Do remember watching The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson that ran from 1962 to 1992? Many of us literally grew up watching the King of Late Night’s antics five nights a week over a span of decades.
Thankfully, NBC 6 Miami’s Flashback Fridays, hosted by on-air personality Sean Michael, is posting some of its clips online so we can watch them again and be just as wildly entertained as we were the first time around.
This segment features some terrific moments with the San Diego Zoo’s Joan Embery and a few cuddly baby primates that steal the show. Just watch as Johnny tries to get one of them to laugh and she turns to give a skeptical gaze right into the camera. You’ll be laughing as hard as the studio audience.
Johnny and Ed’s banter between guest appearances also made this show a classic part of the golden age of television. Here, Ed lectures Johnny nonstop for forgetting the date of Embery’s first appearance on the show, and then harangues him for not going down to the San Diego Zoo to watch Joan’s live animal show himself.
The chemistry and comic timing these two old friends had is simply magical and utterly hilarious. Did you know the two first worked together on a 1950’s game show called Who Do You Trust?
When that show ended in 1962, they moved together to The Tonight Show and spent the next 30 years working side by side. It’s no wonder they could trade barbs on the air so easily without really offending each other, as only old friends can do.
“You could have the worst day ever, where nothing goes right and you just want to end it all…but then it’s 11:30pm and you turn on the TV and there was a show that could make all that day’s troubles just fade away as if they never happened,” commented one of this clip’s 300,000 viewers. “I miss Johnny Carson for those reasons. There will never be another like him, and late night has never been as funny since.”
We couldn’t have put it better ourselves. Join in the fun by clicking the video below and share it with an old friend.
OH, BUT WAIT! Did you think after that you could just go about your day? After that trip down memory lane, it won’t hurt to take one last stroll:
