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Famous TV host and comedian, Johnny Carson, died in Los Angeles on January 23, 2005 of respiratory failure from emphysema. He was 79 years old. In 1999 he suffered a heart attack and in 2002 he revealed he had emphysema. There was no public memorial service, but many people paid tribute to Carson, including late night hosts Jay Leno and David Letterman.
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JudyJohnny Carson, the droll, puckish, near-effortless comedian who dominated late-night television for 30 years, tucking millions of Americans into bed as the host of the "Tonight" show, died yesterday in Los Angeles. He was 79.
The cause was the effects of emphysema, family members said.
Mr. Carson took over the "Tonight" show from Jack Paar on Oct. 1, 1962, and, preferring to retire at the top of his game, voluntarily surrendered it to Jay Leno on May 22, 1992. During those three decades, he became the biggest, most popular star American television has known. During his three-decade tenure, virtually every American with a television set saw and heard a Carson monologue at some point. At his height, between 10 million and 15 million Americans slept better weeknights because of him.
Mr. Carson was often called "the king of late night," and he wielded an almost regal power. Beyond his enormous impact on popular culture, Mr. Carson more than any other individual shifted the nexus of power in television from New York to Los Angeles, with his decision in 1972 to move his show from its base in Rockefeller Center in New York to NBC's West Coast studios in Burbank, Calif. That same move was critical in the changeover of much of television from live to taped performances.
In his monologue and in his time, Mr. Carson impaled the foibles of seven presidents and their aides as well as the doings of assorted nabobs and stuffed shirts from the private sector: corporate footpads and secret polluters, tax evaders, preening lawyers, idiosyncratic doctors, oily Accountants, defendants who got off too easily and celebrities who talked too much.
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