10 Charming Photos of Johnny Carson at Home with His Wife and Sons in the ’50s
Before hosting The Tonight Show for 30 years and becoming the original King of Late Night, Johnny Carson married his first wife, Joan (Jody) Wolcott, and they had three sons. Here’s a look at the beloved television icon at home with his family in the ’50s.
Johnny Carson before ‘The Tonight Show’
Carson eventually became a late-night staple, but he hosted an afternoon game show called Who Do You Trust? before that. A photo from 1958 shows Carson with his family in the rear courtyard of his home in New York.
Before Who Do You Trust? Carson hosted The Johnny Carson Show and was up for the lead on what became The Dick Van Dyke Show. When he wasn’t at the studio, the host would sit on the floor of his den and review scripts.
Carson had a talent for entertaining, which began with magic tricks in his youth in Nebraska. But he mastered almost everything he put his mind to, as Tonight Show co-host Ed McMahon wrote in his memoir, Here’s Johnny. He was charming, hilarious, and excelled at various sports.
Notably, Carson considered turning down The Tonight Show because he was comfortable before it. But according to PBS, he later told himself, “If you’re really going to take a shot at it, if you really want to entertain, you ought to grab for all the marbles or get out of the business.”
“The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that Tonight was the only network show where I could do the nutty, experimental, low-key thing I like best,” he concluded.
Johnny Carson’s first wife, Joan (Jody) Wolcott Carson
According to a 1990 article from United Press International, Carson and Wolcott were college sweethearts who married on Oct. 1, 1949. Both were still in their twenties, and they had a seemingly idyllic life at first. A photo from 1956 shows Wolcott standing in the picture-perfect kitchen of a home she shared with Carson.
But Wolcott had more than domestic skills. She supported the host early in his career and sometimes helped him go over his scripts, at least for photos.
The two seemed to have a loving and playful relationship. But, as reported by UPI, they separated in 1959 and divorced in 1963, a year after Carson began hosting The Tonight Show.
In a 1967 interview with Playboy, Carson set the record straight about his first divorce. “I didn’t initiate it,” he told author Alex Haley during that chat. “The way [the press] put it made it sound like I was the kind of guy who made it big and then got rid of the one who had stuck with him all the way.”
But according to UPI, Wolcott later claimed Carson traded her in. She said, “With men like [Carson], wives are interchangeable. If you have a problem, you just trade it in for a new one, like a car.”
Johnny Carson’s sons, Christopher, Richard, and Cory Carson
Notably, Carson’s marriage to Wolcott was the only one during which he fathered children, three sons born in the early ’50s.
Carson and Wolcott allowed photographers into their homes while their children were still young.
But after finding widespread fame on The Tonight Show, Carson said it bothered him he couldn’t take his sons anywhere “without collecting a trail of people,” according to his interview with Playboy.
Through the years, Carson kept his relationship with his kids primarily private. He told Playboy he became more reclusive and defensive of his personal life the more strangers in public demanded his attention.
Unfortunately, Richard died in a car accident while taking photographs in June 1991, less than a year before Carson retired from The Tonight Show. But Christopher and Cory each survived and received parts of their father’s $300 million fortune upon his death in 2005.
