San Francisco Herald In 1982, comedian , CBS offered Leno his own program that who had filled in for Carson a few times, would go head to head with Tonight. July 2019 was given a show immediately following When NBC got wind of this they Tonight on NBC titled . secretly signed him as Carson’s SanFranciscoHerald.Net replacement, apparently to not enrage NBC ruled late night television. ABC Letterman (or Carson). “Serving Nob Hill and Beyond” had some limited success competing against Tonight with Nightline, a news You could make a valid case that David XXXXXXXXXX show. CBS, however, never could offer Letterman’s act resembled ’s more than low-rated reruns of cop more than ’s, but Carson The Society Page shows. was Letterman’s idol. His boyhood dream had been to replace Johnny as By Gene Mahoney host of . Though Russian Hill Upholstery & Décor is still whenever asked about it in interviews, located in Nob Hill, not Russian Hill. he would always say Carson was a much better comedian than him and he never XXXXXXXXXX thought of taking over Tonight, so as not to give the impression he was trying to I finally got around to reading The Late push Carson out the door. Shift, a book by Bill Carter which detailed what happened when Johnny In 1991, Carson announced he was Carson announced he was leaving The retiring in a year. When Leno was Tonight Show. introduced as the new host of The Tonight Show, Letterman fumed. The Tonight Show began in 1954 on Negotiations and legal wrangling NBC as a late night, weeknight talk ensued. Basically, the NBC Los Angeles show with comedy and music, hosted by executives wanted Leno and the NBC Steve Allen. It was such a success that New York executives wanted Letterman. two years later Allen was plucked off the

show and given his own program in Letterman had always been difficult – prime time. Johnny Carson in 1957 insulting NBC executives on his show, disinviting them from a Christmas party, Allen was replaced on Tonight by Jack In 1989, CBS began a talk show with berating staff members – so the pro-Leno Paar, who had a more combative style – another quick-witted game show host, executives eventually won out. promoting various political causes, Pat Sajak, star of Wheel of Fortune. battling censors, arguing with guests, They never expected the show to beat CBS offered Letterman his own show quitting the show then coming back – Carson. The plan was to appeal to a that would go up against Tonight with until he left for good in 1962. younger audience than Johnny’s aging Leno, for more money than he would one. Then when Johnny retired, Pat’s have gotten at NBC. But he cared more Johnny Carson, a quick-witted game show would become the new leader in about being the host of Tonight than he show host who had filled in for Paar a late night. However, it never caught on did about making more money. few times, was chosen as the new and was eventually canceled. Tonight host. However, his agent and staff were more CBS concluded there was only one concerned with making more money Unlike Paar, Carson shied away from person who could compete with Carson than fulfilling Letterman’s lifelong controversy, and he went on to become – Carson’s permanent guest host on dream, so they urged him to defect. the most successful host in the show’s Tonight, . (Leno got that prized Finally, Letterman called his hero, history. gig by appearing regularly on Johnny Carson, who said that if he had Letterman’s show.) been treated the way Letterman had, he blowhard talk show host, who comes by the homeless. Though there are an would leave. across as a mean spirited partisan hack. estimated 55,000 homeless in Los Angeles County and over 130,000 in Enough said. Letterman decided to move On Late Show he’s just the real Stephen California, Ring claims the homeless to CBS. His replacement on Late Night Colbert. And the real Stephen Colbert is problem could be completely solved was an unknown writer for Saturday an arrogant, liberal blowhard talk show within a few months. Night Live and The Simpsons named host, who comes across as a mean Conan O’Brien. spirited partisan hack. Ring suggests the national guard, along with law enforcement, could sort the David Letterman’s Late Show debuted I haven’t watched television in years, but homeless into groups: criminals, on CBS in 1993, and went on to defeat from what I hear Colbert pretty much substance abusers, the mentally ill, Jay Leno’s Tonight Show in the ratings spends each show bashing President illegal aliens, and others. Each group night after night, week after week, month . Which is ironic, because could have separate facilities built on after month. before Trump got elected, Colbert vacant or government land away from regularly finished behind Jimmy Fallon downtowns and residential areas. The And that’s where The Late Shift, and Jimmy Kimmel in the ratings. He facilities could be tents, porta-potties, published in 1994, ends. owes his success to the man he lambasts and mobile modules distributing food nightly. Then, in 1995, something strange and medical aid. happened. Apparently Leno regularly appears on Ring points out that every major city in Tonight as a guest. Letterman grew a British thespian Hugh Grant was arrested California is spending at least tens of long beard after he retired, claimed he in Los Angeles for procuring the services millions of dollars on homeless stayed on Late Show ten years longer of a prostitute. While the story was still programs, but most of the money is than he should have, and now hosts his in the news, he appeared on Tonight as a being wasted due to what he calls the own show on Netflix. Conan O’Brien, guest. Not surprisingly, that episode homeless industrial complex. bitter about being fired from Tonight garnered huge ratings, defeating (and having to accept a $45 million Ring explains how the homeless Letterman’s program for the night. buyout – poor baby) got his own talk industrial complex works: Developers Surprisingly, however, Leno’s Tonight show on TBS, a cable channel. He accept public money to build housing for Show kept defeating Letterman’s Late banned Jay Leno from ever appearing as the homeless. Cities and counties collect Show in the ratings night after night, a guest on it. building fees and hire bureaucrats to week after week, month after month. oversee it. Nonprofit organizations are Today’s late night talk shows have much In 2009, Leno stepped down from chosen to run it. smaller audiences than Leno and Tonight and was replaced by Conan Letterman had – and a lot, lot less than However, the developers build way O’Brien. Leno was given his own show Carson had. Maybe it’s all the overpriced, overbuilt housing projects. in prime time. Both Leno’s new show competition nowadays. Maybe it’s the Cities and counties collect very and Tonight with O’Brien were ratings internet. Maybe it’s the political expensive building fees while creating a disasters. Eight months later, NBC fired grandstanding instead of being funny. massive bureaucracy. The nonprofits O’Brien and rehired Leno for Tonight. Maybe it’s all of that, or something else. become large bureaucracies with (Bill Carter wrote a book about this, expensive overhead and salaries that do Or maybe some things just aren’t worth too.) nothing to help the homeless. staying up for. In 2014, Jimmy Fallon, a former Ring cites a homeless shelter being built XXXXXXXXXX Saturday Night Live cast member, on Venice Beach, where over 1,000 homeless people have taken over every replaced Leno as host of Tonight. Recommended: “The Homeless public venue, including the beach. Their Apparently he’s still there. Leno isn’t Industrial Complex” by Edward Ring in tents are protected by law as private hosting the show again. Yet. California Globe (online). Published in space – so in addition to housing, the May, it begins with a doctor’s prediction Though presently Fallon and ABC talk tents have become drug dens and of a major infectious disease epidemic in show host Jimmy Kimmel are losing the brothels. A 154 bed shelter is being built Los Angeles this summer. ratings war to Letterman’s successor on as a “wet” shelter, meaning drug addicts Late Show, Stephen Colbert. L.A., along with other cities in and alcoholics will be able to check in California, already has outbreaks of and check out as they please. The Stephen Colbert got his start hosting a tuberculosis, typhus, hepatitis, and other estimated cost of this shelter (so far) is show on Comedy Central, where he diseases. And the primary reasons for $8 million, which works out to over played an arrogant, conservative this are the unsanitary conditions caused $50,000 per bed. All that money for tents, bathroom plumbing, and a Part of the fascination I guess is that a lot guy was just a born loser. For some kitchen? To have freeloading party of this life is about winning and losing. reason, no matter what he did, no matter animals live alongside the truly needy? That’s why sports are so popular, for we how hard he tried, he always ended up see these symbolic dramas acted out for losing. Like his life was preordained like Ring points out that not only is the our vicarious amusement. Certainly a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. I’ll give you shelter incapable of housing the over everybody experiences their ups-and- an example. One night we were playing 1,000 homeless already in Venice, it will downs in this yin/yang universe of ours. 21. Many of you are probably familiar attract more homeless people to the Most of us experience combinations of with that game. Two points for field beach town. winning and losing. But face it, some goals, one point for foul shots, first people are just flat out winners or losers. player to 21 wins, but if you miss the Ring offers several ways to rein in the Phil Spector was a loser who spent his foul shot at 20 you have to go back to homeless industrial complex, but they life masquerading as a winner. Always 12. Anyways, this one night Charlie was won’t be easy. At community hearings strutting around like the cock of the playing an uncharacteristically great across the state, “homeless advocates” roost, making a big show of leaving game, scoring fantastic shots left and are often bused in from other places to hundred dollar tips, flashing expensive right. But the rub was, every time he got shout down local opposition and demand jewelry and flaunting trophy girlfriends. to 20 he missed the crucial last foul shot new projects. PR firms sell feel-good Probably as a way to try and convince and had to go back to 12. He had lapped stories to an incurious media about HIMSELF that he was a winner for he the rest of us at least 4 or 5 times but he people who have turned their lives probably always suspected deep down he just couldn’t make that crucial last shot. around, never mentioning all the people was a total loser. So Charlie decided to play it smart. The still on the street due to sparse, next time he got to 19 he decided to massively overpriced housing for the On the other hand, my old friend Vincent purposely miss the foul shot so he could homeless. (When Los Angeles voters Johnson was a winner masquerading as a win the game later with a harmless field passed Measure HHH in 2016 to build loser. Half black and half white, he never goal. So he takes the basketball and just more housing for the homeless, they knew his father, and his mother treated blindly flings it at the basket with all his were told “permanent supportive him like shit all his life. He was raised in might. Of course it went right in the housing” would cost about $140,000 per a ghetto in southern California during the basket. “I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!” he unit. They are now more than triple that.) early ’60s and remembers walking to screamed in stunned disbelief. So now grade school with tear gas in the air from Wow. Can you believe all that Charlie was back at 20 and of course he the Watts riots. The blacks all hated him corruption disguised as compassion is missed the foul shot when he was because they considered him white and going on in Los Angeles? Gee, it’s a TRYING to hit it and went back to 12 the whites all hated him because they good thing nothing like that happens yet again. “I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!!” he considered him black. Frail and epileptic here in San Francisco. screamed. While the rest of us were with a bad stutter and somewhat homely rolling around on our backs laughing Right? by conventional standards, Vincent was until we cried. In truth it was one of the one of those guys who seemed to have funniest things I’d ever witnessed. XXXXXXXXXX everything stacked against him. A bad statistic waiting to happen. And yet For some reason it reminded me of the Herald Archives: 2012 Vince had a quiet dignity about him. One comedian Pat Paulsen, another total of the most peaceful and tranquil people loser. He decided to get a cool tattoo, but Phil Spector: Coolest Man Alive I’ve ever known. Always walked with the tattoo artist misspelled it and it came his head held high, a prince among men. out “Born too loose.” The poor guy By Ace Backwords Just a very soulful dude. He moved to couldn’t even lose right.### Berkeley in the ’70s to become a hippy. I have this weird fascination with Phil Spent much of his life homeless, living XXXXXXXXXX Spector. I’m not sure why. I’ll regularly in a battered ’56 Chevy that rarely ran, Google “Phil Spector” to see how he’s The San Francisco Herald is published monthly painted in bright psychedelic colors with holding up amidst prison life, see if he’s by Gene Mahoney. All contents ©2019 by Gene the Grateful Dead “STEAL YOUR gotten any more teeth knocked out lately Mahoney (except work not done by Mr. FACE” logo on the front hood. Who can Mahoney). The characters and situations in and etc. I guess everybody likes a rags- explain the twists and turns of our lives, Good Clean Fun comics are fictitious; any to-riches-to-rags story. And if anyone and why some of us are winners and similarity to persons living, dead, or in hiding is ever went from the penthouse to the purely coincidental. Though well-known people others losers. outhouse it's old Phil. He went from and places appear it’s a work of fiction and the usual rules apply. None of these events ever living in a gated castle with the world at For some reason this reminds me of a his fingertips, to a 5-foot-by-9 foot cell took place. Herald logo by James Dylan. Ads guy I used to play basketball with at do not appear in online edition. Contact: that he’s confined to 23 hours of the day. Ohlone Park. Let’s call him Charlie — Gene Mahoney, P.O. Box 843, Redwood City, as in Charlie Brown — because the poor California 94064

Herald Archives: 2014 precisely styled hair-do (ala SF Herald (which of course I kindness, encouraging nature (edited for length from Sheena Easton), and when had a copy of on me) stood up and humanity. I’d like to end original article). Robin was introduced to me, on my chair and jumped over this tribute with a beautiful he immediately went into this the railing onto the sidewalk memory from my fellow cast gay, French hairdresser and yelled, "Hey Robin!" and mate from Breakfast In Marin, Almost character and started cooing ran up to him. He turned Nancy Scher, who worked Famous and fussing over my hair around and I said, "Kimberlye with Joan some years back: while he "styled" it. I played Gold, San Francisco Herald, right along, acting like a the Rickie Lee Jones show at Years ago, I had the pleasure By Kimberlye Gold spoiled diva and everybody Bimbo's in June!" He goes, "Oh of working on a commercial laughed. For a minute, me ‘n my God, it's YOU!" in mock (I with Joan Rivers. There were We lost a lot of people this Robin had ‘em rolling in the hope) horror. "I wrote about 6 or 7 of us; all dressed the year and recently who meant aisles, baby! you, it's right in here!" I same, all Joan Rivers look-a- a great deal to me, both exclaimed and handed him likes. It was for MCI. personally and professionally. From my Rickie Lee Jones at the issue. He took it and said, (Remember MCI?) Before she But none hit so hard as Bimbo’s show review in "Great! Thank you for this!!" arrived, someone from the beloved comedian actor Robin 2001: After the house lights and walked away, waving production company came Williams, who I met and wrote came up, I went over to a back to me, "Thanks again!!" I over to coach us on how to about several times over the very low-key, bespectacled think he was genuinely "be" with Ms. Rivers. He asked years. Depression is a REAL Robin Williams, introduced amused. (God knows us not to engage with her "too illness and unfortunately, it myself, and told him I’d everybody else was!). much.” We all looked at one takes tragedies of this written a piece for the SF another. What? Was she a magnitude to wake people up Herald about meeting him 20 Thanks for the memories, Diva? We were all big fans, so and get us to acknowledge years ago. He very politely Robin… this was not good news. Our just how real it is. and honestly said, "I don’t spirits dampened, and we believe I’ve ever heard of the Hold the presses – this just were noticeably bummed. From my very first “Almost San Francisco Herald." "Don’t in…9/4/14 – Joan Rivers left Someone - someone very Famous” column in 2001: In worry,” I replied. "No one us too… brave - asked, "Why? Why ‘79, I got cast in a rock ‘n roll else has either. But I think couldn't we talk to her?" musical comedy called you might find it amusing and Like our publisher Gene "Because we won’t get any BREAKFAST IN MARIN as worth your while. And we just Mahoney so poignantly stated: work done. She'll hang out "Sunny From Ohio,” an won ‘Best Neighborhood “Somebody always dies at and play with you, and we innocent ingénue (which I Newspaper’ in the SF deadline”… need to keep her on track." was) who gets indoctrinated Weekly!!" I gave him the Well, we all felt much better, into the wild world of sex, website address and he and ignored his request, and But this was not just drugs, rock’ n roll, health thanked me and told me he’d hung out and played with “somebody.” Say what you food and new age this, that be sure to check it out. I’m Joan, who turned out to be will about Joan but she sure and the other thing (which I certain he ran straight to his completely professional, and as hell did it her way and she did). It was a work in progress computer the moment he got insisted on taking a lot of remained a trailblazer in a and so was I. The line home. Why, I bet he’s breaks for us, because, "These field where few women even between the stage and my probably still chuckling about women are just standing get acknowledged and did so life blurred. The show was "our moment" right now… here, let 'em sit down till her last breath. Truly written by two San Francisco already.” She was very inspirational, even if she hurt State graduates, Brenda conscious of time, and when And from my New York City some folks’ feelings. As Joan Warren and Barbara Friedkin she had some trouble reading diary right before 9/11 – would say, “Oh grow up!” or (the niece of William the teleprompter, she right after I played my own “Get Over it!” Friedkin, the director of THE set at The Bitter End: So we stopped the shoot to edit the EXORCIST). One of the all went across the street to copy so it was more reader Joan got over a LOT – actresses was Robin celebrate with food and drink friendly. I was so impressed including her husband’s Williams’ sweetheart at at an outdoor Mexican by how fast she did that. No suicide and being told she College of Marin and he had restaurant. I had to be on a complaining, no joking, just would never work again – and just broken up with her plane in 7 hours and was "put a comma here, slow it she kept going and going and before she was cast - and he floating on a surreal, post-gig down a bit, ok, ok, that looks going like the comedic became MORK! Fun fact: A cloud, when a guy walked by good, let's go again." At the Energizer Bunny. Joan Rivers year after BREAKFAST closed, and somebody called out to end of the day, we all lined had an UNBELIEVABLE work I met Robin Williams when him and he stopped to let up and she posed for a photo. ethic that would rival anyone this guy I was dating, the them take his picture and A few weeks later I got the at ANY age – and at 81 years male half of the SF comedy began to walk away. Someone pic, autographed. I still have old, she was still going duo Rick ‘n Ruby, landed a at the table goes, "Look, it. I have never forgotten how gangbusters and remained guest spot on MORK & MINDY that's Robin Williams!" wonderful she was that day. completely RELEVANT. What and he flew me down for the Without missing a beat, I the general public probably taping. I had a short, grabbed the last issue of the RIP Joan… isn’t aware of is Joan River’s