INT: So we left off, I was about to say, as we're still in New York with Johnny and TONIGHT SHOW [THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON], as you said, for about six years. I wanted to ask you about sketches. And we know there were guests. We know there was music. But what about the sketches?

DC: Okay. First of all, I just want to set it up that this Studio 6B, was an old radio station, a radio studio. It was not geared for gunshots, things and… They were still, had two turntables for sound effects. So gunshots would have to be cued up. And if you wanted two gunshots, it might have to have…. I mean it was really a difficult... And the PA system was awful. In the audience was a mixer this big with three or four knobs; that was it. The speakers on the sidewall were like half speakers attached to the wall on the side. Nothing like we have together. Anyway, so sketches. Well I liked them, but I didn't like 'em necessarily. I know, it was fun. Johnny loved them. And they were so silly, because it was all on cue cards a la Bob Hope, the way he did it. And Johnny had done Hope and saw… And they were funnier than Hope too. They had cards over here and cards over there. And people would just stand around and read 'em and laugh. And Johnny would make sure he screws up or something, you know. So it was kind of wild. You know, like the “Mission Impossible” sketch. [INT: That's what I wanted to ask you since you had mentioned it.]

DC: That [“Mission Impossible” sketch on THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON] was hard because we had to blow him up. And I don't know if today people don't know that format, but MISSION IMPOSSIBLE was a very good show, and it started with a phone call. Jim would be on the phone and saying, and you hear the other voice, "Jim, your mission today is to go to the airport, pick up so and so, and deliver this," and so forth. So he wanted to do that. He wanted to do a take off on that. So they build this little phone booth to put him in. And, you know, it's funny. I had, I couldn't think of a, and I saw it on possible ideas, and I had to stop and think, how did that work. But anyway, that particular, it was just Johnny alone. And it was a quickie. He, we see him going in the phone booth, and we have an announcer, I think live, reading the thing, very good voice and [INAUDIBLE], “Johnny [MAKES NOISE]”. Of course, the music's playing all the time. So just before he's to leave, I think someone throws a bomb into the little booth. And then, of course, when he's ready to leave, he can't get the door out. And he's doing all these mugging shots and all. And go to a wide shot and boom. They'd rigged it to fall apart. And his face is all black. And he loved that kind of an ending. He always liked to have an ending where something happened to him. You know, I can think of two or three other ones that were crazy. But that was, but that didn't involve any other celebrities yet. That was just things that he would do. That was “Mission Impossible”.

INT: Thinking about all the elements that go into, that went into THE TONIGHT SHOW [THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON], what was a typical day at the... You mentioned production meeting in the morn…

DC: Sure. But we'd met--originally we'd have the meeting in the Producer's office, fellow by the name of Art Stark. He had come with Johnny from the ABC show that he was doing.

DC: Art was a Producer and we would have Skitch Henderson, the orchestra leader, there to talk about the music requirements. The Writers would come in. AD [Associate Director] would be there sometimes, my Production Assistant, a gal, myself, Johnny, now never Johnny, he's… Johnny would call the Producer in the morning and say, you know, "What's up?" And they'd have their phone conversation. And we'd all sit around, and we'd discuss who's on and so forth. Had the big board up there, you know, like everybody. It was a quick meeting, you know, everybody knew what to do. But I just would add that the offices on the sixth floor, seventh floor, were great because every interviewer had an office in a row. The Associate Producer had a… And all the, in those days, all the guests were required to come for interviews. And they would go in and meet with certain people, and all the notes would be made. It was very, very organized, that part of it. The routine very rarely changed. I mean the board would be correct all the way through the week. There wouldn't be dropouts. There wouldn't be additions. It was really run very well. And A.D., no the A.D. wouldn't be there. But, yeah. And we'd discuss it. And it wouldn't last too long. If there was a sketch, I might get the copy. They might still be working on it, I mean, you know. But the funny thing, as, you know, probably, the sets all had to come in from Brooklyn. I mean that, it's amazing how they did that. They'd bring 'em up in the elevator, a large elevator, and construct 'em, put 'em up again. So it was difficult to do a lot of production.

DC: But, you know, you'd look at the script [of a sketch to be performed on THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JOHNNY CARSON]. It was really nothing, you know. You had to figure out, okay, what do we do here? Who's in it? How many people? And what happened is when we would come to Burbank two or three times a year with it, now they had a big stage, and scene doc was right across the hall. They could roll these guys in, big sets. So things started to get really big and out--much more difficult for the Director. I remember one time they were doing a pirate sketch, and they had levels, and different celebrities here and there, and every so often it'd be his turn to read the card. You know, it was crazy. And I feel sorry for Bobby Quinn, 'cause later they even got more complicated I saw. But funny, yeah. But anyway, to answer your question, it was… We'd start the… it was just a matter of cutting across the different celebrities and following the lines, you know. And one time I went into John--well Johnny would also do other things without the celebrities. He would do, I don't know if I call 'em sketches, but takeoffs on things. And I remember one time I said, "How long did that run?" "It's 12 minutes." "12 minutes?" I very rarely did this, but I went down to Johnny's office and I said, "You know, it ran 12, 13 minutes." He says, "So? They love it. It makes everybody laugh." I said, "Okay." If that's the main thing." But, you know, he'd do those matinee lady types of things, and he loved it. That was his relief I think. [INT: Well Johnny had the people. He was a star certainly. Sounds like he really had the control. I mean he had his Producers, but if it's what Johnny wanted was what went on the air.] Yeah. Well if it was written it stayed lengthwise. But sometimes he'd do a piece that not's really totally, you know, if he's playing a character like the…

INT: You mentioned coming to Burbank. [DC: Yeah.] The show probably didn't travel too much other than coming to Burbank and-- [DC: You're absolutely right.] How often did you do that?

DC: You're absolutely right. But we came out quite often, I think four to five times a year for a week or two. Maybe it's more, I, three or four times a year. Yeah, and we liked it because, Johnny did because he had a lot more freedom to order things, you know. He might need a car at the last minute or might need this. You could always roll it on stage. He could fly from the ceilings, whatever he wanted to do, you know. He loved to try physical stuff too. [INT: Yeah.]

INT: But you, okay. So you're six years, basically, with THE TONIGHT [THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON]--'62 [1962] to '68 [1968]. Still New York based. When did it make the move to California? After you--[DC: When did I move?] Yeah. Well after you left it, right? So you left the show when it was still based in New York, is that correct? [DC: Oh sure. Yes. Yeah.] And this was...

DC: I'm not sure. No, it was in the late '60s [1960s]. I think I finally left in '68, '69 [1969]. But I started early the summer of '62 with all those other guests to bridge the opening delay. And I did a lot of guest hosts. Johnny took a lot of weeks off. You know, I mean I was, everybody from, Groucho [Groucho Marx] again came, did a whole week, and a lot of major stars came and did it. My favorite was Arthur Godfrey. Arthur Godfrey. We got along great. Personally, we both--because he sort of had the reputation as rather being kind of rough when he was on CBS. And he was just like a father, in a way. He was a very, very nice man. Anyway...

INT: You mentioned earlier there was also political figures and world figures [on THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON]. You mentioned Bobby Kennedy earlier.

DC: Absolutely. Yeah. There were… Well Merv did a lot of that later too. But we had Robert Kennedy on. And I had a little thing I wanted to just meet and get up close to the man. I'm in the booth, so I said, "I'm gonna go down and help put the lavalier [microphone] on his thing, you know." And of course Johnny or whoever would say, "Oh, by the way, I want you to meet..." "Nice to meet you, Sir." I did that several times. [INT: Good for you.] Yeah, you know. But, let's see...

INT: Anything you would like to say about working with Ed McMahon [on THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON]?

DC: Ed was great. You know, Ed would roll in maybe, wouldn't see him sometimes until couple hours before the show. His office right across from mine. He wasn't there much, but loved Ed. God he was funny. He was, some of the best times we ever had was going out socially with Johnny and Ed. And we'd go down to Florida for some meetings and things. And it was, we really had fun. He's a great companion, and he was a great straight man for Johnny. Ed had a great sense of humor, and he had a big background in TV too. You know, when Johnny would do characters like Aunt Blabby in drag, Ed would fire--be just, you know, like Abbott and Costello. One straight man and… But Johnny loved doing that, those characters. And he had one character Johnny did, which I--called El Mouldo, El Mouldo. It was a takeoff on some of these so-called mind readers and things. And it was… [INT: Was he doing Carnac [Carnac the Magnificent]?] Carnac, that's right! You know when he started doing Carnac, they had this funny hat. [INT: The turban, yeah.] Now what did I say, “I didn't like the hat,” or something. I said… no, I forget something. I was wrong, anyways the hat was terrific.

INT: As much as I said the show [THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON] didn't travel that much, you did go on some interesting locations, even in New York. You want to talk about Yankee Stadium?

DC: Yeah. You know, Yankee Stadium, I really didn't do any directing on that. That was set up, I'm not sure who set that up, because my first day on the job was, we're going to Yankee Stadium. Johnny, first of all, I knew he had this, these ideas of doing stunts and getting out, away from the home base and really some adventurous stuff. We did four or five of those. But yeah, report to Yankee Stadium. We're gonna meet these four, three, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Elston Howard, three of 'em. Elston, the catcher. And so actually NBC had brought a Cameraman out. There wasn't much to do, because it was a single camera, Johnny's at home base and we do the pitching. And, of course, he could hardly get the ball there. But one time somebody did hit a tough one, right over his head, made him jump, made him duck. But that's about all there was to it. The wonderful thing is, we got a lot of photos, still photos, and I don't have any.

DC: There's one story that you may not have, I just wanted to mention. I had no opening for THE TONIGHT SHOW [THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON]. Nothing. I had to create one. I had no discussions with anybody. Well, I had to do something. While they were doing these weekly things I was busy, every day, doing all these celebrities. I thought, “I have no opening. I’m gonna shoot an opening. Okay. How? Well I, who's the film editor?” I go up two or three stops, eighth floor and there's nice guy there, cutting film and I said, "Look, I gotta do a film opening. I have no opening for THE TONIGHT SHOW. It's only about three weeks away." You'd a thought, I thought maybe the Producer would do it. Anyway, I don't have a budget. I don't have anything. So I said, "Do you have a good cameraman, like a film cameraman?" I said, "Not 35, 16 of course." He said, "Yeah." Fine. Great. I talked to him. I said, "We're gonna go down Staten Island and I want to get that beautiful shot from the Battery. Of course nowadays you've got helicopters and wonderful shots, but at least I'll have something and it looks... So we go out there. We go to Staten Island. We set up, and we wait for the magic hour, quite a bit, you know, 'til the lights come in and we get that little rosy glow. Okay. We go back. I can remember his name but I won't mention it because I get a call from the guy that's, the film Editor who's gonna put this together. "A little problem with the camera." "What?" and I go, "What?" "It didn't come out very well. Had a malfunction of the camera." This can't be more than five days and I'm still trying to work. I said, "Okay. Get me another cameraman, but not this fellow." So I said, he says, "What do you want to do?" I said, "Well I want to get a shot on Broadway, you know, all the lights and typical shots." And there, I don't think the building is there anymore called the Flatiron Building. It was where they all come together. We got up in that thing. I think that's where we were. And we, maybe we taught... No, we were there. I remember it. And we shot what color, and it was really pretty bad by today's standards. And, you know, all those years I was on, I'd think, why didn't I go out and shoot something better? But it never occurred to me, it was pretty grainy and it was not much, but… so I had to deal with that. Anyway...

INT: Something else that you had talked about was, and kind of adventurous things to do [on THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON], ballooning and skydiving in Palm Springs. What was that about?

DC: Well this was part of Johnny's plans to get out. I mean, you know, you’re doing shows there five days a week, it's kind of fun to get out of town if you can. So I think the first thing was the parachuting. It was set up to go to Palm Springs, where they do that. Nobody in the basket with him. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm ahead of myself. The parachuting was first. He, it was a tandem jump, of course, where you, your instructor, but still, you know, it's a free fall. I wish I'd a had, gotten a couple more cameras for coverage, but you know this is where you learn folks. Ask for more cameras. Anyway, we, he puts him through the jumping with a high, you know, high ramp, getting used to hitting the ground hard. How to roll. How to do that. Johnny was very physical, great shape. He was really in shape. And so we did that. I had, oh, the guy shooting the film was a fellow who did all, a lot of the Bob Hope tours over in Vietnam. So I felt he would be the man to do it. So basically all we could--did, we showed Johnny getting hooked up in all the paraphernalia, dah, dah, dah. But once they take off, I wish I'd a had a chase plane. God, I wish I had a, you know. But this is where you learn folks. Get a chase plane. Anyway, we get him up there and we see him. He's like a dot coming out, you know. But the landing is what you want. Yeah. And we were fortunate enough; he came in and… yeah, it's pretty rough. You gotta, you get dragged a bit and you, but he did it. And hanging in, and that basically was it. And then we also did in Palm Springs, why, he wanted to go up in a balloon. Why, I don't know. But I did some ballooning later with Merv [THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW] and with an interview and that was another error. No, I… But Johnny did, and the winds took him and… In Palm Springs, if you go south out of the city limit, you're in Indian land. They still have a lot of land. Anyway, we followed him in the car, and we wanted to catch the landing, which I believe we did. And that's rougher than you think. I've done it twice before. That basket hits pretty hard and you can, it still drags you along on the ground. It doesn't just set you down. So you have to hang on. And he came out, and that was a pretty easy shot. Oh, and then we did a lot of other things, I can't remember, later.

INT: I can't help but want to ask this: One last thing before we move on to the next chapter in your career. And that's, and I don't know anything about this other than the, going back to your hometown in Nebraska, Johnny’s search for buried treasure [segment on THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON]?

DC: Okay, I'll make this short because there's no big ending to this. But for years in Art Stark's office, we had a lot of fun sitting around talking about all the things to do. And Johnny and I would sit there… Art was a funny guy. And he says, and Johnny used to talk about that treasure, "Oh I buried this thing." Finally Art says, "Why don't you guys just get in the plane and go there and dig the darn thing up." That's the way he was. He was like, you know, just go. So, okay. But we gotta go fly to Chicago to get to this little town, Omaha, get... It was fun. And we get there, and now we go to the house where we lived for many, many years and where we buried the treasure. Knocks on this door and this woman, I hear this high scream; Johnny Carson's knocking on her door. He explained, "Well, we're here to dig up this, I'd planted something. I know this can. I remember what kind of a can it was. And I had these really good coins in there, and we want to dig it up." "Fine. Go ahead." Now Johnny's son, Chris, was with us. He was now about 12 or 13, so… Now unfortunately, he, only guessing where he, he knew it was on which side of the garage, so "I think it's here." So we got Chris, 'cause it had rained quite a bit and the ground was really hard, so I… Now, how do we shoot this? I have a 16 mm camera. I had to go get a 16 mm camera, learn how to work the darn thing and I was the Cameraman. So I'm filming and they're, well, they dig for awhile, "Gosh, I don't think it's, maybe it's over here." So we'd move over. And I shoot Johnny shooting, and I notice that people, neighbors are starting to, "Hi folks." Well the word gets out, and pretty soon there's about 30 people around, which is fine, you know. And dig and dig and dig, and finally I said, "You know John, I think this might be time to move on. We have a..." He agreed. And the neighbor, right next door, when we got back, we wrapped him, got out of there and got back to New York. And got a call from the neighbor and he says, "I have a," X-ray, what do you, a land... [INT: Oh, metal detector?] Metal detector, yeah. And he says, "I found it." And he says, "We'll ship it to you." Oh, the big moment arrives, and Johnny opens this box on his desk, this, on the show. We save this for the show. And it's this rusty old dirty can. And, I have to pick up a prop. [MAKES NOISE] "What's that?" It was, you know, it was kind of a downer in a way in that-- [INT: I'm gonna--] --that's all there was. [INT: --go look for this. I hope this is on YouTube.] There weren't any coins or anything like that, but it was a childhood thing, you know. It was kind of cute. But we did a lot of little stuff. Sometimes he'd get an idea to go over to Central Park and do some silly thing, you know. We didn't always use it, but he was like Merv [Merv Griffin], liked to do things at the last minute and get an idea, and we'd do it. And it was fun.

INT: 1968, and you leave THE TONIGHT SHOW [THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON]. What, and begin a chapter, which I guess is your, some freelance years working...

DC: Yeah. I, you know, I was ready to move back. And there was a rumor, you know, I never heard it until I left that we didn't get along, which is so far from the truth. In fact it wasn't too long ago I'm at my golf course, and I'm, a guy comes to me, and he says, "Can I ask you a question?" And I said, "Yeah. Sure." "I heard that--" Oh, he was an Actor who had been on THE TONIGHT SHOW. We have a lot of Actors in our golf course next to Warner Bros. Studio. Anyway, I said, "Yeah. Go ahead." And he said, "I understand you and Johnny didn't get along." And I said, "No. Far from it. Please tell the person that told you that we were the best of friends.” I left and that's what started the rumor. I left for family reasons, which I won't go into, but it was time to leave. And I always learned folks, if you're listening, don't leave your job until you have another one. So I, we had Don Rickles on the show that week, and he had signed the deal to do a show. What kind of a show, I don't know. So I said, "Well, I'm gonna call his Agent, or his Manager." And he says, "I'll talk to Don." They got back to me and said, "Sure. Why not? Do it." So now I had a reason to leave, and packed it all up, and went, came out to Hollywood, and won't go into it. It's a long story. It didn't work out too well. It wasn't a very good show [THE DON RICKLES SHOW]. But the best part was the… Johnny did a, for his first appearance with Don Rickles. And people don't believe this, and I didn't even believe it. I did not know that Johnny had become a very proficient archery person. He would have stuff like that, you wouldn't... And I said, "Well, what's gonna happen?" "Johnny's gonna shoot an apple off Don Rickles' head." I said, "Come on." And we did it--live. And I would say, Don was maybe 15 to 20 feet away with this apple on his head. And I said, and Rickles, I'm surprised Don did it. But the takes of Rickles' face was like, you know, and John was just steady. I mean I never knew he was doing it. Got the apple right in half. [INT: Wow.] That was the best part of the show we ever did. It was a 13-week contract. I think it was over in about six, seven, eight weeks. I forget. Yeah, we didn't get to finish. [INT: One-hour variety show, is that what it was?] I'm not sure what it was. And I don't mean that… [INT: Yeah. No, I understand, you just…] It was a lot of stuff.