Tracing His Rise to ‘The Tonight Show’

On the day of his 100th birthday, a special Vintage Variety episode looks back at the arc of Johnny Carson’s early career and his rise to becoming a TV icon, as chronicled in the pages of Variety.

Carson’s first mention in Variety came in the Oct. 20, 1952, edition. By early 1953, he was noted in our pages several times a month. By the following year, and for the next four decades, not a week went by without at least one reference, usually many more, because Carson worked nonstop. He hosted “Carson’s Cellar” in LA. He worked as a writer on “The Red Skelton Show.” He did nightclubs and personal appearances and telethons and charity gigs, just like every other rising comedian of the day.

Throughout the 1950s, Carson hosted a number of local and network series for CBS, including “Platter Panel” and “Earn Your Vacation.” The latter was a quiz show in which contestants told Carson their personal reasons for wanting to travel to a certain place. Carson then asked them trivia questions related to the location, and if they got enough of them right, they won the trip. By the late ’50s, Carson had a steady gig hosting the ABC daytime game show “Who Do You Trust?,” which involved competitions between married couples. He was also an affable regular on the talk show circuit.

Carson’s debut entry was a doozie. He made the top of page one with a short item noting that the show had taken a jab at the political battle then raging between presidential candidates Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson over income tax statement disclosures or the lack thereof, particularly for Eisenhower’s vice presidential running mate, Richard Nixon. So with that context, here’s the full story that ran Oct. 20, 1952, two weeks before Eisenhower would be elected to the first of his two terms in the white House.

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