Two new books on Johnny Carson and Shirley MacLaine offer intimate views of celebrity

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2024

⏱️ 20 minutes

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Summary

New books focused on Johnny Carson and Shirley MacLaine offer intimate portraits of two of television and Hollywood's biggest stars. Johnny Carson hosted The Tonight Show for 30 years, becoming an unparalleled nighttime staple and unifying force within American culture. His life is the subject of Carson the Magnificent, a new biography co-written by Bill Zehme and Mike Thomas, who took over the decades-long research project after Zehme died in 2023. In today's episode, Thomas joins NPR's Scott Simon to discuss the divisions between Carson's public and private personas. Then, Shirley MacLaine's personal photo walls feature pictures of dignitaries, starlets and leaders like the Obamas, the Dalai Lama, Dolly Parton, Stephen Hawking and others. In her new book, The Wall of Life, MacLaine uses her photo collection as a way to tell her life stories through a scrapbook format. In today's episode, she speaks with Here & Now's Robin Young about past lives, enduring friendships in Hollywood, and the balance between reality and fame.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Because of the way our fractured media
0:07.4	environment works today, it's really hard to grasp how famous, famous people used to be.
0:14.2	Today's episode can serve as a reminder in a bit. We speak with the one and only Shirley MacLean
0:19.5	about her new memoir. But first,
0:21.8	the new Johnny Carson biography, Carson the Magnificent, does what any great biography should
0:27.3	at least aim to do, capture the subject in all their faults and complexities. And co-author
0:33.1	Mike Thomas spoke with NPR Scott Simon about what made Carson such an engaging and endearing late-night hosts to millions of people, but also what fractured his relationships with his own family.
0:46.4	That's coming up.
0:48.2	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:53.0	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
0:57.6	On our new show, Sources and Methods.
0:59.6	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people, helping you understand why distant
1:04.6	events matter here at home.
1:07.2	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:13.1	And now, ladies and gentlemen, here's Johnny.
1:20.9	Might be hard to grasp today just how big Johnny Carson was.
1:24.9	We hosted the Tonight Show from 1962 until 1992, a bedtime companion
1:30.3	for 9 million viewers each night, and his fame names lined up to sit on his couch. Over time,
1:37.7	Johnny's name became as big as their own. Asquire magazine's Bill Zamey began a biography of
1:43.8	Johnny Carson in 2002
1:45.7	and interviewed the man himself as well as friends, competitors, ex-wives, and family.
1:52.1	When Bill died of cancer in 2023, Mike Thomas, who had once been arts and entertainment writer at the Chicago Sun Times,
	...

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