December 3, 1968: Elvis Presley's Comeback Special

December 3, 1968: NBC airs the special Singer Presents ... Elvis. It becomes known to Elvis' fans as "The '68 Comeback Special."

Elvis Presley became a regional star in 1954, and a national superstar in 1956. After 2 years in the U.S. Army, he returned in 1960, and made his 1st comeback, a very successful one.

But by 1962, a pattern was set: No live performances, and 2 or 3 movies a year. Elvis films followed a standard formula of a poor boy looking to make good, doing so, singing, and getting the girl. They were cheap to make, with Elvis' paycheck usually being the most expensive part. With Elvis' fanbase, so enough of his fans would come to see them that they were guaranteed to make enough of a profit to justify the next one. Therefore, the films didn't have to be good. Some were, but most weren't.

By 1967, Elvis had grown stale. And popular music had changed tremendously, thanks to The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and everybody they influenced. He was still The King, but there had been a coup: Rock and roll was now a republic.

In October 1967, Elvis' manager, "Colonel" Tom Parker, talked NBC into doing a Christmas special with Elvis. (This was around the time the word "special" began to be used to describe such out-of-the-ordinary programs. Previously, such a program would be called a "spectacular.") NBC talked Singer sewing machines into sponsoring it. Elvis hated the idea.

NBC hired Bob Finkel to produce the special. He had another idea: One Christmas song, and enough material for a soundtrack album, including new songs and Elvis' greatest hits. This idea appealed to Elvis, and the Colonel was talked into it.

Finkel hired Steve Binder, NBC's rock and roll guy. He had directed The T.A.M.I. Show in 1964, and the variety series Hullabaloo in 1965 and '66. He was already signed to direct a special for British singer Petula Clark, which would air on April 8, 1968. Binder believed he could reintroduce Elvis to fans who were too young to remember his first burst of success in 1956, and were too young to appreciate his first comeback in 1960. Binder set out to remind everyone of the old question: "Who's king around here, anyway?"

(I first heard that question in a 1980 ad for Pepto-Bismol, with an actor playing King Henry VIII. I had presumed that the question had been borrowed from an old movie or TV show. But I can't trace it back any further than the commercial in question.)

They taped at NBC's studio in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank, California on June 27 and 29, 1968. There was a segment of Elvis singing new songs, like "Guitar Man" by Jerry Reed, later to be known for singing songs like "When You're Hot, You're Hot" and playing Cledus Snow in the Smokey and the Bandit movies. There was a segment of Elvis singing gospel songs, like "Saved," which Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, who had written several of his hits, had written for LaVern Baker. He sang the Christmas song with which he is most identified, "Blue Christmas."

But the key segment was on a square stage, surrounded by about 100 fans, reunited with his old band. Well, two of them: Bass fiddle player Bill Black had died in 1965, but lead guitarist Scotty Moore and drummer D.J. Fontana were there.

And, wearing a black leather suit, he sang songs from the first segment of his career, 1954 to 1961. "Heartbreak Hotel." "Hound Dog." "All Shook Up." "Jailhouse Rock." "Love Me Tender." "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" And he had those teenagers eating out of the palm of his hand, kids who were toddlers when those songs were new.

At one point, he sang "Can't Help Falling In Love," from his 1961 film Blue Hawaii. It's almost as if you can hear the transition from "The Memphis Flash" to "The King of Las Vegas."

The closing song was "If I Can Dream," written by Walter Earl Brown. Wearing a white suit with a long double-breasted jacket indigenous to the late 1960s, Elvis knocked out a spectacular performance that showed that, in spite of having run in place throughout (Cliché Alert) the turbulent Sixties, he could be in tune with the times.

The song was recorded on June 23, 1968. It had been 18 days since Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated a few miles away, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles; 70 days since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Elvis' hometown of Memphis; with riots at Columbia University in New York and the streets of Paris in between those assassinations; and the Vietnam War continuing with no end in sight.

By the time the special aired on December 3, things had gotten no better: It had been 98 days since the riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; 48 days since the black-gloved salute of Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the Olympics in Mexico City; and 28 days since Richard Nixon and George Wallace, racists both, had, between them, won 57 percent of the popular vote in a Presidential election. And still, the war had no end in sight.

The world needed that song at that time. It's needed the song many times since.

Certainly, Elvis needed the boost the special gave him. It turned out to be the most-watched program of the entire 1968-69 television season. The month after it aired, in January 1969, an inspired Elvis recorded a back-to-his-roots album in Memphis -- at the same time, as it turned out, that The Beatles were trying and not exactly succeeding in doing the same thing with what became Let It Be. These Memphis sessions would produce hits like Mark James' "Suspicious Minds" and Mac Davis' "In the Ghetto."

And he went back to live performing, starting the following July at the International Hotel in Las Vegas -- later the Las Vegas Hilton and now the Westgate Las Vegas. Maybe he was a figurehead now, but the King was back on the throne.

*

December 3, 1968 was a Tuesday. Actor Brendan Fraser and singer Montell Jordan were born.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. And no games were scheduled for the NHL. But there were 6 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Atlanta Hawks, 126-93 at the new Madison Square Garden.

* The Cincinnati Royals beat the Baltimore Bullets, 129-127 at the Baltimore Civic Center (now named the CFG Bank Arena). Oscar Robertson scored 38 points for the Royals.

* The San Diego Rockets beat the Chicago Bulls, 108-103 at the Chicago Stadium. The Rockets moved to Houston in 1971.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 137-115 at the Milwaukee Arena. In 1974, it was renamed the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena. John Havlicek led all pro basketball players on the night with 41 points.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Phoenix Suns, 122-108 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California. Wilt Chamberlain scored 35 pounds and grabbed 25 rebounds.

* And the San Francisco Warriors beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 127-122 at the Cow Palace outside San Francisco in Daly City, California.

There were 3 games played in the American Basketball Association:

* The New York Nets lost to the Denver Rockets, 127-108 at the Auditorium Arena in Denver. Larry Jones scored 37 for Denver. In 1974, to avoid confusion with the Houston team, the Denver Rockets adopted the name of the 1st NBA team in Denver, the Nuggets.

* The Minnesota Pipers beat the New Orleans Buccaneers, 116-94 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* And the Oakland Oaks beat the Dallas Chaparrals, 135-109 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena. 

May 22, 1992: Johnny Carson's Last "Tonight Show"

May 22, 1992: Johnny Carson hosts The Tonight Show for the last time, after 30 years. Well, 29 years, 6 months and 21 days.

The show had begun on NBC in 1954, and Carson had hosted since 1962. His announcer and sidekick had been Ed McMahon from the start. His bandleader had been Carl "Doc" Severinsen since 1966. He started out broadcasting from NBC's headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York, and had taped from NBC's studios at Burbank, California since 1972.

He had scaled back from 90 to 60 minutes per show in 1980, and from 5 days a week to 4 and then to 3. Still, his influence, especially his ability to turn a young comedian from an unknown to a star by bringing him onto the show, was undimmed. In a special issue in 1989, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of broadcast television, People magazine named Johnny Carson the Number 1 TV personality of all time.

There were tributes and parodies. In the 1970s, DC Comics imagined The Midnight Show Starring Johnny Nevada -- the capital of Nevada is Carson City -- broadcasting from Superman's hometown of Metropolis, and they even poked fun at Johnny's propensity to go on vacation. (He did it himself: In the 1980s, noting that the President was at his ranch again, Johnny said, "Ronald Reagan spends more time in California than I do!")

In 1983, Jerry Lewis played a Carson-like figure in the film The King of Comedy, with Robert De Niro as a young comic who commits a crime in order to become a star on the show. In 2019, the film Joker had De Niro playing the Carson-like host, with Joaquin Phoenix taking the young comedian-criminal role. Both films gave the late-night show a multi-colored curtain, like Carson used.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, on Saturday Night Live, Dana Carvey played a naughtier-than-usual Carson, with Phil Hartman as an even harder-laughing, even more obsequious, McMahon.

People wondered when "The King of Late Night" would retire. Comedians who had guest-hosted for him jockeyed for position. Joan Rivers -- correctly, as it turned out -- became convinced he wasn't going to pick her, and left, getting her own late-night talk show on Fox, and it tanked. She never appeared on The Tonight Show again. Eventually, even before suggesting that he might retire, Carson anointed Jay Leno as his successor, leading David Letterman, whose show followed Tonight on NBC, to make a deal with CBS, to go head-to-head with Tonight once his NBC contract ran out in 1993.

In 1991, his Carson's son Ricky, a photographer, was killed in a car crash. At the age of 66, depressed over the loss of his son, hearing of Letterman's deal with CBS, seeing the success that The Arsenio Hall Show was having with younger viewers, and with his contract running out, he decided not to negotiate a new one, and retired.

Leading up to his last show, he showed one old clip a night, from fan balloting of his best moments. Number 3 was his 1968 "Copper Clapper Caper" with Dragnet star Jack Webb. Number 2 was his 1984 duet, impersonating Willie Nelson, with Julio Iglesias, on the song Willie and Julio then had on the charts, "To All the Girls I've Loved Before." Number 1 was the 1965 demonstration of Ed Ames, then playing Native American chief Mingo on the TV Western Daniel Boone, throwing a tomahawk at an outline of a cowboy, and having it land in an uproar-inducing position.

The night before his last show, he had his last guests. Comic actor Robin Williams congratulated Johnny on his timing: Two days before, the Dan Quayle-Murphy Brown controversy had happened. Three weeks before that was the South Central Riots in Los Angeles. Robin was his usual hopped-up self, cracking everybody up, including Johnny.

Johnny's last musical guest was Bette Midler. He had helped make her a star after her first album in 1973, and she had become a favorite of his. She sang "You Made Me Love You" while sitting next to him. And onstage, while the camera cut back and forth between her there and Johnny at his desk, both of them with tears in their eyes, she sang "One For My Baby (And One More for the Road)."

That was on Thursday night, May 21. On Friday, May 22, there were no guests. Johnny said some nice things and showed some old clips, including of long-gone legends. Among these were the last TV appearances of Judy Garland, Louis Armstrong and Jack Benny. At the close, he mentioned his children, including Ricky, and his 4th and last wife, Alexis. He thanked Doc and the band, he thanked Ed, and he thanked the fans, concluding with, "I bid you a heartfelt good night."

Johnny Carson died on January 23, 2005. He was 79 years old.

*

May 22, 1992 was a Friday. Actress Anna Baryshnikov, daughter of dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov and Lisa Rinehart, was born on this day.

Football was out of season. One game was played in the NBA Playoffs: The Utah Jazz beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 97-89 at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City. Karl Malone scored 39 points.

One game was played in the Stanley Cup Playoffs: The Chicago Blackhawks beat the Edmonton Oilers, 5-1 at the Northlands Coliseum, completing a 4-game sweep of the Clarence Campbell Conference Finals. But they would be swept themselves in the Stanley Cup Finals, by the defending Champions, the Pittsburgh Penguins. This would be the Hawks' only Finals appearance between 1973 and 2010.

And these Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Milwaukee Brewers, 10-9 at Yankee Stadium. The Brewers scored 5 runs in the top of the 8th inning to tie the game. In the top of the 14th -- meaning they were still playing when Carson went on the air -- Greg Vaughn hit a home run to win the game.

Robin Yount went 0-for-2 before leaving the game due to an injury. Paul Molitor went 2-for-7. For the Yankees, Kevin Maas, Danny Tartabull and Charlie Hayes hit home runs, while Don Mattingly went 2-for-7 with 3 RBIs, and Matt Nokes went 0-for-3, but with 4 walks.

* The New York Mets lost to the San Francisco Giants, 7-6 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Anthony Young started for the Mets, and pitched well, but the bullpen blew it. This was early in a stretch where Young went 27 straight decisions without a win, including this game and several other no-decisions, many of which saw him pitch well but be betrayed by his defense or his bullpen.

* The Montreal Expos beat the Atlanta Braves, 7-1 at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal.

* The Oakland Athletics beat the Boston Red Sox, 5-3 at Fenway Park in Boston. Rickey Henderson went 3-for-4 with a stolen base and 2 RBIs.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Cincinnati Reds, 8-2 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the California Angels, 5-3 at Camden Yards in Baltimore. Cal Ripken went 1-for-3 with a walk.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Minnesota Twins, 6-3 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit.

* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Chicago White Sox, 6-2 at the new Comiskey Park (now Rate Field) in Chicago.

* The Houston Astros beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-1 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis.

* The Texas Rangers beat the Kansas City Royals, 10-7 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas. George Brett went 0-for-4.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Chicago Cubs, 2-0 at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. Andy Benes pitched a 3-hit shutout, outpitching Greg Maddux. Tony Gwynn was injured, and did not play.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 6-4 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Barry Bonds went 2-for-4 with a walk and an RBI.

* And the Seattle Mariners beat the Cleveland Indians, 2-1 at the Kingdome in Seattle. Randy Johnson outpitched Scott Scudder. Ken Griffey Jr. went 1-for-4.

May 1, 1972: Johnny Carson Moves "The Tonight Show" to Los Angeles

May 1, 1972: For the 1st time, at 11:30 PM Eastern Time on NBC, this announcement is made: "From Hollywood: The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. This is Ed McMahon along with Doc Severinsen and the NBC Orchestra, inviting you to join Johnny and his guests... "

In this case, the guests were, in order: Comedian Bob Newhart, whose sitcom, The Bob Newhart Show, would debut on CBS the following September 16; Cal Worthington, the biggest car dealer in Southern California, whose persona and TV commercials would become the target of many jokes in Carson's monologue over the next 20 years; Darlene Conley, an actress best known for her soap opera roles; Don Rickles, one of the top comedians of the era; Nancy Reagan, then the First Lady of California, as her husband Ronald was then Governor, and both were former actors; and actress Shelley Winters, then filming The Poseidon Adventure. (Newhart turned out to be the last survivor of those guests.)

McMahon, Carson's announcer and sidekick since he became host of The Tonight Show in 1962, said, "From Hollywood," but it wasn't quite true. Hollywood is a neighborhood of the City of Los Angeles. But, at the time, most of the TV shows produced by NBC were actually taped, or filmed, in the adjoining city of Burbank.

This led to jokes about "Beautiful Downtown Burbank" on the variety show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In from 1968 to 1973, and Carson picked up on it, poking fun at "Burbank's legendary Restaurant Row," which included "Vinnie Abruzze's Little Touch of Newark." (Being from Newark, my parents took offense at this, but they still watched Johnny.)

For most of the 20th Century, New York, particularly Midtown Manhattan, had been the center of the American entertainment industry. The musical theater branch of it, based on Broadway (the street giving the industry its name, much as "Hollywood" would come to mean the American film industry as a whole), led to Midtown becoming the center of the songwriting world. The radio networks, and the TV networks they founded, operated out of there, because that's where the writers, singers and actors were.

After World War II, television boomed, and its writers and producers filmed most of their shows in New York. But the desire to film outdoors, and the corresponding need to have good weather, made filming in New York problematic. By the 1950s, many TV shows were being made in Los Angeles, even if they were said to take place in New York. This is still the case today: There are some shows that do New York location shots, but most do their main filming in L.A. (CBS' FBI franchise is an exception, with the flagship show filming entirely in New York. NBC's One Chicago franchise, which, despite being on a different network, is made by the same production company and thus takes place in the same "fictional universe" as "The FBIs," films entirely in Chicago.)

TV variety shows tended to be done in New York, including at NBC's studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza at Rockefeller Center. The Tonight Show had begun in 1954, hosted by Steve Allen, at the Hudson Theatre at 139 West 44th Street, just off Times Square and the actual Broadway. Jack Paar became the host in 1957. When Carson took over in 1962, production was moved to the NBC studios at "30 Rock."

And there they remained for 10 years. And variety shows like The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS, and talk shows like The Tonight Show on NBC, would have Broadway stars on their show, doing scenes from their plays, whether dramatic scenes, comedic scenes, or songs.

But in the 1950s, record companies began realizing that recording soundtracks to films and TV shows would be easier if the records were made where the shows and films were made. So record companies began moving west. The Capitol Records Tower opened in 1956. By the 1960s, nearly every recording company had a Los Angeles-area studio, including the 3 major networks: NBC through RCA Victor, CBS through Columbia Records, and ABC through ABC-Paramount. (Paramount Pictures had nothing to do with it.)

Ed Sullivan had gotten his start as the Broadway columnist for the New York Daily News, and he loved bringing Broadway stars onto his show. He was always mixing up names, much like baseball manager Casey Stengel. But as the 1960s wore on, it was happening more often. Finally, CBS recognized that he was in cognitive decline, and The Ed Sullivan Show was canceled in 1971, after 23 years.

Carson saw the writing on the wall, and realized that Broadway was no longer the center of the entertainment world, Hollywood was. So he moved lock, stock and Carnac the Magnificent, and headed west. He remained there until he retired in 1992, still "the King of Late Night."

NBC Studios, Burbank

Of course, Carson wasn't always in California. He liked his vacations, and had enough pull with NBC to eventually get Mondays off; later, Tuesdays, too. On those nights, either there would be a "guest host," usually another well-known comedian like Joey Bishop, David Brenner, Joan Rivers, and, eventually, his official successor-in-waiting, Jay Leno; or there would be a repeat, under the banner The Best of Carson.

He joked about it himself, once introducing himself by saying, "My name is Johnny Carson. You all know me from The Best of Carson." He once pointed out President Reagan's tendency to head off to his ranch outside Santa Barbara by saying, "Ronald Reagan spends more time in California than I do!"

The move to Burbank came with another big change for Carson. Most of his shows that had been taped in New York had already been lost, due to the high cost of videotape: Some of the master copies had simply been taped over. He formed Carson Productions, so that every Tonight Show he hosted from 1972 to 1992 would be preserved.

Once Leno took over, while he did most of the tapings in Burbank, he would take it elsewhere, as befitting his already-long lifestyle as a traveling comedian. He would do a week in Las Vegas, a week in Chicago, a week in Washington to mine material from the federal government, and, occasionally, back at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

In 1994, he went back to New York for the first time. Jack Paar, who had been a guest of Carson's only twice, in 1986 and 1987 (and once with baseball player-turned-broadcaster-turned Today Show correspondent Joe Garagiola as guest host in 1968), was a guest of Leno's on the 1st show back in New York. Before sitting down in the chair closest to Leno's desk, Jack told Jay, "Mrs. Roosevelt sat in this chair. John F. Kennedy sat in this chair. Martin Luther King sat in this chair. Never let Madonna sit in this chair." Madonna had recently made a profanity-riddled appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman.

The next night, Madonna was a guest on the show. I hope Jay at least put her in a different chair.

*

May 1, 1972 was a Monday. Actress Julie Benz was born on this day.

As Monday is often a travel day in Major League Baseball, there were only 3 games played that day:

* The New York Mets beat the San Francisco Giants, 7-4 at Candlestick Park. Tom Seaver got the win.

* The Houston Astros beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-8 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.

* And the Philadelphia Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 2-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

Football was out of season. The NBA Finals were in progress, although this was a travel day between them. Ironically, they went the other way: The 1st 2 games were played in Los Angeles (well, Inglewood, not Hollywood or Burbank), while the next 2 were played in New York. Then tied 1-1, the Los Angeles Lakers beat the New York Knicks in 5 games.

The Stanley Cup Finals were also underway, with Game 1 having been played the day before, at the Boston Garden. The Boston Bruins would go on to beat the New York Rangers in 6 games.