Johnny Carson – The Ultimate Collection
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: B- Main Compilations: B
Though he was not the show’s first host, Johnny Carson
will always remain the quintessential host and star of NBC’s
still-in-production Tonight Show.
Originally set up as ninety minutes of late night live broadcasts, the
series eventually became a taped hour-long show until Carson’s departure and
remains that way at the time of this posting years later. All the talk show hosts since have operated
under Carson’s long shadow, including all those with more freedom on
cable/satellite networks since. Johnny
Carson – The Ultimate Collection is the DVD set version of the very popular
home video release of the highlights of this classic.
Carson had originally been on radio, then a talk show
host, plus a game show host. After Jack
Parr and Steve Allen founded the series, Carson took over and late night TV
would never be the same again. He began
the series at its home in New York, then moved it to Burbank, California and
that is where it is to this day. This
set does a fine job of covering his entire 1962 – 1992 period, the main
programs are as follows:
DVD 1
The Best Of The 60s and 70s
The Best Of The 70s and 80s
DVD 2
The Best Of The 80s and 90s
Johnny Goes Home (an outstanding filmed documentary
special)
DVD 3
The 5-21-92 show, the next to last and the last with
guests, here being Robin Williams and Bette Midler.
The Last Show, with Carson’s reflections on his career.
These are exceptionally well picked and remarkably just
scratch the surface of the catalog his Carson Productions owns. One of the nicest things about this set is
you can see Carson, Ed McMahon, Doc Severinsen and company inventing television
as they go along. From black and white
to color, from live to tape, the show, its writers, and its stars were more
innovative than they often get credit for being. With extras, this adds up to about seven hours of truly non-stop
entertainment. Fans will love it, but
if you actually have not sent the show, it is a must-see. Whether we will ever see entire seasons come
out on DVD or not is hard to say, as talk shows are like game shows in that
never really happens, but Johnny Carson – The Ultimate Collection lives
up to its name and remains a very popular set since its 2002 DVD release.
The full frame 1.33 X 1 image comes from the thousands of
master elements owned by Carson and remains in his stunningly untapped
archive. In the early years, NBC was
using black and white professional NTSC videocassettes and because they were so
expensive, they were reused over and over again. That means even more hundreds of hours were lost because they
were taped over. For what is here, most
are original taped sources. Some are
16mm films of taped shows, or even kinescope copies of lesser quality. That is just the way even big hit TV series
manage to survive, sadly due to terrible lack of insight, storage and
preservation efforts. The Dolby Digital
2.0 is often monophonic sound boosted to some extent to take advantage of
simple stereo playback and is clean for the most part, but some of it cannot
hide its age. Newer clips, especially
the last two shows on DVD 3 are definitely stereophonic. Extras are on all three DVDs, each coming
with specific dates on when all the guests in the compilation actually
appeared. DVD 1 offers an 11 chapter
look at the last months of Carson’s run on Studio 1 Backstage, the
second has 12 stills of the tel-op artworks in between each commercial break,
12 magazine covers and a featurette dubbed Danger Johnny with Carson
doing various crazy stunts. DVD 3 has
biographies of Carson, McMahon, Severinsen, and producer Fred de Cordova, eight
text segments of question notes, four text frames on the history of the series
until Carson’s departure, a list of awards, an unnarrated Johnny Carson
Story piece that runs just over five minutes making his 25th
year, and a nice twist on multi-angle cameras that does not need the
multi-angle DVD function. Highlights of
the three cameras used on the final Carson show are offered in various
clips. The result paints a portrait of
one of the most important figures in TV history, a set that justly lives up to
its name.
- Nicholas Sheffo
