

I prefer Joan's comedy to his.

R23 - the Simpsons started 3 years later in Dec 1989, after being introduced by the Tracey Ullman Show. The network was fully expanded and had almost a full program line-up at that time.

Not the same at all.

Joan's show was the first - and I believe only show - on Fox. It's hard to think how this could be - but I remember Fox only having one or two nights of programming and building it. The rest were re-runs.

It was weird to see a network 'grow' and not have a full slate of programming

She shat in his toupee

Maybe Carson didn’t like her because she was a piece of garbage?

Yeah I’ve heard the whole “women in comedy were oppressed” narrative. It doesn’t make her any less garbage.

R27 - liked her enough to be his go-to fill in host for many years and she got higher ratings when she subbed for him on his show.

You're calling her garbage because of why?

She took a huge gamble, and lost.

Too bad for her. She survived, even if Edgar did not.

R18 In all fairness Fox was only in like 80% of American households at that time.

He had a well-known reputation for being a world class asshole. She (at least in her later years) had a very favorable one with her fans and others that knew her. I've always been Team Joan on this one. I thought he behaved like a misogynistic asshole with the whole thing.

R30 - BARELY 80% - and it was on independent and UHF stations and split the air time with them.

So you really had to remember - oh, there's a new show on this 'old' non-network channel with a talk show host. T

These channels were the ones that played MASH, Brady Bunch, Bewitched, and other old show reruns. And then you have Joan - the only produced show on Fox network - for one hour 5 nights a week.

She single-handedly had to carry the success of the network on her shoulders. There were NO other shows on Fox. None.

He is almost completely forgotten these days, even here on DL.

R19 She says "because I'm a woman" in that video. It's like saying because I'm gay, because I'm Black or because I'm a Jew. Perhaps, rightly or wrongly, Carson felt like she wronged him and it's as simple as that. He certainly seemed interested in helping her out earlier in her career and she was still a woman (and a Jew) even then.

I think Joan and Edgar could have handled it better. Yeah, Johnny was an asshole but he also gave Joan a career. Lack of loyalty stings. In the end, she crashed and burned and spent years rebuilding her career and he ended his reign as the king of late night TV and retired peacefully.

This broke my heart.

He must have been disgusted at her shenanigans behind his back (of course he knew all about it from the get-go). He made her a star, gave her a huge opportunity, then...

I think she harbored a lot of rage toward men. Probably all those years playing to 3 drunks in dive bars. Who knows how many cocks she had to suck?

Anyone have any info (personal, or article or book recommendations) on Carson's personality? I get this gut feeling that he was like my dad (this is not a good thing), and want to look into it a little

Carson was a sleazebag who often propositioned his female guests.

Carson gave her an opportunity but Joan made herself a star. I think he was jealous. Joan also alluded to the having an affair at some point as well.

Carson was in love with Joan, and behaved like a jilted lover. Joan admitted they screwed around.

Joan was pretty irresistible to men. She said she often engaged in coitus with other stars she appeared with on “The Tonight Show”, married or not.

Happier times...

I don't think Joan ever slept with Johnny. She was married and wasn't his type at all.

Well known that Johnny was a miserable mean man off camera. Alcohol didn’t help.

Joan knew that even though she could have been a natural successor to Johnny, there was no way in hell he would even consider her,

What was she supposed to do?

I’ll never forget when Edgar killer himself and Johnny did not have an ounce of human kindness to call her. Unspeakable.

And Jay Leno continued the feud

Johnny was happy as long as Joan knew her place.

I've never been good at knowing my place.

Joan thought she had nothing to lose. She wasn't even in the running to replace Johnny Carson. That mess degenerated into a long running feud between David Letterman and Jay Leno.

It was her husband Edgar, who was aggressively incompetent , that she followed to her demise.

I don’t know. Why did he beat his wives?

[quote] Joan was pretty irresistible to men. She said she often engaged in coitus with other stars she appeared with on “The Tonight Show”, married or not.

Consider the source.

Johnny had a problem with women. He had Joan in a category. Her early schtick was the gossipy Jewish Housewife from New York thing. She was hilarious. But she didn't know her place. She became a huge success. And she wanted her own show. Not guest hosting. Not doing the circuit, the clubs and guest spots. And in his mind, she overreached. She didn't get "permission." He kind of stabbed her in the back first. That was a mistake. I felt bad watching R7 video.

I remember reading in her book that ABC offered her a deal the year before she went to Fox for a morning talk show, for huge money, and she turned it down because of her loyalty to the Tonight Show and her assumption that she was in the running to replace Carson.

[quote]It was her husband Edgar, who was aggressively incompetent , that she followed to her demise.

The biggest mistake many women in entertainment make is putting their husbands on the payroll. Look at Mo'Nique as the latest example of this horrible choice.

Carson was a huge mess.

No one knew what was going to set him off, and once he went he stayed gone.

"A jealous, pistol-packing Johnny Carson — sure that his second wife, Joanne, was cheating on him — broke into her secret Manhattan apartment and found it full of pictures of the other guy: Giants football legend Frank Gifford."

And Carson wept like a baby afterwards.

Look at all the crap movies Melissa McCarthy makes with her talent-free husband, whereas she's proved elsewhere that her comedic and dramatic instincts are top-notch.

[quote]It's not Joan's fault that there was backstage drama with Fox

But if the backstage drama was over her husband's involvement with her show, it's pretty hard to separate her from it even though her loyalty to Edgar was understandable.

[Quote] You're calling her garbage because of why?

Hi Rip Van Winkle!

R51 Frank Gifford was a stud when young. Hell even in older age you can tell that was a good looking man.

Joan was a threat to Johnny. He wanted her under his thumb.

R52, can't say I'm a fan of MM.

She was on SNL and in one sketch, she's devouring a whole bottle of ranch dressing.

Maybe it was blue cheese. The audience just roared and roared. But I thought why is this funny?

Rivers was good on The Tonight Show- in small amounts. Her guesting gigs were Special Occasions- full of pomp and energy- and she got lots of hot celebs as guests (probably ones Johnny didn't want to deal with). It was must-see TV.

But her solo late night show was ghastly. Desperation and flop sweat. Just cursed from the start. And it wasn't Edgah's fault (but she blamed him to death).

R57, I don't think people realize how hard it is to be on 5 nights a week, and be sharp and funny. Yes they had writers, but the pressure on them had to be enormous. and some personalities don't wear well. I think Joan was one who became unfunny and abrasive over time. Not so special every single night.

These were frenemies. Success and its money always comes first.

Both used codependents (Melissa and Joanne/Joanna) and were doomed to hurt people in order to always WIN/fuck people over..

There’s an end scene in “Mean Girls” where Regina George finds the proper environment on the lacrosse field. That’s where I think Johnny and Joan would have thrived.

I remember it being described in the media at the time that she found out she wasn’t on the list, or else bot even on any short list, to become Johnny’s post-retirement permanent replacement someday; and then her husband had sealed the deal for her own FOX show before she called Johnny to let him know. And then he hung up on and never spoke to her again. (And then Carson’s eventual permanent replacement Leno never invited her back on the show during his own hosting tenure either, in deference to Johnny).

I think R60, you have it right.

Carson could be a very petty and childish man.

He was mad she wouldn’t be able to fill in for him anymore. Bitches should know their place.

Dick Cavett's show was so much better than Carson.

Joan Rivers salute on NBC Tuesday, May 13 at 10 EDT.