My general impression of Johnny Carson was that I didn't much like him but I never watched him that much and he was not fresh in my mind, so when I noticed TMN was running some "classic interviews" from The Tonight Show last month, I decided to take a look and revisit that whole subject.
So one night I taped a block of interviews. They were Henry Fonda, Elizabeth Taylor, Susan Sarandon, William Holden and Goldie Hawn. I think they were all from the 70's. Susan Sarandon was from her ingenue days, pre-Rocky Horror. Very charming. Anyway, an interesting bunch of subjects all-in-all (for old people anyway).
Bottom line: I was right. Johnny Carson was not very good. He was, I would say, a poor interviewer. Not that he asked bad questions but he was the classic over-explainer of his questions who would take what should be a 6 word question and turn it into a novella.
And he was not very funny. He did a lot of mugging and he was very obvious.
So that's what I have to say about that.