Johnny Carson at Home: The King of Late Night’s Off-Air Life in 20 Photos
Heeere’s a look inside the OG TV legend’s domestic world
For multiple generations of Americans, Johnny Carson is closely linked with the concept of home. Whether his name conjures fuzzy memories of drifting off to the quiet soundtrack of television static and a parent’s laughter, or brings to mind tuning in to hear his take on the news after a long workday, many remember Carson as a nightly ritual. He entertained an audience of roughly 15 million Americans per night on The Tonight Show, with 55 million tuning in to watch his final 1992 episode after he spent three decades as host. Though he was a familiar face in households across the country, Carson generally preferred to keep his off-duty life private, and devoted most of his time to his work rather than his home life.
Before his rise as one of the most recognizable (and highest paid) faces on TV, Carson was an aspiring magician who grew up in Nebraska. He found work in Omaha as a local radio personality before moving to Los Angeles to switch to onscreen entertainment. The rest is television history: After working his way up the ranks, Carson was tapped as host for the late-night talk show in 1962, shaping the format into what it is today. In the process, he helped launch the careers of numerous comedians (including Joan Rivers, Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneres, Jay Leno, and David Letterman) and interviewed just about every cultural icon you can think of. Before the ’70s–’80s heyday of his late-night dominance, when he was beamed into living rooms across America every evening, he practiced skits for a crowd of just four—his wife and three sons—in his home living room. Read on to reminisce with photos of the small-screen legend at home.
Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection1/20College sweethearts
Carson poses in the yard of the Encino, California, home that he shared with his wife, Joan “Jody” Wolcott, in 1955. The couple met at the University of Nebraska. “I was John’s assistant in his magic act,” Wolcott told biographer Paul Corkery. “In fact, those were our dates; he never had any money for a real date. He made twenty-five dollars for the evening. We’d go to milkmen’s conventions, fairs, whatever.” The pair were wed in 1949 and moved to California in 1951.
Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images2/20A show (and house) of his own
Carson started his West Coast career as a general station announcer before finally getting his own show, Carson’s Cellar, on local station KNXT. It caught the eyes of comedian Red Skelton, who hired Carson as a writer for the popular Red Skelton Show. Shortly after, Carson broke through with his namesake CBS program, The Johnny Carson Show, which ran from June 1955 until March 1956. He and Wolcott are pictured with their Encino ranch-style dwelling in this 1955 photo alongside their three sons, Christopher, Richard, and Cory.
Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images3/20Home on Hayvenhurst
“It was the first home I had ever owned in my life, and I mortgaged everything I had to buy this house,” Carson said of the Hayvenhurst Avenue residence, where he and his family are shown again in this 1955 snapshot. “I can still remember the price—there are certain things in your life that you always remember because it’s kind of a turning point—$42,000, which was a lot of money in 1955,” he said during a 1980 episode of Tonight. Adjusted for inflation, the home would have cost about $500,000 today.
Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images4/20An animated nursery, from Carson to Cash
The nursery’s playful mural, as seen in this 1955 snapshot, ended up being a draw for the Encino property’s next owner: Johnny Cash. The Man in Black was early in his career when he bought the pad in the late 1950s. “I remember coming into that house to sign the papers, and there you were, and the real estate man,” Cash recalled during a chat with Carson on a 1980 episode of Tonight. “And what we really liked about it was [what] you had in the bedroom for the children…. you had Mickey Mouse and clowns and all kind of cartoon characters painted on the walls, and [my] little girls just loved that.”
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images5/20Humble home sweet home
Photo: Earl Leaf/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images6/20Diving in
During his short ownership of the dwelling, Carson added a swimming pool to the fenced-in backyard. The Corning, Iowa–born comedian is pictured jumping into the home’s fun new feature in this 1956 photo.
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images7/20SoCal couple
Carson and Jody pose at their backyard pool in this 1956 photo. A classic lawn chair, a striped and scalloped awning, and a fringed umbrella furnish the pool deck. “[Jody] probably felt the need to become a Hollywood wife of some sort, whatever that meant,” biographer Bill Zehme explained of this time period. “Even though [Carson] wasn’t [yet] a superstar by any means, they had to learn how to be ‘not Nebraskan’ anymore.”
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images8/20Johnny and Jody
The Carsons pose in a doorway of their Encino home here in 1956. A year prior, the duo appeared together on a 1955 cover of TV Guide. According to biographer Paul Corkery, Jody, who had been a magician’s assistant to Carson back in their college days, was employed as a singer for The Johnny Carson Show.
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images9/20Goodbye, California
Carson looks out the window of his Encino home in this photo from 1956, the same year The Johnny Carson Show was canceled. The program had not established the proper identity to let Carson’s humor shine, and its performance with audiences suffered. Seven directors and eight writers cycled through the studio doors over the program’s 39-week run.
Photo: NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images10/20…And hello to New York
Carson’s next gig was as host of a game show called Who Do You Trust?, which was filmed in New York. In this May 1958 snapshot, Jody and the Carson boys greet the entertainer as he returns to their picturesque Birch Hill Estate in Harrison, New York, after a day on set.
Photo: NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images11/20Off-duty comic
Carson pores over scripts alone in a living area of the Westchester County home in 1958. Though he was charming while performing, he was a self-described loner and famously aloof off-camera. “I feel much more comfortable with a studio audience,” Carson said in 1978. “On the show, I’m in control. Socially, I’m not in control.”
Photo: NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images12/20Living room roughhousing
In this 1958 photo, Carson is pictured playing with his two eldest in the New York abode. The boys had a somewhat rambunctious reputation locally; according to Corkery, the Carson kids launched mice into the air with a homemade rocket the year after this photo was taken. “They were very lively,” a neighbor told the biographer. “Jody often seemed to have her hands full. But they really weren’t any more trouble than other kids in the neighborhood.”
Photo: NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images13/20Home rehearsals
This 1958 snapshot shows the TV host running through a Who Do You Trust? skit in front of his family in their New York pad. Carson would remain on the show for five years, until stepping into Jack Paar’s shoes on Tonight. “I turned The Tonight Show down the first time it was offered to me because Who Do You Trust? was very comfortable and quite easy,” he explained. “[But] the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that Tonight was the only network show where I could do the nutty, experimental, low-key thing I like best.”
Photo: NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images14/20Work-life imbalance
While polished images of Carson and Jody at home make the relationship seem picture-perfect, their union wasn’t as smooth as it appears. The couple separated the year after this 1958 photo was taken. “If I had given as much to marriage as I gave to The Tonight Show, I’d probably have a hell of a marriage,” Carson said in 1986. “But the fact is, I haven’t given that, and there you have the simple reason for the failure of my marriages: I put the energy into the show.”
Photo: New York Daily News Archive/Getty Images15/20Shifting family structure
Christopher, Cory, and Richard sit in front of their parents at their Birch Hill Estate in this photo from the same 1958 photo shoot. “Kids couldn’t be more miserable living with parents who can’t stand each other,” Carson later reflected on his divorce from Wolcott, which he called “the worst personal experience of [his] life” in a 1967 interview with Playboy. “They’re far better off if there’s an honest, clean divorce. I’m happy to notice that my boys don’t seem to be negatively affected by mine."
Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection16/20Move to Manhattan
Carson and Wolcott officially divorced in 1963, the year after he stepped in to replace Paar as host of The Tonight Show. He and his second wife, Pan Am stewardess turned television show host Joanne Copeland, were married later that year. The newlyweds are pictured at their home bar in this 1964 snapshot. According to a Vanity Fair interview with Dick Cavett, who wrote for The Tonight Show during this era, the pair maintained a four-bedroom unit at 1161 York Avenue.
Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection17/20Home office with a wild rug
Carson’s home office, pictured in 1964, had a fairly muted design—aside from the zebra rug. Reportedly, the apartment had been a bachelor pad before Carson married Copeland, who redecorated the Lenox Hill dwelling.
Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection18/20Home bar
Carson poses in front of the apartment’s dark-wood bar, which matched the parquet floors, in 1964. Later, the comedian would open up about his struggles with alcohol. “I found out I just did not drink well,” he said in 1979. “And when I did drink—rather than a lot of people who become fun-loving, gregarious, and love everybody—I would go just the opposite. And it would happen just like that!” The problem followed Carson throughout his marriages. “I was married to two different people,” Copeland later recalled. “He became a tiger. … He had a low tolerance. He had blackouts.”
Photo: David McLane/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images19/20Moving on up
The couple are pictured in their Manhattan apartment in September 1965. Around this time, they would attend a dinner at the home of producer and talk-show host David Susskind, who lived in a co-op at the United Nations Plaza. “You have to move here,” Susskind reportedly told Carson. “How can you not wake up happy living here?” And so, the couple packed up to move into the condominium where writer Truman Capote, actor Cliff Robertson, fashion designer Bonnie Cashin, and Robert F. Kennedy also owned units.
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Photo: Ben Martin/Getty Images20/20Big Apple living
Carson and Joanne share a laugh in the living room of their nine-room duplex in the west wing of the U.N. Plaza in 1967. According to Vanity Fair, the apartment cost $173,000. Carson moved in with eight color television sets and 16 phones, per VF. Joanne reportedly decorated the apartment with wolf, cheetah, and lamb skins. “This is a building of high achievers,” she told Time in 1969. “People who live here are not climbing. They have arrived.”
Carson would eventually be married four times, with his first three wives nearly sharing the same name; after Joan and Joanne (from whom he was divorced in 1972), there was Joanna Holland, a model who Carson was married to from 1972 until 1985. Finally, in 1987, he married Alexis Maas, who he reportedly met on a beach in Malibu; they remained together until his 2005 death at the age of 79.
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