THE TONIGHT SHOW (New Years Eve 1965)

[Richard M Roberts]

Since we've been doing rare New York Era TONIGHT SHOWS of recent, here's the New Years Eve Broadcast of 1965, one of the earliest complete shows that actually exists on color videotape. Guests include Gina Golan, William Walke and Woody Allen, along with old Ben Grauer and his traditional New Years reports from Time Square.

Also, this show preserves one of the early aspects of THE TONIGHT SHOW that was changed several years into it's run, but in the early days it was actually an hour and forty-five minute show, and the first fifteen minutes was basically a warm-up with Ed McMahon and bandleader Skitch Henderson where the TONIGHT SHOW band got to do a few numbers, then Johnny Carson would come on and do a 90-minute show. These warm-ups were not seen all around the Country, mostly just on the East Coast, but they did them for the first three or four years of the show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Du8lLUkpHE


RICHARD M ROBERTS