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Category:    Home > Reviews > TV Talk Show > Comedy > Johnny Carson - The Ultimate Collection

Johnny Carson – The Ultimate Collection

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: B-     Main Compilations: B

 

 

Though he was not the show’s first host, Johnny Carson will always remain the quintessential host and star of NBC’s still-in-production Tonight Show.  Originally set up as ninety minutes of late night live broadcasts, the series eventually became a taped hour-long show until Carson’s departure and remains that way at the time of this posting years later.  All the talk show hosts since have operated under Carson’s long shadow, including all those with more freedom on cable/satellite networks since.  Johnny Carson – The Ultimate Collection is the DVD set version of the very popular home video release of the highlights of this classic.

 

Carson had originally been on radio, then a talk show host, plus a game show host.  After Jack Parr and Steve Allen founded the series, Carson took over and late night TV would never be the same again.  He began the series at its home in New York, then moved it to Burbank, California and that is where it is to this day.  This set does a fine job of covering his entire 1962 – 1992 period, the main programs are as follows:

 

 

DVD 1

 

The Best Of The 60s and 70s

The Best Of The 70s and 80s

 

DVD 2

 

The Best Of The 80s and 90s

Johnny Goes Home (an outstanding filmed documentary special)

 

DVD 3

 

The 5-21-92 show, the next to last and the last with guests, here being Robin Williams and Bette Midler.

The Last Show, with Carson’s reflections on his career.

 

 

These are exceptionally well picked and remarkably just scratch the surface of the catalog his Carson Productions owns.  One of the nicest things about this set is you can see Carson, Ed McMahon, Doc Severinsen and company inventing television as they go along.  From black and white to color, from live to tape, the show, its writers, and its stars were more innovative than they often get credit for being.  With extras, this adds up to about seven hours of truly non-stop entertainment.  Fans will love it, but if you actually have not sent the show, it is a must-see.  Whether we will ever see entire seasons come out on DVD or not is hard to say, as talk shows are like game shows in that never really happens, but Johnny Carson – The Ultimate Collection lives up to its name and remains a very popular set since its 2002 DVD release.

 

The full frame 1.33 X 1 image comes from the thousands of master elements owned by Carson and remains in his stunningly untapped archive.  In the early years, NBC was using black and white professional NTSC videocassettes and because they were so expensive, they were reused over and over again.  That means even more hundreds of hours were lost because they were taped over.  For what is here, most are original taped sources.  Some are 16mm films of taped shows, or even kinescope copies of lesser quality.  That is just the way even big hit TV series manage to survive, sadly due to terrible lack of insight, storage and preservation efforts.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 is often monophonic sound boosted to some extent to take advantage of simple stereo playback and is clean for the most part, but some of it cannot hide its age.  Newer clips, especially the last two shows on DVD 3 are definitely stereophonic.  Extras are on all three DVDs, each coming with specific dates on when all the guests in the compilation actually appeared.  DVD 1 offers an 11 chapter look at the last months of Carson’s run on Studio 1 Backstage, the second has 12 stills of the tel-op artworks in between each commercial break, 12 magazine covers and a featurette dubbed Danger Johnny with Carson doing various crazy stunts.  DVD 3 has biographies of Carson, McMahon, Severinsen, and producer Fred de Cordova, eight text segments of question notes, four text frames on the history of the series until Carson’s departure, a list of awards, an unnarrated Johnny Carson Story piece that runs just over five minutes making his 25th year, and a nice twist on multi-angle cameras that does not need the multi-angle DVD function.  Highlights of the three cameras used on the final Carson show are offered in various clips.  The result paints a portrait of one of the most important figures in TV history, a set that justly lives up to its name.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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