This morning Chris Jackson on KUFX was talking about Robin Williams (natch), and I called in to suggest that Chris take a listen to Johnny Carson's final night, when the only two guests he had were RW & Bette M. (this was the first thing I looked up when I heard the news, btw).
About the clip:
Robin Williams gets a really nice intro from Johnny, and given that it was Johnny's farewell, it also plays quite nicely as a farewell to Williams (and after yesterday I defy anyone to have a dry eye!).
Williams goes ballistic as usual, and this was May '92, and apparently only 1 or 2 days after Quayle had gone off on Murphy Brown. So both Johnny in his monologue & everything after was rich with material.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjLVcBe2O6wThey make a salient point about Comic Relief, and then Williams encourages Johnny to run for office. Eventually Johnny introduces his only other live guest, the divine Ms. M., & she does a number (I admit that I am remiss in not yet having seen
20 Feet From Stardom, but if those two gals weren't in there then it's a crying shame). BUT...
...after she sits down, Bette eventually mentions that she knows that one of Johnny's favorite songs is some ballad from the 40's and they proceed to do an entirely impromptu duet - right there at the desk! (which Johnny never, EVER did!) ((it's a long clip, but at the 26:10 mark you can hear the audience actually gasp when they realize that Johnny is singing!)) - and it's a tearjerker in the extreme. And then Bette does "One More for My Baby, and One More For the Road", and the camera keeps panning back to Johnny.
And now 22 yrs later I think is is a profound sendoff for RW. There's a brief camera angle on RW when Johnny & Bette are singing & he is totally choked up.
Back to the present...the instant I tell Chris Jackson that I had an idea for a Robin Williams moment, he pulls up a different segment from the Tonight Show, and then another one, and this was just for the two of us. It didn't air, and he stuck with me for several minutes and played at least 3 different clips, asked me what I thought of them, and eventually he asked if he needed to cheer
ME up!? We agreed that if Williams was really suffering from that level of depression, then, CJ's words, "...a lot of people would say he was a coward for taking his life, but really...every day he had to climb Mt Everest just to do what he did, so that was actually pretty courageous"
Couldn't agree more, but still so sad.
