Magazine writer and biographer, Bill Zehme had been on the Johnny Carson beat for decades. He was a fan and looked at Carson as the great American Sphinx. Finally, he landed a prized interview for Esquire Magazine in 2002 - a decade after Johnny left the airwaves. When Carson died in 2005, Zehme signed a contract to do an expansive biography on the "King of Late Night.
He worked on the book for more than a decade and then a cancer diagnosis and ongoing treatments halted his progress. Zehme died in 2023. The New York Times called it "one of the great unfinished biographies." Enter: Mike Thomas, Zehme's former research assistant, who took the notes and the finished chapters and completed the project which became the book "Carson: The Magnificent."
