MYSTIC FROM THE EAST

My son, Devin, is the authority on all things comic. He has spent much of his life examining the stylings of a variety of comics, from Garry Shandling to Norm MacDonald to Ricky Gervais. I don't pretend to keep up with most contemporary comics (although Gervais's work is appointment viewing for me), but I am well grounded in the comedy of the Paleolithic Age in which I grew up. I was fortunate to see comics of all varieties perform on early television variety shows. I saw everyone from the witty and topical (Mort Sahl, Dick Gregory) to the silly and sincere (Red Skelton) to the profane and incendiary (literally) Richard Pryor and Sam Kinison. There were the kings of the one-liners (Bob Hope). There were the strange visitors from another planet (Jonathan Winters, Robin Williams). I enjoyed comic teams (Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, Laurel and Hardy (the greatest of all), Stiller and Meara, Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, Rowan and Martin, Nichols and May, Allen & Rossi, and the Smothers Brothers among many others. There were those who specialized in malapropisms (Norm Crosby) and those who pretended to be drunk (Frank Fontaine), and those who went from conventional to off-the-wall (George Carlin). There were those who specialized in New York Humor (like Robert Klein), and those who broke barriers for women (Joan Rivers, Rosanne, Phyllis Diller, Moms Mabley), and those who went from the comedy clubs to the world of cinema (Woody Allen). I sat around the house with friends listening to LPs with 40 minutes of recorded humor by Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart and Redd Foxx and Shelley Berman. There was the borscht belt schtick of Buddy Hackett and Jackie Mason and Henny Youngman--and my favorite of this ilk--Rodney Dangerfield. There were the mimics (Vaughn Meader, David Frye, Rich Little, Frank Gorshin). And, uncategorizable, there was Rickles.

Almost all of these people and dozens of others made regular appearances on the Tonight Show, hosted for thirty years by Johnny Carson. For many young comics, getting the "Okay" hand sign from Johnny after their 7-10 minute set was tantamount to having your career choice validated. For a fortunate few, having Johnny call you over to the couch after the set meant you would soon be a star. He had that kind of power.

With such a rich tapestry of comedy to choose from, it would be a foolish pursuit to select the greatest comic bit of all, but for me it is Johnny Carson's own bit--Carnac the Magnificent. The moment I heard that there would be a "visitor from the East" on the show that night, I was ecstatic. Like any sketch brought out multiple times a year for the better parts of three decades, the pleasure was usually derived not from the particular wit of the jokes on that particular night but from the reassuring "sameness" of the bit; it was the comedic equivalent of comfort food. And there was always the possibility of something going wrong, which usually led to some memorable moments.

In his New Yorker tribute to the comedic writer Marshall Brickman (co-author of Annie Hall) last week, Steve Martin wrote, "When he died, last year, I learned that he was the originator of Johnny Carson’s eternally fresh routine “Carnac the Magnificent.” Sadly, Steve was very much mistaken, although Brickman did play a role in the structure of the bit. The concept of Carnac did not originate with Johnny Carson. For those unfamiliar with the routine, Johnny appears on stage dressed as a mystic visionary. He is then lauded by Tonight Show sidekick Ed McMahon, holding a stack of white envelopes, with a variation of the following descriptor: "I hold in my hand the envelopes. As a child of four can plainly see, these envelopes have been hermetically sealed. They have been kept in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnall's porch since noon today. NO ONE [at this shout, Carnac always acts startled] knows the contents of these envelopes – but you, in your mystical and borderline divine way, will ascertain the answers having never before heard the questions."

As you will see below, Steve Allen, earlier host of the Tonight Show, had a not dissimilar routine called Question Man with his sidekick Tom Poston, a ubiquitous presence in 50s and 60s television.

Below is a clip from 1974, about a dozen years into Johnny's run, and a few years after the show moved from New York to California. By this time certain tropes had been well established. Carnac always looks a bit lost when the curtains part. He invariably stumbles when he approaches the desk (on two occasions he actually destroys prop desks). He tears open and blows into each envelope before removing the question. He loses his patience with Ed, who always repeats Carnac's pronouncements. And he glares at the audience when his joke line bombs. It is those moments that prompted Tonight Show writer Marshall Brickman to add the following to the bit. When a joke fails, Carnac wishes some disturbing fate upon those in the audience who have groaned at the unappreciated joke, usually involving a "weird holy man" or a "yak" or your "sister" in some combination. Those insults often became the highlights of the sketch. At the sketch's conclusion, Ed would announce "I hold in my hand the last envelope", which spurred the audience into raucous applause (even the audience knew its part well). That would prompt Carnac into his most vivid curse of all. The final joke often, but not always, involved the comic "rule of three"--which would reverberate like a machine gun as Carnac spit out the "divined" question to the answer. And off he would go--presumably back "East".

Of course, as I said, sometimes things didn't go exactly according to plan, as on the following night in the mid 1980s when the sketch bombed, not least in part because Carnac was missing an important part of the bit.

A good many of the jokes don't resonate any longer because they were topical and of a place or time (often Los Angeles) that is largely unknown to viewers today. But you can tell which lines strike a chord with the audience. Many of the jokes skewer prominent personalities or political figures or the incompetence of a bureaucratic institution like the IRS or the Air-Traffic Controllers or NBC Television studios. Many reflected some current story in the newspaper headlines. Below is a compilation clip, which concludes with the joke that got the biggest laugh in the entire run of the sketch. But there are many more segments available on YouTube, so if you enjoy, go exploring.