Building a Writing Career and Completing the Long-Awaited Johnny Carson Biography | Mike Thomas

I can say in all honesty that today is a momentous occasion here on the podcast!

Why do I say that? Because today is the culmination of a nearly 20-year journey to hold a very special book in my hands. It’s titled, Carson the Magnificent, and it’s the long-awaited biography of one of my entertainment heroes, the late Johnny Carson.

For those who aren’t very familiar with Johnny Carson, he was the host of NBC’s Tonight Show for 30 years, from 1962-1992. They called him “The King of Late Night” because he ruled the late-night airwaves for decades.

When Johnny Carson retired from the Tonight Show in 1992, at the top of his game, he famously went into his retirement cave and rarely came back out except for a few public appearances in the years afterwards.

That’s why it was such a big deal when the writer and journalist Bill Zehme was able to score an interview in Esquire magazine in 2002, ten years after Carson retired. It was the only formal interview that Carson had granted since his retirement.

A few years later, Carson agreed to let Zehme write his full biography. The book was announced, and he went to work on it. Then the years crept by and the book never came out. Zehme got cancer, which obviously stalled progress on the book. Then he passed away last year with most of the book written, but still incomplete. Over the years it had become known as one of the great unfinished biographies, almost achieving legendary status, but not for reason that Zehme or the publisher wanted.

But then earlier this year, nearly 20 years after Zehme started work on the Carson biography, Simon & Schuster announced that Chicago writer Mike Thomas would be taking up the reigns of the book and completing Zehme’s work. This was the perfect match because Thomas was a well-established entertainment writer, as well as a friend and former research assistant of Bill Zehme.

You have to understand how excited I was to see this announcement earlier this year. This is no exaggeration: for the last 20 years, every 6-8 months I would try to find some little scrap of news about the book. That’s how excited I was. So when I saw that Simon & Schuster was still going to release the book, I was over the moon.

Which brings us today. I knew the book was coming out on November 5, so a few weeks ago I got in touch with Mike Thomas to see if he’d be interested in talking about the book here on the podcast. He graciously agreed, and with the help of Anne Pearce, the Associate Director of PR at Simon & Schuster, we arranged this conversation.

So that’s how this conversation came about. It’s more backstory than usual, but I thought it might be interesting for listeners. Let me tell you a bit about my guest!

Mike Thomas is the author of two critically acclaimed books, The Second City Unscripted: Revolution and Revelation at the World-Famous Comedy Theater and You Might Remember Me: The Life and Times of Phil Hartman. He spent more than fourteen years as an arts and entertainment features writer at the Chicago Sun-Times and is a regular contributor to Chicago magazine. He lives in Chicago with his family.

In this conversation, we dive into all sorts of topics related to Mike, his writing career, and of course the book that brought us together, Carson the Magnificent. Our conversation topics include:

• How he knew he wanted to be a writer.
• How he became acquainted with Bill Zehme in the 1990s.
• Why Bill struggled to finish the Carson book.
• Mike’s process of taking Bill’s work and seeing it to completion, and what it was like to pick up the writing mantle from someone else.
• Mike’s advice for people who want to begin or expand their career as a writer.