Maine fans remember entertainer ‘who kind of tied the nation together at night’

From Rita Willey of Rockland, a champion sardine-packer who showed Johnny how to do it in 1970, to Dan Cashman of Bangor, a Carson superfan who was inspired to start his own late-night talk show in the 1990s, Mainers were deeply affected Sunday by word of the entertainer’s death.

Willey wound up on Carson’s “The Tonight Show” in 1970, when it was being broadcast from New York.

When she was invited to appear, her husband said, she demonstrated her award-winning sardine-packing speed alongside Carson, who tried gamely to keep up.

“He didn’t do too good,” Lanny Willey said Sunday afternoon. “He didn’t eat any sardines. I don’t think he liked Maine sardines.”

But Carson couldn’t help but be wowed by Willey’s flying fingers, which packed more than 70 cans of sardines in eight minutes.

Carson’s eye for the unusual and his willingness to do anything for a good joke were keys to his immense popularity. He hosted the NBC talk show from 1962 until his retirement in 1992.

“When Johnny was in the saddle at ‘The Tonight Show,’ most people I knew watched – and wouldn’t think of not watching,” said Michael McCauley, a communications and journalism professor at the University of Maine who focuses on the history of broadcasting.

McCauley noted Carson’s ability to unite television watchers across the country for his 30-year run.

“He kind of tied the nation together at night,” he said. “More so than any of the current talk show hosts. He was intelligent, he had interesting guests, and he had a certain warmth.”

Bangor broadcaster Ric Tyler readily recalled one of his favorite “Tonight Show” moments.

In the fall of 1983, Tyler was a freshman at UM, watching the show in his Orono dormitory, York Hall.

One of Carson’s jokes during a segment of “Carnac the Magnificent” really tickled his funny bone.

“I laughed, and I laughed hard,” he said. “And out of my window I heard dozens of other students laughing, too. It was fascinating. You could call it a phenomenon. I call him more of an icon.”

Cashman, a Bangor broadcaster and former host of the “Night Show,” a talk show that ran from 1997 to 1999 on WBGR-TV, was saddened Sunday by the news of Carson’s death.

“I think that anyone who has ever even thought about going into television counts him as an influence,” Cashman said. “He basically developed the whole genre of the modern-day talk show.”

Cashman said he would watch tapes of old Carson episodes to get interview ideas for his own show.

“He was certainly someone to look up to,” he said.

After Carson left daily television in 1992, he sailed his $20 million yacht, the Serengeti, around the world, including to Maine.

One morning in 2002 Carson was spotted on board the yacht in Belfast Harbor.

A Belfast woman who was among those who arrived at the city pier for a glimpse pointed toward the 130-foot yacht and said, “He kept me up for years, and I got circles under my eyes, and he got that.”