(9 of 10)
Similarly, about a year ago, Johnny abruptly canned his manager of eight years, Al Bruno. The story is that the intricate sound and tape effects that go with Carson's cabaret act got snarled by a technician three shows running during an engagement at Miami's Eden Roc. Johnny called up New York, says a friend, actually sobbing. "They didn't laugh," he said. Carson blamed Bruno and bought out his contract.
"Johnny gets angry at ineffectual, inefficient people who don't do their job properly," says McMahon. "It bugs him when people don't pull their oar." Sometimes it bugs him on the air. Not long ago, when some stagehands were chattering while Carson was on, the star turned and snapped coldly: "Are you fellows through now?"
Paper Terrier. When the taping is over, Johnny has a Coke or Michelob, slips into a turtleneck jersey and a cardigan, then, to avoid the ambush of autograph hounds, takes a side elevator down and makes a fast getaway in his waiting limousine. From then on, he writes his own script—one he likes to keep a closed book. Sometimes it is an open ledger. The Chicago Tribune paid him $25,000 for a 14-part syndicated interview series just completed last week. A top editor of the Trib concedes that its penetration was "pretty thin."
That is not surprising, for the off-camera Carson is intensely a private man who lacks the peacock fever that afflicts most entertainers. When he goes home after the show, he stays there. He and his second wife, Joanne, 35, a petite ex-model and decorator, get out to dinner only about twice a month, to about half a dozen plays a season and regularly only to pro football games. Joanne "almost never" entertains. Muffin, their Yorkshire terrier, is paper-trained, so they don't have to walk her. "We enjoy spending our time here," says Johnny. "We have a comfortable home, and we like each other's company. I'm not going to sit around in a roomful of people pretending to have a good time and saying 'Oh, isn't this fun?' when it isn't. I think it's a waste of time doing something you don't really want to because people think you ought to."
Tight Suitcase. Besides, Johnny cannot walk a block without being bugged for autographs or buttonholed by chirping women who invariably announce: "I undress in front of you every night, and my husband doesn't mind." Equally oppressive are the men who ask coyly: "Can't you come on a little earlier—you're ruining our love life." Carson knows these lines well: he has used them himself. Still, he laughs on the outside, cringes on the inside, and shrugs, "I guess it goes with the