The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

Recurring segments and skits

• Carnac the Magnificent, where Carson played a psychic who gave a punchline to a joke before revealing the corny setup. This was to some degree a variation on Steve Allen's recurring "The Question Man" sketch. "Carnac" examples:
• "Billy Graham, Virginia Graham and Lester Maddux" ... "Name two Grahams and a Cracker!"
• "Debate" ... "What do you use to catch de fish?"
• "Frathouse" ... "What do you call a Japanese home struck by a meteor?"
• "Floyd R. Turbo," a dimwitted yokel responding to a TV station editorial.
• "Art Fern," the fast-talking host of a "Tea Time Movie" program, who advertised inane products and romanced his attractive blonde assistant, played by Carol Wayne (1971-82) and Teresa Ganzel (1982-91), when the camera was off.

:The fake movies he would introduce usually had a cast of several actors with similar-sounding names, typically topped off by some variation on "Rex, the Wonder Horse."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:On giving directions to a fake store he was touting, he would show a spaghetti-like road map, sometimes with a literal "fork in the road," other times making the joke, "Go to the Slauson Cutoff...", and the audience would recite with him, "...cut off your Slauson!"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• "Aunt Blabby," an old woman whose appearance and speech pattern bore more than a passing resemblance to comedian Jonathan Winters' character "Maude Frickert".
• "Stump the Band," where studio audience members ask the band to try to play obscure songs given only the title. Unlike when this routine was done during the Jack Paar years with the Jose Melis band, Doc's band almost never knew the song, but that did not stop them from inventing one on the spot. Example:

:Guest's request: My Dead Dog Rover

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:Doc Severinsen, singing: "My dead dog Rover / lay under the sun / and stayed there all summer / until he was done!"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• "The Mighty Carson Art Players," which spoofed news, movies, television shows, and commercials.

:Example: Johnny, dressed as a doctor, starting to talk about some intimate topic (just as in the real ad) and then being hit by cream pies from several directions at once.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• "The Edge of Wetness," in which Johnny would read humorous plot summaries of a fictional soap opera while the camera panned the audience, stopping on an unsuspecting audience member who Carson claimed was, for example, the butler from the soap.