Interview: John Davidson on guest-hosting The Tonight Show, getting turned upside down for Airport '79, posing for Cosmo, and more

First things first: if you haven’t yet had a chance to check out the first part of my interview with John Davidson, stop reading and… Well, actually, keep reading long enough for me to type “click here to read part one, and once you’ve done that, then come back and read this second part.”

If you’re reading this, then I presume you’ve either read part one or else you’ve decided to throw caution to the wind and read the parts out of order. It’s a bold move, and I applaud you for it.

Okay, now go read part two!

What do you remember about working with Lucille Ball on Here's Lucy?

Oh, there's a pro. I was the love interest for the young Lucy - Lucy Arnaz - and she was great. We've had several duets that we sang together, and she's a singer/actor/entertainer, just a great talent. But getting to know Lucille Ball... I went to dinner at her house with Gary Morton, and Lucy... I don't know whether everybody realizes that she did everything. She started out by just being this dimwitted, sort of ditzy girl doing blonde jokes, that kind of humor, but gradually she learned the business. And Desi Arnaz probably coached her as she got started, but in her latter years she became the set director, the director of the show, head of lights, head of sound, wardrobe, timing...everything. She made it her way. She was very strong. Very sweet, but very strong. She did everything. Sort of the way Streisand did after she learned the film business. She started directing and said, "Wait a minute, this could be done better!" And I think maybe she was criticized for that, because people didn't realize that she knew so much about it. But Lucille Ball really knew everybody's job. Lucy did it all. She was very interesting, and just such a master at television.

I didn't realize quite how many times you'd guest-hosted The Tonight Show over the course of your career.

Yeah, I didn't either! [Laughs.] Somebody showed me that, it was, like, 87 nights!

I'm guessing Mark Malkoff told you.

Probably! [Laughs.] But, yeah, The Girl with Something Extra was on NBC, and my relationship with The Tonight Show got started because they were promoting one of their own. I really think they called Johnny Carson and Fred de Cordova and Peter Lasalle and said, "Why don't you use Davidson? He's one of our boys! He's on NBC, on The Girl with Something Extra."

So that got started, and then I got to know them, and...I was okay at doing it. I don't think I... [Hesitates.] I don't know, I think I did some good shows. But, yeah, they'd bring me in for Christmas week for three or four years, and I'd do that week of shows, and then I'd replace Johnny whenever he went out, and I guess it ended being 87 different nights! That was a great experience, meeting and interviewing so many people.

Do any particular guests stand out?

Well, I always wanted to have friends of mine on...and, of course, that's not what a guest host should do! You're not Johnny Carson. His name is on the coffee mug and the pencils and everything. You know you're stepping into his shoes, and that's all it is. You're just a temporary host. So you can't have your friends on. But I managed to get two artists on. One was Kenny Rogers. Kenny had never done The Tonight Show. They said to me, "He's not a talker. He's just a singer." I said, "Are you crazy? Kenny Rogers tells funny, funny stories! He's a raconteur!" But people didn't know that. This was when he had just left The First Edition, and he was becoming Kenny Rogers. So they said, "Okay, we'll have him on." And he was fabulous.

During the sound check, Kenny was wearing the glasses he used to wear with The First Edition - he had the full beard and the glasses - and after sound check, I said, "Kenny, are you hiding from us? The dark glasses, the beard... Do you not want us to get to know you? Why don't you take the glasses off and let us in? Let the audience in! You've got great eyes!" And he never wore his glasses again. And in his book, he credits me with getting him to take off his glasses! [Laughs.] I think it was a way of hiding. All of us, I think, are shy. That's why we go up on stage: so we can release something. I was very shy as a kid. And I think he would go on stage, but when he'd wear these dark glasses and beard, he was hiding behind that. So I said, "Let us in! Let us get to know you!" So that was a great moment, and that went great.

The other one was Jacques Cousteau. I'm a scuba diver, and I said, "Can I please have Jacques Cousteau on?" Because my manager was Jerry Weintraub, and I said to Jerry, who had done some specials with Cousteau, "Do you think you could get him to be a guest when I take over for Carson?" And he said, "Let me ask him," and Jacques said, "Okay!" And The Tonight Show said, "Jacques Cousteau is a boring scientist and filmmaker. He's just not interesting." I said, "He invented the regulator for scuba diving, and he's done incredible things about undersea life and understanding the sea and the oceans..." Finally, they said "yes," but they put him on the last six minutes of the show...and the last three minutes of the show, I've got to spend billboarding the guests for the next night! "Tomorrow night, I hope you'll come back and join us when our guests are..." So I had about four minutes with Jacques Cousteau. He waited around the whole show for his interview, and he was so nice, but I was embarrassed that I couldn't give him his time. 

I remember when I was making The Happiest Millionaire at Disney Studios - that's the movie that followed Mary Poppins - and I was the romantic lead with Lesley Ann Warren, and Fred MacMurray was the star of the show. And I said, "Fred, would you come on The Tonight Show and be my guest?" And he said, "You know, I don't do those shows well. I'm not good at that. I don't know how to play myself. I don't know who Fred MacMurray is!" So that's another thing I remember: that he turned me down to be a guest. 

I have to ask how you found your way into Edward Scissorhands.

Jerry Weintraub set that up. Jerry knew... I don't know, somebody connected to the film. Maybe the director, Tim Burton. But it was just a one-day shoot, and it was $15,000 at the time. I thought, "Well, geez, I could use $15,000!" And like I said, it was a one-day shoot, and I was playing a talk show host in the film. I got to meet the star of the show, Johnny Depp. I spent about two seconds with him in makeup. Very interesting guy, but unfortunately he was working on his lines. He was trying to learn his stuff, so I didn't spend much time talking to him. But Tim Burton just... I spent 15 minutes with Tim Burton with him explaining to me what the movie was all about, and his mouth was trying to keep up with his mind. His mind... He's an imaginative, inspired guy. Just amazing. It was a great experience, but it was just for one day. 

And possibly on the flip side of things, how did you enjoy doing The Concorde ... Airport '79?

Again, that was another one I did for the money. [Laughs.] I think it was a three-day shoot. Again, Jerry Weintraub set that up for me. Unfortunately, I just sat in my chair for so long while they set up scenes. My chair had my name on it, which was good, because I was going to spend a lot of time sitting in this chair. It was a very small part. I was with Andrea Marcovicci, a very lovely young actress. We had some love scenes, and she was wonderful. She's a singer as well! But I was in the disaster part, when the airplane rolls. So they put us on a cylinder and rolled me upside down. So I was in the background of all of these disasters that happened to the airplane. I didn't have any lines, but I just happened to be in the background. So I spent three days being rolled upside down! But it was okay. It paid some money. I can't remember how much. But I was working on a model airplane at the time in my dressing room, so that's mostly what I did: worked on my model airplane.

I have a podcast called Obscurity Knocks, and when I had Barry Primus as a guest, one of the projects on my list to ask him about was the movie you did together: Roger & Harry: The Mitera Target.

Yes! Now, that was another pilot for a show. The intent was to make a series out of the Robert Redford and Paul Newman movie The Sting. After that movie came out, the studio tried to create a TV show about two guys who try to pull off a robbery. Barry and I did that with Joan Van Ark. She was the love interest. Joan Van Ark gave me the best kiss. I've kissed a lot of ladies in movies, but I will never forget Joan Van Ark.

Just a couple of years ago, I saw her an autograph signing thing, and I said, "Do you remember when we kissed in that movie?" She French-kissed me. She stuck her tongue in my mouth! And I thought, "Oh, my God!" I'd never had an actress do that while the camera was rolling. It was really cool! She's a great lady, and you talk about somebody who's open and honest and candid. She's just so giving and so open. But that's the most astounding kiss on film that I've ever had! But the pilot didn't sell. Maybe it's because she stuck her tongue in my mouth. I'm not sure. But she denied it! She said, "I don't remember that." I said, "Well, I'm telling you, you did, because I will never forget that!" [Laughs.] She was very sweet.

[Writer's note: I didn't realize it at the time, but Davidson was actually conflating two different TV movies from right around the same time. The movie he did with Joan Van Ark—but without Barry Primus—was called Shell Game, and just based on the title, I'm guessing that's the one that was trying to emulate The Sting. On the other hand, the IMDb description for Roger & Harry: The Mitera Target—in which he did co-star with Barry Primus—reads as follows: "A millionaire hires a pair of private investigators, who specialize in recovering lost and stolen objects, to find his daughter, who has apparently been smuggled out of the country." Sounds more like a buddy-cop flick by way of Banacek.]

How do you look back at your layout for Cosmopolitan?

Ah, I don't know. My manager at the time said, "You know, you're just too wholesome." Because, you know, my parents were both Baptist ministers, and...I'm not religious at all, I'm an atheist, but I came from a very religious background. And he said, "Why don't we shake things up a bit? Helen Gurley Brown just called and wants to do a follow-up to the Burt Reynolds centerfold." Which was wearing a towel. It wasn't nude like Playgirl. So I was a follow-up to that. And on the other side of the centerfold was Jim Brown, the football player. So it was the both of us. And...I don't know. I didn't think it got that much reaction. It was just weird.

It was a weird thing to do, and [Francesco] Scavullo, I think, was the photographer in New York. Very famous photographer. And...it was just kind of dumb. My wife at the time—my first wife, Jackie—went with me, and it was a big laugh. I dunno. I probably shouldn't have done it. It upset my folks. My folks were very upset. I don't know, I'm not a sexy thing like that. I'm not, like, a Tom Jones. I've never been roguish like Burt Reynolds. It was just kind of dumb.

Looking back on your recording career, do you have a favorite album in the bunch?

Well, I have two. One was the one I did in London. When I did the Tom Jones summer series in London, I went into the studio with a full orchestra and made an album off of that series. I guested on the Tom Jones show, and I did 13 shows in London, and I did the album while I was there. There's a lot of things on there that I really like. But my third album, for Columbia in the late '60s, was called A Kind of Hush. The Herman's Hermits song, I recorded as a ballad. [Singing.] "There's a kind of hush / All over the world / Tonight..." And I did it with just my guitar. That's when I realized that I really loved singing with my guitar, which is what I'm doing now in my club in Sandwich, New Hampshire called Club Sandwich. And that's when I realized that I really loved the intimacy of not using my Broadway voice.

Because I'd come from Broadway, so I had a big... [Singing.] "There's a bright golden haze on the meadow..." I've got a big Broadway voice! But on that, I was using my intimate voice, and I did a lot of tunes that showed me that that could be effective in recording. And Bob Banner, who discovered me on Broadway and also discovered Carol Burnett, he said, "I want to do an album with you just with guitar." And then later we added the strings and the harmonica and the bass. But originally I recorded that whole album just with my guitar. So that was a chance to use a more intimate sound, and it got me away from my Broadway voice. Because I was touring in, like, Camelot. [Singing.] "If ever I would leave you..." You know, I was sounding like Robert Goulet! But that album showed me I could be intimate, and that kind of changed a lot of things. 

My last question is a stock question I ask everyone: is there a project you've worked on over the years that didn't get the love you thought it deserved?

Hmmm. Yeah, I wrote a play. It was called Father/Son (& Holy Ghost), and I did it at my school, Denison, and then I did it in a theater in Beach Haven, New Jersey called the Surflight Theater. I did it for a week there. It's about the relationship with my father. I had never confronted my Baptist minister father, who had his doctorate in philosophy of religion, about my critique of religion in general. So this was a play in which I bring my father back as a ghost, I visit him in the church study, and I confront him about religion and that religion is manmade. And I thought it was pretty good. Another actor played my father - Bob Armstrong - and he was wonderful. And I thought, "Why didn't that go forward?"

Maybe the writing wasn't good enough. But it was basically... [Hesitates.] George Bernard Shaw had the idea of two opposing thoughts... It was a dialogue. A religious debate is what it was. Maybe it was... I don't know what was wrong with it. But I was hoping that I could tour in that play, because it was also about my wanting more love from my father, not being close enough to my father. But in the middle of that was a religious argument. "What do you mean? People can't walk on water. People can't be born of a virgin. What are you talking about? People can't change water to wine. Come on! You can't take two fish and feed two thousand people!" So there was a lot of that. Maybe it was too simplistic, trying to handle all of religious dogma in one play. But it was really more about the relationship with my father. Anyway, I thought it was a pretty strong piece, but I couldn't get that to go forward, and...I wish that had. [Pauses, then smirks.] So are we going to end on that serious note?

Actually, we're going to send on something that I guess is technically slightly serious, but I just wanted to thank you for appearing at the live farewell to Gilbert Gottfried and his podcast.

Oh, yeah. Boy, did I feel out of place there! 

Even so. 

I just barely fit in there. We all fit together because we all loved Gilbert so much. And his wife Dara is so sweet. But all those people had so much more to give and so many more stories than I had, and I just felt, "What am I doing here? These people are so talented!" There were so many interesting people on that show. I hope they rerun that again. That was a delight. And thank you for watching that.

[Gilbert’s farewell show, which was available as a pay-per-view thing a few months ago, is not currently available for viewing, mostly because of the cost of royalties involved. Below, however, you can listen to John’s appearance on Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast, and then below that you can watch a clip from their conversation that John posted on his YouTube channel when Gilbert passed away.]

I was a huge fan of Gilbert's, and I've become acquaintances with Frank [Santopadre, Gil’s friend and co-host] over the years, and he's just such a nice guy. 

He made it work. I think Frank had a lot to do with the latter part of Gilbert's career! I mean, Frank focused Gilbert. Frank was the genius behind his podcast. I think everybody knows that. But the two of them worked together so well, and Frank is such an amazing man. I hope he has great success going forward. 

As do I.

Anyway, it's been a pleasure to talk to you, Will. Thank you for the time!

Thank you for your time, as well as your willingness to dig a little deeper than usual with the topics of conversation. As you can see, I enjoy my obscurities.

I can! [Laughs.] All the best, man!