Jay Leno
Monologuiste
Jay Leno
Monologuiste Extraordinaire!
(Et Propriétaire de Voitures)
It is to Johnny Carson that EVERYONE bestows the title of the
KING OF LATE NIGHT TELEVISION
Certainly, given the history of television and 
culture, we must acknowledge this is both true and just.
And yet we must affirm that the title of the
KING OF LATE NIGHT MONOLOGUISTS
... must go to James Douglas Muir "Jay" Leno.
But how, you ask, can you distinguish 'twixt the twain, the Monologue and the Show - variously called Tonight, The Tonight Show, or The Tonight Show with [FILL-IN-THE-BLANK], or simply in colloquial parlance, [FILL-IN-THE-BLANK]1. One is inexorably linked to the other. And so the King of the One must be the King of the Other.
Footnote
It was common when talking about the Tonight Show to say something like "Did you see Johnny Carson last night?" Once this habit started it caught on and today most talk and interview shows are informally referred to by the name of the host.
Ne c'est pas?
Weeeeeellllll, not quite.
Today Johnny's fans will go back to the monologues - which began each show - and find as much mirth now as then. But what will often draw their ire is how young viewers will shrug their shoulders and ask what's so funny about Johnny Carson.
Johnny Carson
The King of Late Night Television
And we must admit it. A lot of Johnny's jokes fell flat, eliciting a groan from the audience or worse, silence. True - as his announcer and sidekick, Ed McMahon, pointed out - Johnny was at his best when he was recovering from a bad joke. And in some of his monologues Johnny had to do a whole lot of recovering:
There's some wonderful things to see here in Burbank. Do you know for example that they have their own wax museum? It's called "Burbank"2.
Footnote
It's not clear what Johnny - or rather his writers - really meant here. Maybe the joke is that many people see wax museums as boring places and the running joke was about how there was less than exciting culture in "Beautiful Downtown Burbank" .
A late report from the newsroom just came in. The elephant man was just arrested for creating a disturbance at the supermarket by requesting to be double bagged3.
Footnote
The Elephant Man referred to Joseph Merrick (August 5, 1862 - April 11, 1890) and the popular play that told of his life. Joseph Merrick suffered from a condition that produced uncontrolled growths on his bones and skin that resulted in major deformities. Probably the "joke" is a reference to when Merrick went out he covered his face with a bag to disguise his deformities.
Prince Charles has cancelled his plans to ride the mechanical bull at Gilly's Bar4.
Footnote
Again a rather obscure comment, possibly referring to Prince Charles's many trips around the world where he would take part in the customs and practices of the indigenous peoples.
I understand [Secretary of State Alexander] Haig's come up with an idea for new military uniforms. He's got four stars and a battery on his shoulder5.
Footnote
Although even the audience didn't get the joke, it's meaning is clear. It referred to commercials that featured actor Robert Conrad who played tough he-man characters in The Wild Wild West (1965 - 1969) and Baa Baa Black Sheep (1976-1978), later known as Black Sheep Squadron. The commercials were for Eveready batteries and touted their durability - that is, their "toughness". We saw Bob in some heady masculine activity like motorcycle riding and the commercial concluded with an Eveready battery on Bob's shoulder and Bob daring the viewer to knock it off.
One difference between Jay and John is that Jay would sometimes add in video clips as part of the monologue. One of the most popular was the "gas-skit". This was when Kevin Eubanks, the leader of the Tonight Show band, was complaining about the bad mileage he was getting in his new car. The tank always seemed to be on empty. Jay told him he simply had to drive more carefully and avoid the jack-rabbit starts and stops.
But then the announcer, Ed Hall, told Jay that he, Jay, had a secret, and they had "security camera" footage to prove it. Over Jay's voluble protests the video was shown of Jay siphoning gas from Kevin's car6.
Footnote
That must have been one heck of a security camera. It was able to film from various angles and locations, zoom in for closeups, and pan back for wider shots.
Very few of Jay's jokes fell flat and they usually got good laughs. If there were groans it was because he had strayed from the best of taste. One time Jay mentioned that the last American survivor of the Titanic disaster had just died at age 99. Holding his hands about two feet apart, Jay added:
"The sad part was she was just this close to the shore."
After the mixture of self-conscious laughter and admonitory groans, Kevin said,
"Oh, that's a rough one, Jay."
Alas, as Ecclesiastes says omnia tempus habent et suis spatiis transeunt universa sub caelo. Although Jay's last show was not too long ago - at least compared to the span since Johnny's departure nearly three decades past - his lengthy tenure of 1992 to 2014 (with the hiatus between 2009 and 2010 where Conan O'Brien assumed Tonight's helm) assures that any monologue heavy with topical and political humor will soon be unintelligible. After all, how many people today will get jokes like:
I finally got me one of those fancy Beverly Hills accountants. Boy, this guy is sharp. I had him fill out my census form. I got back $3007.
... and ...
Did you hear 700 Yugos have mysteriously vanished from the city streets in the last three years? Well, the police have finally solved the mystery. It seem the owners were parking them on the wrong side of the street during trash day8.
Footnote
The Yugo was a compact automobile from Yugoslavia and acquired a reputation as being one of the worst cars you could buy.
... as well as ...
Just before the show I went to the dressing room and was going to hang up my jacket. There was a fisherman in the closet9.
Footnote
The reference is to the case of a young Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, who had come to the United States as a refugee. Members of the Cuban community in Florida refused to turn Elian over to the Federal authorities and eventually agents raided the home where he was held. One of the adults in the house was a fisherman and was photographed as he was standing in a closet. Eventually Elian's father was allowed to come to the United States and when it was clear Elian wanted to return with his father to Cuba he was allowed to leave. Polls taken showed most people in the US agreed with the decision.
... or ...
Oh, yeah. I got my Lincoln Savings and Loans wrist watch. It's kind of hard to read since the hands are always in the center of the clock10.
Footnote
A reference to the Savings and Loan scandal of the time. There had been a big push for deregulation of the banking industry and surprise! surprise! this was taken advantage of by certain bankers who realized personal gain did not require solvency of the institutions. Ultimately hundreds of savings and loans failed. But the clock reference is now a bit obscure.
... and then there's ...
David Crosby is marketing a new line of salsa. Sorry. I don't want anything that David Crosby says "I made it myself11."
Footnote
David Crosby is a rock musician most famous for being a member of the close harmony supergroup Crosby, Stills, and Nash. After the group split up David underwent hard times where he was arrested and imprisoned for drug possession. His time in jail probably saved his life and once he got out he turned out much for the better.
Each of the Tonight Show hosts had a signature segment: Steve Allen's "Man on the Street", Jack Paar's traveling to other countries, Johnny Carson's "Mighty Carson Art Players" and "Carnac the Magnificent". Jay had several - "Jaywalking", "Stuff We Found on E-Bay", and others. But the most popular was "Headlines" even though today the introduction is a bit dated as it showed newspapers rolling off the presses.
Jay would have a set of cards where the newspaper article was pasted for easy display to the camera. Jay would then read the headlines and make whatever comments seemed appropriate.
Examples of the headlines are:
Federal Agents Raid Gun Shop - Find Weapons
Boring Issues Debated at Length
Most Doctors Agree that Breathing Is Good For You
They weren't all just headlines. There were ads.
SHEEP. SLIGHTLY used. Housebroke. Free. You pick up.
Pretty much everyone knows Jay is a car enthusiast and Jay Leno's Garage which started out as a "podcast" in 2012 soon became a television series. The show's interest extends beyond that of automobile enthusiasm and can be quite educational for anyone interested in American culture. After all, from the start of the 20th century, the car quickly began its inexorable intertwining with other parts of Americana, and Jay explains the workings of the cars and what made them unique for the time.
The cars run the gamut from those of designed for Mr. and Mrs. Everyperson (the 1972 Gremlin) to the truly elite (a 1934 Rolls Royce). Then there were those aspiring beyond the middle class.
One show featured the 1966 Lincoln Continental Convertible. Even today with modern computer processors controlling our cars, it's amazing to watch Jay and a specialist pointing out what an incredibly complex automobile it was. The 1960's models were distinguished not only by their massive size but by their culmination of electrical switches, relays, and sub-motors that without their coordination the car just wouldn't work.
Nevertheless the Continental Convertible was the extreme in luxury cars. It produced an extremely smooth ride - a big selling point - and you hardly noticed bumps. As an additional sign of the then-times the riders - driver and passengers - each had a large ash tray and cigarette lighter at their elbow.
The car could accomodate six people and comfortably. In less than perfect weather you also didn't select heat or air conditioner. You just punched out "low" or "high" for the fan speed and the correct temperature was automatically adjusted based on the ambient temperature. Although today the Continental sedans are still being produced, the convertible model was never profitable and was discontinued after a few years
The shows don't only celebrate cars produced en masse or even successfully. There was a show about the Chrysler Turbine Car of 1963. The car was manufactured in Italy and introduced in the United States in late 1963. The supposed advantage is the car could run on any fuel as long as it would burn in air. As part of their promotion program, Chrysler took one of the cars to Mexico and ran it on tequila. In France they used Chanel No. 5 perfume.
But the mileage was poor. Although on the highway it got 19 miles per gallon - which at the time was pretty good - but the car would also idle at 23,000 rpm. This dropped the mileage below what was typical for a car of the time. Of course the price of gas was only 23 cents a gallon - cheap even by the standards of the day - and fuel cost wasn't a major concern to the consumer.
One of the selling points was the smooth engine. Jay put a glass of water on the engine when it started up and there was no discernable vibration. The sound of the car was a whoosh-whine reminiscent of the jet sounds of the movies, but was quiet compared to piston driven engines.
But one problem was the emissions. Although the exhaust temperature was actually lower compared to piston cars, the emission pollutants were too high for the emerging standards.
The turbine cars were virtually handmade and it never went beyond the test stage. There were only about 54 in the US fleet and they were on the road between 1963 and 1966. Although the car would not have been marketable based on merits alone, Chrysler had just hit one of a number of financial reverses and so economically the company couldn't mass produce the car anyway.
Jay also had truly antique cars - including a collection of steam automobiles. One was Advance Steam Traction (yes, it's Traction) from 1906 and of course he had some Stanley Steamers.
The Stanley Steamer was a classic automobile and in the days when gasoline was still a waste product of petroleum refining, steam was the primary source of modern power. Jay's Stanley is not a true original since the originals were made largely of wood.
Steam powered automobiles were still manufactured into the 1920's. One advantage was you could use fuel of almost any kind. But gasoline was common. Using gasoline seems strange since you would think an internal combustion engine using the fuel directly would be simpler.
Well, not at first. Steam engines had been around for centuries - millennia, even. The first steam engine was invented by Hero of Alexandria who lived from 10 CE to 70 CE. Called the aeolipile it was a metal sphere filled with water. When it was heated over a fire, the steam was ejected through side jets, and the sphere would rotate. But Hero never figured out how to make the contraption do useful work.
When commercial automobiles began rolling from the factories, steam engines were more reliable, more durable, and much quieter than the then rather crude internal combustion engines. Stanley Steamers also used an innovation where unlike other steam engines - such as used in locomotives - if the water got too low instead of heating a boiler plate to where it would crack and the engine explode, a copper tube would start to melt, resulting in loss of pressure, but not - usually - an explosion. But the steam cars could still backfire as Jay would at times inadvertently demonstrate.
What is a surprise is the speed of the steam cars. In 1906 a Stanley was clocked at 127 mile per hour. This was an incredible speed in the day when most people were still riding around in horse drawn carriages.
A drawback of the steam automobile was the time it took for the boiler to heat the water. In early models this could be half an hour. But by 1925 steam cars - such as the Dobles - started up by the touch of a button and heat-up time was a minute or less. But alas, ultimately the complexity of the steam engines both in construction and operation - you had 13 steps to start up a Doble - sent people to the gasoline driven internal combustion engine. As gasoline was cheaply plentiful, the steam automobiles faded. But if anyone ever wants to build a nuclear powered car, it would mandate a return to steam.
References
"The Timeless Humor of Johnny Carson", Susan Kingwriter, The Los Angeles Times, September 23, 2017
"That Old Feeling: Paar Excellence", Richard Corliss, Time, January 30, 2004.
"Crazy headlines Jay Leno Loved", News24, February 7, 2014.
"1963 Chrysler Turbine", Jay Leno's Garage, November 7, 2012.
"1906 Advance Steam Traction Engine", Jay Leno's Garage, September 13, 2013.
"Historic Engines - Stanley Steamer", Jeff Zurschmeide, January 30, 2017.
Jay Leno's Garage, 2012-2019.
"Who Invented the Steam Engine?" Elizabeth Palermo, Live Science, March 19, 2014.