Dean Martin / Johnny Carson 1969 TV

One of the funniest episodes of late-night TV, a snapshot of the anything goes late 60's and Johnny's favorite episode. Dean Martin makes an unexpected appearance and steals the show from Bob Hope. The underrated George Gobel then shows up (in part 2) and unleashes one of the greatest lines of all time. Dean struggles to find an ashtray to the hilarity of all and Johnny is left valiantly trying to hang on to some kind of order and keep the censors happy."

Honestly, watched it from start to finish, and didn’t even crack a smile.
Totally unfunny. ol’ Deano acting like a drunk, Johnny egging him on, audience reacting on cue to the “Laugh” and “Applause” signs.

Absolute crap.

Thanks for the post. Love the old Johnny Carson show. Great stuff. Used to watch it in the 70’s and 80’s as a kid. And I grew up with an alcoholic parent and find Old Deano funny. I know we’re all different, with different thresholds, but I don’t apply my own circumstance to everyone else.

That may well be so, nevertheless viewers tend to underrate the role of writers in television shows and overrate the pretty face, pretty hair stars. What do writers write for game shows, for example? For news shows? Why were teleprompters invented in the first place? Talking heads are really reading heads.

It is interesting to see what passed for "late-night TV" back in 1969. This was a very interesting era in which the hippie generation was juxtaposed with the brat pack generation - who were still mostly in their 30s and 40s at the time.

1969 was the year of Woodstock yet Johnny Carson definitely played to an older crowd in his late-night TV show.

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, the whole Dean Martin/Frank Sinatra/Sammy Davis Jr. scene was most uncool. Yet today as I continue to age, I am starting to appreciate a lot of the culture that my father was exposed to back in the 1950s and 1960s - when he was a young man. Consequently, I find it hard to listen to Led Zeppelin - that music now gives me a headache.

"Mad Men" is some sort of TV show and mostly geared towards women, but I like watching it with my wife because you have guys basically coming to work smoking cigarettes, drinking shots of bourbon after scoring a major advertising deal, and having secretaries to do a lot of their work for them (as well as screen their calls). That is something that does not happen these days - even if you are a VP at a major corporation.

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