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Bet
Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
October 2013
On Sale: October 15, 2013
304 pages
ISBN: 0544217624
EAN: 9780544217621
Kindle: B00CICPU4O
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Biography
A revealing and incisive account of the King of
Late Night at the height of his fame and power, by his
lawyer, wingman, fixer, and closest confidant.
From 1962 until 1992, Johnny Carson hosted The
Tonight Show and permeated the American consciousness.
In the ’70s and ’80s he was the country’s
highest-paid entertainer and its most enigmatic. He was
notoriously inscrutable, as mercurial (and sometimes cruel)
off-camera as he was charming and hilarious onstage. During
the apex of his reign, Carson’s longtime lawyer and
best friend was Henry Bushkin, who now shows us Johnny
Carson with a breathtaking clarity and depth that nobody
else could.
From the moment in 1970 when Carson hired Bushkin (who
was just twenty-seven) until the moment eighteen years later
when they parted ways, the author witnessed and often took
part in a string of escapades that still retain their power
to surprise and fascinate us. One of Bushkin’s first
assignments was helping Carson break into a posh Manhattan
apartment to gather evidence of his wife’s infidelity.
More than once, Bushkin helped his client avoid
entanglements with the mob. Of course, Carson’s
adventures weren’t all so sordid. He hosted Ronald
Reagan’s inaugural concert as a favor to the new
president, and he prevented a drunken Dean Martin from
appearing onstage that evening. Carson socialized with Frank
Sinatra, Jack Lemmon, Jimmy Stewart, Kirk Douglas, and
dozens of other boldface names who populate this atmospheric
and propulsive chronicle of the King of Late Night and his
world.
But this memoir isn’t just dishy. It is a tautly
rendered and remarkably nuanced portrait of Carson,
revealing not only how he truly was, but why. Bushkin
explains why Carson, a voracious (and very talented)
womanizer, felt he always had to be married; why he loathed
small talk even as he excelled at it; why he couldn’t
visit his son in the hospital and wouldn’t attend his
mother’s funeral; and much more. Bushkin’s
account is by turns shocking, poignant, and uproarious
— written with a novelist’s eye for detail, a
screenwriter’s ear for dialogue, and a knack for comic
timing that Carson himself would relish. Johnny
Carson unveils not only the hidden Carson, but also the
raucous, star-studded world he ruled.
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