I’ve always wanted to read Johnny Carson’s memoir and then soon realized that he never wrote one. I don’t know why, but I thought that this was the next best thing: a biography written by his longtime lawyer/possibly-best-friend-it’s-unclear, Henry Bushkin. Looking back, why on earth would I think that a lawyer would be the best one to sum up the life of this huge celebrity? No idea. I wish I hadn’t read it. Reasons why are ahead.
First of all, whether it’s true or not, Henry makes Johnny’s mother sound like the most awful person in his life. He went into details of how generous Johnny would be with making sure his parents had everything they could’ve ever wanted and his mother never seemed to be impressed or cared in the slightest. How she was a cold and emotionless woman and she’s ultimately the reason that Carson himself had such issues with commitment and women and most of his personal relationships. And I don’t know… but hearing that story from Carson would be one thing, but to have it be told secondhand from a person who Johnny ultimately fired seems… wrong. He wrote this book long after Johnny had died and that only makes things worse in my mind, like he didn’t even have the guts to write it while he was still here because Carson definitely would’ve been against such a breach of privacy.
It’s wildly known that Johnny cheated on his wives and though Bushkin (also a married man) goes in great detail about many of those times, he slips in his own infidelity in this one sentence: “I had many adventures in Vegas and on the road that did nothing to reinforce marital bonds.” UUUUUGGGGGGHHHHH. Yes, he’s trash for cheating on his wife, but he’s even scummier for phrasing it so lightly like that.
Maybe I’m being naive about this, but I had no idea about Carson’s huge ego (again, this is coming from the mouth of Bushkin). It makes sense that he had one being worth millions and having so much power, but it’s so disheartening to read some of the stories about him being such a complete asshole. Why did I read this book?!
The fact that Carson would cheat on his wife with the reasoning of “out of sight out of mind” is so gross and I hate that I heard it.
He quotes from Susan Forward’s book Toxic Parents that says, “All of us develop our expectations about how people will treat us based on our relationships with our parents. If those relationships are, for the most part, emotionally nourishing, respectful of our rights and feelings, we’ll grow up expecting others to treat us in much the same way… But if childhood is a time of unrelenting anxiety, tension, and pain, then we develop negative expectations and rigid defense.” And while this is so insightful and true, I can’t help but think that Carson (or the way that Bushkin made him appear in this book) made no attempt to ever move past the way that he was treated by his mother. He blamed her for it his entire life.
I wish this book wasn’t written. Not because it paints Carson in such an unfavorable light (and it’s not entirely about what an awful person he was, there are many stories of him being generous and giving), but because he didn’t have anything to do with writing it. It’s unfair. Someone else can’t write your memoir for you. I know that’s it’s seen as an unofficial biography, but Bushkin was close friends with the man at one point and it reads more intimate than a regular biography. He attempted to write his memoir for him and that’s just wrong. Don’t read it. I wish I hadn’t.