October 1, 1962-May 22, 1992.
An excerpt from this "lost" broadcast.
Tony Randall discusses with Johnny his new record album which includes the the original "Boo-Hoo" classic co-written by Carmen Lombardo. Both Lombardo and Randall sing a duet of the song.
Tony recounts the time he was co-hosting with Betsy Palmer "It's Oscar Night in Hollywood," live from the Brown Derby on April 4, 1960. It was a half hour broadcast where Randall was suppose to interview celebrities attending the Oscar broadcast, including Gary Cooper, prior to the Academy Awards actual telecast. Everything goes wrong for Tony including a last minute decision by the Academy to NOT have any actors or actresses appear before the the actual Oscar telecast itself. Randall relates numerous incidents from that disastrous broadcast.
Johnny and Tony discussing moments when they would forget their lines, actress Carolyn Jones tells the story of John Barrymore who on stage was drunk and forgot his lines. The stage manager feeds Barrymore and his co-star on stage the line. Barrymore yells to the stage manager, "We know the line, but who says it?" Johnny loves the anecdote.
Johnny Carson, host of NBC's network late-night "Tonight Show" reigned for 30 unprecedented years...five times the combined tenure of Steve Allen, and Jack Paar. Carson was impervious to competition, including efforts to dethrone him by Les Crane, Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett, Jack Paar, Pat Sajak, Joan Rivers, and Arsenio Hall. Sadly, very few complete "Tonight Show" broadcasts survive during Johnny Carson's first ten years of broadcasting. Around 1965, through the early 1970's, oldest tapes were first erased systematically by orders from myopic NBC executives, to be recycled for purposes of saving money. Ironically, in many cases, these older master tapes were too brittle, and portended probable drop-outs for re-use after being erased. Subsequently blank after being erased, these older questionable master 2" Quad tapes were either sparingly used or never used again for recording new programming and eventually were discarded. Saving thousands of dollars at the time (wiping master tapes for potential re-use) resulted in losing millions of dollars by NBC in today's marketplace, and more importantly wiping thousands of historic TONIGHT SHOW broadcasts, which contain precious personal anecdotes from political, show business, and sports icons of the past.