Thesis Statement: Johnny Carson, the undisputed king of late night television, has been in the entertainment business in some fashion since a child in Iowa.
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On October 23, 1925, John William Carson was born to Kit and Ruth Carson in Corning, Iowa. Johnny was no more than a year old when his parents moved to Red Oak, Iowa. Johnny started school in Red Oak where his father worked as the local superintendent of the Iowa and Nebraska Power Company. He had only been in school for a very short time when his family moved to Avoca, Iowa, about forty -five miles north of Red Oak (Lorence,1975). Johnny was not raised in a poor setting like many famous people claim, but rather to a pretty well off middle class family. Being young during the depression was not a problem for the Carson family, since the electric business at that time seemed immune to the problems that so terrible on many other occupations (Leamer,1989). .
Soon after Johnny had gotten settled in to his school ant Avoca, his father was given a rather nice promotion and they moved to Norfolk , Nebraska. It was in Norfolk that Johnny spent his young formative years. At that time Norfolk was a city with a population of a little over ten thousand, which was pretty large for a Midwest town in the thirties(Tennis, 1980). On Saturday evenings Johnny would spend the evening in the den listening to the Jack Benny show, memorizing every joke verbatim in order to repeat them to his third grade class the next day(Lorence,1975)."There comes a time or a moment when you know in which direction your going to go" Johnny told in a 1979 Rolling stone interview. He said " I think it happened to me when I was quite young. I think it's when you find out that you can get in front of an audience and be in control. I think that probably happened in grade school, probably fifth or sixth grade.".
A childhood friend of Johnny's, James Cochran, remembers a story from their elementary days that shows a certain physical courage and self-assurance that Johnny had.
