Hometown Hollywood

Henry Bushkin To Pen A "Johnny Carson Tell-All"

Posted on 03. Nov, 2008 by CSS in BOOKS, Entertainment

Johnny Carson’s longtime lawyer is blowing the lid off the secret life of the beloved “Tonight Show” host- painting him as a sad, depressed man who cheated on his wives, was tormented by his mom and refused to visit his son in a mental hospital.

Henry Bushkin, who was jokingly referred to as “Bombastic Bushkin” by Carson on his late night NBC talk show- Told Page Six about a “warts and all” memoir he’s pushing about the late night king.

Some of the revelations include:

• Carson was so miserable at the top of his game that he constantly “questioned his own ability to have happiness in his life/”
• Carson enjoyed the use of a 10,000 square-foot penthouse with a private pool at Caesars Palace when he played in Vegas and routinely entertained the “18 beautiful girls in the chorus line that opened his act… and he was certainly involved with some of them.”
• Carson allegedly refused to visit his son, Rick, when he was committed to Bellevue with severe emotional problems. “The kid was there for four and a half months. I had to take care of everything and was there almost every day. Rick [who died in a car crash in 1991] was a lovely human being.”
• Carson also allegedly abandoned many of his closest friends, including Bushkin, who says, “At one time we did everything together.  At the end, he treated me like everybody else- like I didn’t exist.  At the end, it was like I was an irritant.  In many respects, he was the saddest guy I ever Knew.”

And now Henry Bushkin is going to make a few more pennies off his dear old friend…. You know he could be telling the God’s honest truth about every fact he will detail in his book- but I just hate to see people slandered when they aren’t able to defend themselves, especially when it happens to the deceased.

Tags: Henry Bushkin, Johnny Carson