Johnny Carson at Home: The King of Late Night’s Off-Air Life in 24 Photos
For generations of Americans, Johnny Carson is closely linked with the concept of home. Whether his name conjures fuzzy memories of drifting off to the soundtrack of television static and a parent’s laughter or brings to mind the relief of a few jokes after a long workday, many remember Carson as a nightly ritual. He entertained an audience of roughly 15 million Americans each evening 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 step into onscreen entertainment. The rest is television history: Carson was tapped as host for The Tonight Show in 1962 and shaped the late-night format into what it is today. By then he had already moved to New York, where the program filmed. He spent his time off set in suburban mansions and city aeries until the show relocated to California in 1972, famously taping in Burbank.
In the process of becoming a phenomenon himself, Carson helped launch the careers of a handful of now-iconic 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 the family living room. Read on to reminisce with photos of the small-screen legend at home.
Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection1/24College 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 25 dollars for the evening. We’d go to milkmen’s conventions, fairs, whatever.” The pair married in 1949 and moved to California in 1951.
Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images2/24A 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 in front of their Encino ranch-style dwelling in this 1955 photo alongside their three sons, Christopher, Richard, and Cory.
Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images3/24Home 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 Images4/24An 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: CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images5/24Johnny the joker
“My kids are the only ones I know whose problem is sibling rivalry with a balsam tree,” Carson is quoted as saying in a newspaper article from the 1950s, which details that the entertainer’s three children “aren’t quite old enough to understand why their oldest ‘brother’ sleeps in a suitcase.” Carson was a teenage ventriloquist as well as a magician, but as an adult, he mainly entertained his kids with their eldest “brother,” a dummy he called Eddie—as seen in this 1955 snapshot.
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images6/24Humble home sweet home
The Carson family’s Encino home, originally built in 1951 and shown here five years later, sat on nearly half an acre. A curving walkway lined with neatly trimmed hedges led to the ivy-covered front entrance. “It wasn’t a particularly large house but a nice, comfortable house,” Carson once said of the abode.
Photo: Earl Leaf/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images7/24Diving 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 Images8/24SoCal 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 Images9/24Johnny 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 Images10/24Goodbye, 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 Images11/24…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 home in Harrison, New York, after a day on set. The Birch Hill Estate was the family’s first home in the Empire State.
Photo: NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images12/24Off-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 Images13/24Living 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 Images14/24Home 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 he stepped 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.”
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