Johnny carson biography video edgar

It started out as a dream project.

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Zehme and Carson appeared to be an ideal match of biographer and biographee: the consummate celebrity profiler and the consummate comedy pro. Zehme, the author of previous biographies of those shy violets Frank Sinatra and Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, was a fellow Midwesterner (Carson was born in Iowa, and raised there and then in Nebraska), a fan of Carson’s “Tonight Show” since teendom, and a wry tour guide to the piranha tank of ego and neurosis that is late-night television.

When Carson was set to step down as host of NBC’s “Tonight Show,” after 30 years atop Mount Olympus, Zehme scored a sit-down interview with the reclusive star, who gave him the unprecedented all-clear to interview those in his tight orbit of friends, colleagues and family.

Out of this came Zehme’s eloquent adieu, “The Man Who Retired,” published in Esquire in 2002. After Carson’s death in 2005, from emphysema, Zehme began the biography in earnest, but a decade later he