Slice
Goodnight, Johnny
Before anyone did anything, Johnny Carson did it all. Leno, Letterman, Conan? Pfffht. They're all pickin' up on the style he laid down more than 40 years ago—the topical monologue followed by a short skit followed by celebrity interviews.
And with 4,500 shows during a 30-year Tonight Show run, is it any surprise that Johnny did pizza long before Slice was but a gleam in its founders' eyes?
We did some digging and found some archived 1982 footage of Johnny tossing dough with a young pizzaiolo named Barry O'Halloran.
The clip, which appears on the website of Mr. O'Halloran's present-day pizzeria operation, is strikingly different from today's late-nighters. First of all, Johnny spends a great deal of time with Mr. O'Halloran, initially at the desk and then on stage throwing dough. Today's shows would relegate a non-celebrity segment like this to about three minutes of stage-only time. Also notable is how Johnny playfully ribs Mr. O'Halloran, managing to be funny without a hint of condescension. Johnny gives him a hard time about being Irish in a traditionally Italian field (something that might not play too well on today's airwaves) and about spending lonely nights home alone tossing dough.
The young O'Halloran has the type of pizza philosophy we at Slice like to see. He describes wanting to open his own pizzeria but eschews starting with a franchise, saying you lose the "magic" of pizza when you start concentrating so much on making dough of the paper variety. He also talks about his victory at a San Francisco pizza-dough thow-off, describing his competitors as folks who didn't seem to care about what they were doing. "It's more like just a job for them," he says. (And it's nice to see, via his website, that Mr. O'Halloran realized his dream of opening a pizzeria.)
We also learn that Johnny is well acquainted with Gotham pizzerias ("New York, when you're walking along, you'll see when you look in the windows, you'll see guys workin' the pizza") and that he preferred thin crust: "When I go out, I like the little thin crust on pizza."
This starts a discussion on thick vs. thin crust, with Mr. O'Halloran describing the typical thick-crust eater: "They'll order a couple pitchers of beer, and they'll pipe down the thick crust, and they'll be out the door with their bellies full; they don't really care what it tastes like."
To which Johnny replies, "So these are slobs, huh?" while redeeming his harmless jab at thick-crust eaters with "No mail, please!" Mr. O'Halloran then deems Ed McMahon a thick-crust slob and Johnny a thin-crust gourmet.
Post-banter, they're onstage, with Mr. O'Halloran teaching Johnny how to toss dough. After what are probably some intentional flubs for laughs, Johnny actually proves to be quite adept at it.
Watching the clip reminds us here at Slice how much we enjoyed Carson when he was on the air. And even though we already felt his absence during his retirement years, we'll be missing him that much more. For the last time: Goodnight, Johnny.
— photograph at top by Douglas C. Pizac, Associated Press