Searching for the Best Joke Ever? Here’s Johnny!

For 30 years, Ed McMahon’s signature introduction was heard nightly in living rooms across the country as millions tuned in to The Tonight Show. Johnny Carson was a quick-witted, charismatic host who kept audiences and guests on their toes. Who can forget the night Dom DeLuise’s epic magic trick took a wrong turn? Somehow Carson started an impromptu and all-out egg fight with DeLuise and both men (with a contagious childlike energy) ended up with cracked eggs on their heads, shirts and yup, inside their pants! That brand of unpredictable, unscripted and unexpected fun entertained millions!

Carson’s jokes spanned from witty one-liners to on-set skits that didn’t always elicit laughter from the crowd — and that is when Carson was his funniest. He had no problem calling out the audience for its lack of engagement or shooting the camera an intense and well-timed glance as if he were speaking directly to viewers at home. Sometimes he’d even break into a random dance on stage (and he was a good dancer).

AARP Membership— $12 for your first year when you sign up for Automatic Renewal

Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine.

Join Now

Like most comedians, he didn’t shy away from self-deprecating humor and often found himself on the receiving end of jokes about his wives, ex-wives and failed marriages. He once mentioned to Jonathan Winters that he was no longer practicing magic (he started practicing magic at the young age of 12), to which Winters responded, “Well, you’ve been able to make two wives disappear!” 

Carson welcomed America’s most loved and iconic stars, and he mastered the art of witty banter with each of them. Betty White and Carson were epic on camera. Joan Rivers, Rodney Dangerfield, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin and Bob Newhart were other fan favorites. Carson’s chemistry with others was always the context for his jokes, and the interplay with his guests, cohosts and audience was usually funnier than the jokes themselves. Below are examples of those escapades.

How Hot Was It?

Carson often slipped a line into his monologue about how hot it was outside, which cued the audience to respond, “How hot was it?” The punchlines varied from corny to funny, but Carson’s deadpan look coupled with his genius timing delivered hysterics every time. Here are a few of his hottest punchlines.

• How hot was it, you ask? It was so hot that:
• I saw a fire hydrant flagging down a dog.
• I caught Doc and the band snorting ice cubes.
• I saw a robin dipping his worm in Nestea.
• It was so hot today that Burger King was singing, “If you want it your way, cook it yourself!”

Carnac the Magnificent

Perhaps his most memorable recurring sketch was when Carson played Carnac the Magnificent, a “psychic” who would emerge from behind the curtain in a feathered turban and black cape. The Carnac character had the rare ability to divine answers to questions that were sealed in envelopes handed to him by McMahon.  

Here are a couple of Carnac’s answers that had the audience laughing the hardest:

Answer: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L.

Question: Describe the sound made by someone choking on alphabet soup.

Answer: Sis boom bah.

Question: What sound does a sheep make when it explodes?