Late-night legends

Friday, June 1, 2001 | 9:03 a.m.

Wheeeeeeere's Johnny?

"On a 160 foot yacht, as we are talking," Doc Severinsen said, "on his way to Vancouver."

Johnny Carson withdrew from the public eye after retiring from the "Tonight Show" in 1992. He had been a fixture in Americas living rooms and bedrooms for 30 years.

Since then Doc, Johnny's flamboyant band leader, and Ed McMahon, his loyal announcer, have continued to keep busy schedules. But never together.

Tonight the former late-night colleagues will have a professional reunion at the Orleans Showroom. Johnny won't be there.

"The last time we worked together was on May 22, 1992," Ed said. "That was nine years ago. It was on a little show called 'The Tonight Show.'"

Doc and Ed met earlier this week on the Showroom's empty stage to map out plans for their three-day engagement. It was their first meeting in four years. The last time they saw each other was at a surprise birthday party for Doc, who was conducting the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra in Minneapolis.

"They snuck me into town," Ed said. "They got him onstage and I was in the wings. There is a whole bunch of opera-type people. It's a big night. They love him in Minneapolis.

"I say all I want is a monitor, so I can see him, and a hand mike. So he's onstage, about ready to cut the cake, and from the wings I give him our little code for each other.

"I said 'Tiffany Lips' and he looked around in disbelief and he said, 'That can't be Golden Throat.' And I come out and kiss you on the lips, if you remember."

"That was one of the few times he ever did that," Doc said. "Oh, there was that one night in Tijuana."

"Yeah, that one weekend," Ed said. "Anyway, that's the last time we've seen each other. What happens is, our trail seems to keep overlapping."

"I knew if we kept this up long enough we'd wind up on the same stage at the same time," Doc said.

What's up, Doc?

They briefly discussed their upcoming show.

"What things do you want to do that involve the band?" Doc, tan and fit at age 73, asked.

"I thought I would tell that story about that night Johnny had some terrible material," Ed, also trim and fit at age 75, replied. "It was going nowhere, right in the dumper. I was bold enough to pick up his lighter and set fire to his material. There was no conversation, it just happened. I burned his material and he may have had the greatest joke in the world on page three that he's waiting to get to, but I set fire to the material.

"It's in his hand. It's burning. He looks at me and he says, 'You're absolutely right,' and he picks up the wastepaper basket and looks up and just as he does Doc starts playing taps. Six writers in a room for a month wouldn't come up with that bit."

Another memorable moment came one Thanksgiving.

"I'll show you how Italian Doc is," Ed said. "What do you have every Thanksgiving Day, Doc? Lasagna."

"Lasagna. That was one of the reasons my second wife and I parted company," Doc said.

"This one Thanksgiving I'm in New York doing the Macy's Parade and Doc's got my spot next to Johnny," Ed said.

"I'll tell you, I was (angry)," Doc said. "I wasn't in a good mood anyway, because everybody else had a family and my family wasn't really speaking to me all that much, and I'm sitting there thinking about what do I do, it's Thanksgiving."

"Johnny said to Doc, 'What are you stuffing your turkey with,' and Doc said, 'Probably money,' " Ed said. "Stuffing the turkey with money. That's one of the funniest lines ever on the show."

"Like everything else on that show, nothing was written and nothing was planned," Doc said. "(The turkey comment) came out of deep pain. But I've taken care of that, I married a girl who is part Italian. I go from here to Milwaukee and from Milwaukee to Italy. My wife keeps getting more animals and saying, 'We can't go away and leave all these animals.' "

"You know how many dogs I have in my little abode?" Ed said. "Six. I have six dogs."

"What kind of dogs do you have?" Doc asked.

"Every kind. Name one," Ed said.

"You know what I've got at home?" Doc said. "I've got an Italian dog, it's called a Neapolitan mastiff. He's 20 months old and already he's huge."

"I won't call mine mutts," Ed said. "I call them precious mixtures. We have several precious mixtures. My wife rescued one that is 17 years old and he has adopted me. He's got arthritis. Only in Beverly Hills -- we take him to an acupuncturist."

Eat your heart out

Doc, who is a conductor for the Minnesota Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Colorado Symphony Orchestra and the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, owns a number of restaurants.

"I wouldn't call it a chain," Doc said. "I've got one that's a real restaurant in Brentwood (Calif.). It's a place called Trattoria Toscana. You know where Hamburger Hamlet is? It's right across the street."

"I've got to go in there," Ed said.

"It's noisy and it's really good," Doc said. "We've been there for 13 years."

"Do you spend any time there?" Ed asked.

"Hell, I'm never in L.A., but when I get to town, yeah, I go there," Doc said. "The reason nobody knows I'm connected with it is that in the very beginning they wanted to know about using my name, because we were on the show and everything. I said, 'I don't think the people in this town want to come to an Italian restaurant owned by a guy named Severinsen.'

"A lot of the bigwig people that come there, if they knew it was owned by a trumpet player, they'd wonder, how good could that be?"

"Where else do you have them? Do you have one in Phoenix?" Ed asked.

"No, I just have that one Toscana," Doc said. "But I've got seven places called Rosti. They're spread out. In Italy, they have these neighborhood places where you can go in and get hot food for your house. That's what these started as, but they're becoming more like sit-down restaurants."

Meanwhile Ed is busy with a new version of his "Star Search" television show.

"It's called 'Next Big Star,' " Ed said. "We started on the Internet, nextbigstar.com. Anybody can download an application blank. A gal who lives in Idaho up near the Canadian border, she can go with grandma into the garage with a camcorder, tape her performance and if she's another Barbra Streisand we'll know that when we see it. We put it up on the Net, people see it, they vote on it and it works its way along and the winners get on the show. We're in production right now. We sold it to Pax. We're now part of the Pax network, which is owned mostly by NBC. Pax is reaching 83 percent of the country."

Ed's going to tape the show in Branson, Mo., in October.

"I have a tour bus I take out for the show, to make these audition calls," Ed said. "A guy down in Nashville does all the great tour buses. One of my discoveries, Britney Spears, is now touring with 12 buses. Anyway, it's a big luxurious thing, 45 feet long. I had one that had a Jacuzzi pool, a full kitchen and a full bed. Your kind of place, Doc."

"Does it come equipped with a companion?" Doc asked.

"If one wishes," Ed said. "I know your wife, Emily, would be happy to hear about that."

"Oh, yes, and I'm trusting you to tell her. What's another alimony check?" Doc said.

"Between us," Ed said, "there are 10 little Indians (ex-wives). You, me and Johnny. We can't have 11."

"I'm still paying through the nose," Doc said.

"Ten wives among us," Ed said.

"If I can't make it with this one, I don't deserve it," Doc said.

Inevitably, the conversation returns to "The Tonight Show" and Carson.

"Johnny, he never wanted to be (a celebrity)," Ed said. "He was dragged in by his heels kicking and screaming. He loved entertaining, doing the monologue and sitting at the desk. But when that was over he would just as soon read a book.

"When the run of the show was over, it was over. I don't think Doc knew (Carson) was going to totally cut himself off from the public. I suspected it, but I didn't know."

"No, I didn't know," Doc said. "And I didn't think he would end the show the way he did, with the long notice and the way it built and built.

"I thought he would be driving to work one day and the traffic would be a little heavy and he would call in and say, 'Hello, I'm not coming in today, and I'm not coming in tomorrow or ever.' "

"That's probably what I felt, too," Ed said. "I didn't think it was going to be that long of a goodbye. That's not his style, to drag it out. His style is the immediacy of everything. He hardly even rehearsed."

"You know, he could edit a whole speech as he was doing it?" Doc said. "He was a master linguist. He majored in logic in college."

"He was a comedy writer," Ed said. "When he was doing a bit he could realize, whatever the set up was, if it wasn't transferring to the jokes. He could alter that setup in the middle of the joke and he could add a couple of more lines that would make the next joke better. He would do that all the time.

"He went out on top. I'm having lunch with him one day, and his attitude is, 'Ed, I did it. I built the monument. There it is, 30 years. Nobody'll touch it.' Doc and I are glad we were mortar men at the bottom with the ladder and carrying the cement. We helped build the monument.

"We're going to have a lot of stuff relating to the show in our performance. You will feel like you are at 'The Tonight Show.' "

Hey-yooooooo.

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