Here's Johnny! – Ed McMahon, 2005 ½★

A Sidekick's Lot Is Not an Easy One

Whenever I tuck into a celebrity memoir, great expectations are not an issue. Maybe I’ll learn something. Maybe I’ll be entertained. But it’s unlikely I’ll be blown away, or even remember much about the book a year later. Grant me pleasant diversion, and I’m satisfied.

Johnny Carson – Henry Bushkin, 2013 ★★½

Keeping Uneasy Company with America's Host

One day, while being interviewed by a British journalist for an article that would appear in a February, 1978 issue of The New Yorker, the celebrated talk-show host Johnny Carson gave a strange answer to a routine question. Asked whom he regarded as his best friend, Carson named his lawyer, Henry Bushkin.

This must have come as a surprise to many readers, accustomed as they were to Carson’s smooth repartee with a wide range of guests on NBC-TV’s “The Tonight Show.” It certainly surprised Bushkin. 

But it won’t surprise anyone reading Bushkin’s memoir of life with Carson. By the time the anecdote occurs, almost halfway through the book, one senses Carson was a man without much in the way of friends or sentiment.