The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson - Recurring Segments and Skits - Characters

Characters

• Carnac the Magnificent, in which Carson played a psychic who clairvoyantly divined the answer to a question contained in a sealed envelope. This was to some degree a variation on Steve Allen's recurring "The Question Man" sketch. The answer was always an outrageous pun. "Carnac" examples:
  • "Billy Graham, Virginia Graham, and Lester Maddox" ... "Name two Grahams and a Cracker!"
  • "Over 105 in Los Angeles" ... "Under the Reagan plan, how old do you have to be to collect Social Security?"
  • "V-8" ... "What kind of social disease can you get from an octopus?"
  • "Debate" ... "What do you use to catch de fish?"
  • "Baja" ... "What sound does a sheep make when it laughs?"'
  • "Camelot" ... "Where do Arabians park their camels?"
  • "Ben-Gay" ... "Why didn't Mrs. Franklin have any kids?"
  • "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" ... "How deep is Orson Welles' belly button?"
  • "Mr. Coffee" ... "Name the father of Mrs. Olson's illegitimate baby."
  • "Ghotbzadeh" ... "What do Iranian men do when their wives refuse them by night?"
  • "S. I. Hayakawa!" ... "Describe the sound made by a man getting his zipper caught in a Waring blender."
  • "Pass the hat" ... "What does a cannibal do after eating Minnie Pearl?"
  • "Dippity-Do!" ... "What forms on your Dippity early in the morning?"
  • "A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou" ... "Name three things that have yeast."
  • "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" ... "How do you tell Marcello Mastroianni his doo-dah is open?"
  • "Three Dog Night" ... "What's a bad night for a tree?"
  • "McIntosh, Dolly Parton, and the Ford Pinto" ... "Name an apple, a pear (play on "pair" of breasts) and a lemon!"
  • "Goodyear, Tuck, and Andrei Gromyko" ... "Name a tire, a friar and a liar!"
  • "Sis boom bah" ... "Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes."
  • "Senta Berger" ... "I ordered a corned beef on rye from the NBC commissary and guess what they did?"
  • "Walla Walla" ..."Hey......Tony (Italian accent) What kind uva carpets you got atta you houseah?"
  • "Inky dinky doo" ... "What do sanitation workers have to sweep up after a parade of Inky dinkies?"

If the laughter fell short for a too-lame pun (as it often did), "Carnac" would face the audience with mock seriousness and bestow a comic curse: "May a diseased yak befriend your sister!" or "May a rabid holy man bless your nether regions with a power tool!"

• "Floyd R. Turbo", a dimwitted yokel responding to a TV station editorial. Floyd always spoke haltingly, as though reading from cue cards, and railed against some newsworthy topic, like Secretaries' Day: "This raises the question: Kiss my Dictaphone!"
• "Art Fern", the fast-talking host of a "Tea Time Movie" program, who advertised inane products, assisted by the attractive Matinee Lady, played by Paula Prentiss (late 1960s), Carol Wayne (the most familiar Matinee Lady, 1971–82), Danuta Wesley (1984), and Teresa Ganzel (1985–92). The fake movies Art would introduce usually had eclectic casts ("Ben Blue, Red Buttons, Jesse White, and Karen Black") and nonsensical titles ("Rin-Tin-Tin Gets Fixed Fixed Fixed"). This would be followed by a four-second stock film clip before coming back for another commercial, usually catching Art and the Matinee Lady in a very compromising position. On giving directions to a fake store he was touting, Fern would show a spaghetti-like road map, sometimes with a literal "fork in the road", other times making the joke, "Go to the Slauson Cutoff...", and the audience would recite with him, "...cut off your Slauson!" The character was previously named "Honest Bernie Schlock" and then "Ralph Willie" when the Tea Time sketches first aired in the mid-to-late 1960s. At least one surviving pre-1972 Art Fern sketch that originated from New York had its movie show title as "The Big Flick", an amalgam of two movie show titles in use at the time by New York station WOR-TV, The Big Preview and The Flick. On that sketch Lee Meredith was the Matinee Lady. Carson's Comedy Classics features an episode where Juliet Prowse is in the role of Matinee Lady, from 20 August 1971.
• "Aunt Blabby", an old woman whose appearance and speech pattern bore more than a passing resemblance to comedian Jonathan Winters' character "Maude Frickert". A frequent theme would be McMahon happening to mention a word or phrase that could suggest death, as in "What tourist attractions did you check out?," to which Aunt Blabby would respond, "Never say check out to an old person!"
• "El Mouldo", mysterious mentalist. He would announce some mind-over-matter feat and always fail, although triumphantly shouting "El Mouldo has done it again!" Ed McMahon would take exception, noting El Mouldo's failure. "Did I fail before?" asked El Mouldo. "Yes!," replied McMahon, to which El Mouldo said, "Well, I've done it again!" El Mouldo was in large part a continuation of Carson's mentalist character Dillinger, which he had performed on The Johnny Carson Show in 1955 over CBS-TV; Dillinger was an obvious spoof of Dunninger, leading to complaints and threats of lawsuits against Carson and CBS.
• "Ronald Reagan". During Reagan's term in office, Carson developed an accurate impersonation of the president that was featured regularly in Mighty Carson Art Players skits. Carson also did a less memorable impersonation of Jimmy Carter during his term as President.