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Jay Leno had the difficult task of following Johnny Carson as host of The Tonight Show. He had to carve his own path without alienating too much of the audience that had tuned in to Carson for decades. Now, Leno shares what he thinks he shared in common with the late-night TV legend.

Leno hosted NBC’s iconic Tonight Show from 1992 to 2009 (and again briefly in 2010) after Carson spent 30 years behind the desk. Carson, the undisputed king of late-night, was known for his sharp wit, comedic timing, and deep privacy.

That privacy and off-camera persona are where Leno sees similarities. “When I got The Tonight Show, I began to understand Johnny even more,” Leno wrote in Howard Smith's book My Friend Johnny (via People). “I would never compare myself to Johnny, but I think this is the one thing we had in common: the ability to not really fit in anywhere.

The first time Johnny Carson saw Jay Leno perform comedy, he didn’t book him to appear on The Tonight Show. Instead, Carson gave Leno the advice that would lead to him hosting it.

As the all-time king of late-night television, Carson is a controversial figure to many other comedy icons, but not to Leno. While Carson’s cold, aloof demeanor and near-total control over the TV comedy business caused irreparable harm to his relationship with former friends and protégés such as Joan Rivers, Leno, on the other hand, made a concerted effort to respect his hero’s space and stature as he pursued a purely professional relationship with the Tonight Show legend.

As such, Leno knew not to take it personally when, as an up-and-coming stand-up, Carson explained to him exactly why he wasn’t yet good enough to perform on The Tonight Show. In his forward for Howard Smith...

Despite millions of people watching him for decades, Johnny Carson kept a relatively small inner circle. One friend of the former Tonight Show host is sharing some behind-the-scenes details about what life was like as Carson's close companion.

Carson had a reputation for having his favorites when it came to Tonight Show guests. He also wasn't afraid of banning some stars from the late-night TV show or cutting off others if he felt slighted.

The comedian was also known to be somewhat shy and reserved when off-camera. He was careful about who he let in and how many people got to see the "real" Johnny Carson.

One of the lucky few was Howard Smith, Carson's longtime neighbor in Malibu, California. After a chance meeting at a dinner party, the two quickly bonded over their shared love of tennis. Carson frequently visited Smith's home to play on tennis, and a friendship blossomed from there.

As "The Twilight Zone" was nearing the end of its third season in 1962, creator Rod Serling was feeling the strain of having to generate over half of the series' scripts. Though Serling was fortunate to have a regular network outlet through which he could prick the increasingly troubled consciences of an American public confronted with the Civil Rights Movement, the Cold War, and the military's expanding involvement in the Vietnam conflict, he was, off-camera at least, a very funny man. He liked to laugh. And if he had his druthers, he'd have a separate network outlet to make television viewers laugh as well.

So, late in the third season, Serling revisited "Mr. Bevis," a pilot premise he'd attempted in the first season of "The Twilight Zone," and gave it broader comedic spin. The result was "Cavender Is Coming," which, if it pleased his CBS overlords, would've become a sitcom vehicle...

Four-time Grammy winner Lenny Kravitz will perform for Sunday’s emotional “In Memoriam” segment on the Oscars 2023 ceremony. While only 40-50 people are generally remembered for the television ceremony hosted by Jimmy Kimmel on ABC, over 200 people will be recognized on the Academy’s webpage starting that evening.

SEEWho is Performing at the Oscars 2023?: Full List of Presenters and Performers

Here is a lengthy list of many contributors to film who died since last year’s Academy Awards ceremony:

Mary Alice (actor)

Gil Alkabetz (animator)

Kirstie Alley (actor)

Burt Bacharach (composer)

Angelo Badalamenti (composer)

Simone Bär (casting director)

Joanna Barnes (actor)

Carl A. Bell (animator)

Jeff Berlin (sound)

David Birney (actor)

Bruce Bisenz (sound)

Robert Blake (actor)

Eliot Bliss (sound)

Nick Bosustow (shorts)

Albert Brenner (production designer)

Tom Bronson (costume designer)

James Caan (actor)

Michael Callan (actor)

Donn Cambern (editor)

Irene Cara (songwriter)

Gary W. Carlson (sound)

Marvin Chomsky...

The Audubon Society battles plumage poachers in the Everglades, circa 1900. Legendary director Nicholas Ray suffered an on-location meltdown filming this early ecologically sensitive epic, but the finished product is still one of his better pictures. Burl Ives, Christopher Plummer and Chana Eden give top 'Ray' performances. The eccentric supporting cast includes Peter Falk, boxer Two-Ton Tony Galento and none other than the real Gypsy Rose Lee. Wind Across the Everglades DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1958 / Color / 1:85 enhanced widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date October 6 2015, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Burl Ives, Christopher Plummer, Gypsy Rose Lee, George Voskovec, Tony Galento, Howard Smith, Emmett Kelly, Pat Henning, Chana Eden, Curt Conway, Peter Falk, Sammy Renick, Cory Osceola, MacKinlay Kantor, Totch Brown, George Voskovec, Sumner Williams. Cinematography Joseph Brun Film Editor Georges Klotz, Joseph Zigman Art Direction Richard Sylbert Original Music Paul Sawtell & Bert Shefter Written by Budd Schulberg Produced by Stuart Schulberg...

Patricia Neal ca. 1950. Patricia Neal movies: 'The Day the Earth Stood Still,' 'A Face in the Crowd' Back in 1949, few would have predicted that Gary Cooper's leading lady in King Vidor's The Fountainhead would go on to win a Best Actress Academy Award 15 years later. Patricia Neal was one of those performers – e.g., Jean Arthur, Anne Bancroft – whose film career didn't start out all that well, but who, by way of Broadway, managed to both revive and magnify their Hollywood stardom. As part of its “Summer Under the Stars” series, Turner Classic Movies is dedicating Sunday, Aug. 16, '15, to Patricia Neal. This evening, TCM is showing three of her best-known films, in addition to one TCM premiere and an unusual latter-day entry. 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' Robert Wise was hardly a genre director. A former editor (Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons...

Too Much Johnson – which was intended for inclusion in a theatre show – forms an 'intellectual bridge' between the director's theatrical and cinematic careers, says its restorer

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It's hugely exciting discovery – and a bizarre, unexpected one too. An early Orson Welles film, previously thought lost, has been found in a warehouse in northern Italy. Too Much Johnson, the second film Welles ever created, is a silent movie, a slapstick comedy that has never been shown and was thought to have been destroyed in a fire.

"We may never fully understand the mystery of why it was abandoned. What matters now is that it is safe, and that it will be seen," says Dr Paolo Cherchi Usai, senior curator of motion pictures at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, which restored the footage.

The film, says Cherchi Usai, is the "intellectual bridge" between Welles's theatrical and cinematic careers.

Orson Welles made his feature film debut as a director with Citizen Kane and before that he directed the eight-minute short film Hearts of Age, which you can watch at the bottom of this post. However, Welles worked on another film between those two efforts, which was believed lost forever... until now. Dave Kehr at the New York Times has posted a feature article on Welles' Too Much Johnson, a 1938 film he wrote, directed and never finished based on the play by William Gillette, which has recently resurfaced "in the warehouse of a shipping company in the northern Italian port city of Pordenone, where the footage had apparently been abandoned sometime in the 1970s." Classic film organization Cinemazero is working with George Eastman House and the National Film Preservation Foundation to preserve and transfer the nitrate film to safety stock, after which the 40 minutes of surviving footage will be screened...