Passing The Late-Night Crown

By RICHARD CORLISS

Late night comedy: On the day Jay Leno has been announced as host of NBC's The Tonight Show beginning next May, Johnny Carson confides to his audience, "I want to tell young Jay Leno I've changed my mind; I'm gonna stay." And then Carson, the program's star since Jack Kennedy was President, barks out his brittle laugh and purports to lose himself in merriment.

Late night melodrama: An hour or so later, David Letterman says, "Before we continue, I think we should congratulate our friend Jay Leno for being selected as the host of The Tonight Show. And the good news for us is, we get Stump the Band." This hoariest of Carson time fillers is no silver medal for Letterman, in his 10th year as star of his own NBC chatfest. The world had long known that the anvil-jawed Leno, Tonight's exclusive guest host since 1987, was bound to succeed Carson. But press tattle hinted that Letterman, who gave Leno his first sustained TV exposure, was furious at not being offered the job. One source told the Washington Post that Letterman planned to sue NBC to break his contract, making him available for offers from CBS and ABC. Once upon a time, the ringmaster of Stupid Pet Tricks was indeed Carson's heir apparent, Bonnie Prince Dave. But now Leno will assume command over the United Kingdom of Late Night. Letterman gets to keep Wales.

For NBC the decision was nothing but common sense. The cash-register-drawer- j awed new host not only projects a likable, intimate video presence, but he will also bring in more money for Tonight: his audience tends to be younger than Carson's, thus more appealing to advertisers. He is also a plow horse of stand-up comedy. Currently he does concerts in three or four cities a week in addition to his subbing duties. For The Tonight Show Starring Jay Leno, he will appear in 250 new episodes a year, more than twice the number Carson now does. And no slot is planned for a substitute host. Leno will not have a Leno.

Leno sees his anointing as a reward to be judiciously savored. "I consider myself a good soldier," he says. "You go to work, you do the job -- write joke, tell joke, get check -- and the world will pretty much take care of itself." After establishing himself as a Johnny wannabe, the glockenspiel- jawed comic was offered other talk-show slots, but, he says, "I wisely turned them down. To me, this is the only job in television. I'm kind of coming in as the new CEO. You don't really own it, you just hold it and try not to drop the ball when you hand it to the next guy. I like the history of The Tonight Show, being able to look back over the years and think, gee! Steve Allen! Jack Paar! Johnny Carson! You get to hang your picture on the same wall."

Allen built the wall in 1954, establishing Tonight as a bedtime slot for zany comedy and snappy conversation. For five years beginning in 1957, Paar turned it into a wailing wall; he made Tonight into Event TV by tangling with politicians and crackpots, discussing his young daughter's training bra, walking off the show one night after the censors clipped a joke. And Carson, unquestionably the longest lived power player in TV, bought the wall. Or rather, as his popularity and contract demands escalated, NBC bought it for him.

With his sangfroid and Swiss-watch timing, Carson brought a temperate temperature to Tonight after the Paar boil. But he did more: in his nightly monologue he helped set the nation's political and social agenda. When Johnny made jokes about Vietnam, Watergate, errant Senators or TV evangelists, he enabled the audience to laugh the problem away. "Nobody can figure out Johnny's politics," Leno says. "The joke comes first." The trouble is that Carson's monologues have stayed hip, while his studio audiences have grown duller, less attuned to the issues he makes fun of. The star now gets his biggest cheers when he walks onstage; the crowd has come not for comedy but for celebrity spectacle. Carson makes a state visit, and the audience responds like tourists at Buckingham Palace.

Now they can watch the changing of the guard. "I'll continue to do a monologue about the topics of the day," the hydrofoil-jawed host-in-waiting says. "I enjoy doing the political stuff" -- though his old stance of ironically outraged liberalism has been tempered as he segued from guest to host. Leno will also retain that charming anachronism, the studio orchestra. Bandleader Doc Severinsen will retire, though, as will Carson's faithful retainer, Ed McMahon.

Other changes will have to wait. After all, Johnny has 105 more shows to do before he bows out, and Jay has 74 more guest spots. "This is probably the only job in the world," the peninsula-jawed Leno wryly notes, "where you get the job and they go, 'O.K., good! You'll be starting . . . in a year.' " At least Leno knows the job will be his. Letterman, in his later slot, must stew. The other night, he made a mistake, then groused, "That's why I don't get 11:30!" He must be content with what he has: the best talk-show on TV.

With reporting by William Tynan/New York