Notes & asides.(remembering Johnny Carson)(Obituary)

* Johnny Carson, R.I.P.

If Johnny Carson could have managed it, no doubt his death would have been a private affair. Who would have been invited to his memorial service? We don't know. That is the measure of his integrity as a private man. We don't even know how many of his ex-wives would have been invited, or would have come.

I was his guest a half-dozen times, and was always handled with great courtesy. He once confided to a critic that I was the only guest he had ever been frightened of. I don't know what the circumstances of that odd situation were, and the critic didn't pause to ask, and Johnny didn't elaborate. As far as I know.

As I write these words a memory flashes up.

Scene: The Tonight Show. Guests: David Susskind and me (WFB).

David Susskind is widely forgotten, but he was a singular presence on television for about 20 years. He staked out the ultimate talk show (he called it Open End) by the simple expedient of making it endless. He would start out at 9 P.M., on Channel 13 in New York (this was before it had become a part of the educational network), with one or more guests, and just talk on & on into the night, sometimes not closing down the program until after midnight.

I was sometimes his guest, and he developed over several years an uncontainable sense of indignation . . . that I, and my views as expressed in NATIONAL REVIEW, should exist. At all. The hostility had come to something of a boil when Johnny Carson convened us for a joint appearance on The Tonight Show.