During a September 23 rally in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump was mid, uh, “weave”—ranting about late-night talk show hosts Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel, who mercilessly ridicule Trump on a nightly basis. “Where is Johnny Carson?” he asked. “Bring back Johnny.”

Alas, Carson died in 2005. But the next best thing, a new biography called Carson the Magnificent, does an exhilarating job of bringing him back. Even more, it brings back its author, Bill Zehme. Zehme died in 2023 at age 64 after a nearly decade-long bout with colorectal cancer. This book, uncompleted at the time of his death, was his passion project.

Zehme, who wrote best-selling biographies and appreciations of Frank Sinatra, Andy Kaufman, Jay Leno, Regis Philbin, and Hugh Hefner, was particularly fascinated with Carson, the “king of late night,” who dominated his time slot during his 30-year tenure as host of The Tonight Show.

Zehme actively worked on Carson the Magnificent from 2005 until 2013, when he started to feel ill. Throughout his battle with cancer, he was determined to finish the book, according to Andrew Buss, a Vanity Fair contributor and Zehme’s chief editorial assistant for the last seven years of Zehme’s life. “‘More to come,’ he’d always say. I believed him,” says Buss. “Johnny Carson remained his North Star until the day he died. It was a carrot in front of him, something to look forward to. But I also believe it brought him sadness that he hadn’t been able to finish it. Especially toward the end, when he expressed rare signs to me that that could be the case.”

The task of completing the book fell to Mike Thomas, who shares an author credit with Zehme. Thomas, himself an esteemed biographer (You Might Remember Me: The Life and Times of Phil Hartman) and incisive writer about comedy (The Second City Unscripted), says he felt like an “interloper”—but, as he tells Vanity Fair, he is glad he accepted the challenge of competing another writer’s magnum opus.

Vanity Fair: Next year marks the 20th anniversary of Bill embarking on this project.

Mike Thomas: It meant the most to him of anything he ever worked on, and I’m just pleased it’s finally out in the world. People can now see what he was working on all those years.

What was your reaction to being asked to finish the book?

I did not take that decision lightly. A few months after Bill died, Jon Karp, who was Bill’s editor at Random House before he moved to his own imprint and then finally to Simon & Schuster, where he is CEO, reached out to me. He wanted to keep the book alive, and so I put him in touch with Bill’s daughter, Lucy. He came back to me and asked what I thought about completing the book. I was flattered as all hell, but I hadn’t read the manuscript; I didn’t know how much reporting and research Bill had done. It took a month to determine what lay ahead.

What kind of shape was the book in when it came to you?

Bill wrote three quarters of the book. It was a very polished manuscript. I basically had to continue Johnny’s story where Bill left off, but Bill did all the heavy lifting. Turns out he had done way more research and reporting than I could use. I had access to Bill’s giant storage locker on the North Side of Chicago, and it was a matter of sorting the material. I went back and said I would love to do this. But Bill was one of the greatest magazine writers who ever lived, and Johnny Carson was at the top of his field. I felt like an interloper here. This was more than a bit daunting, but I’m glad I took it on. It’s a great full-circle project for me, having been mentored by Bill.

How did you two meet?

When I was in my 20s, I called people in the field to pick their brains. In late ’95, I remember reading Newcity [an alternate weekly] and they had a winners-and-losers column. Under ‘winners,’ it said that Bill Zehme had landed the contract to write Jay Leno’s memoir and that he moved back to Chicago. I didn’t even know he was from Chicago. I’d been reading this guy for years.

What was it about his writing that made an impression on you?

He was a master at humanizing people. A lot of that had to do with the fact that he wasn’t an interrogator, he was a conversationalist. He would learn everything he could about his subjects and then have a conversation with them. It really puts these larger-than-life figures at ease, and except for maybe Warren Beatty, they would open up to him. They all knew they were in very good hands creatively and journalistically. One of the first things of his I read was his famous Barry Manilow piece for Rolling Stone. Bill started the piece, “When your name is a punch line, you live in hell. Barry Manilow lives in hell.” It turned out to be one of his classics. It was kind of brave to profile and lionize this guy that everybody thought was just cheesy, but he’s this mega-talented guy who’s written all of these hits, and Bill was not afraid to wade into this—for Rolling Stone, no less. That made a big impression on me.

And so…

I thought I might as well write him a letter, drop him some of my pretty horrible amateurish clips that I had amassed. We hit it off. He needed someone to sort through transcripts for the Leno book. I did that on the side while I worked at a trade magazine in the city. Next thing I know, Bill was able to hire me full-time when he got a contract for his Frank Sinatra book. From that point on, I was his full-time researcher or legman. We went on to the Andy Kaufman biography, and then we did a Regis thing before I left to go to the Chicago Sun-Times. He paid me to learn, which was amazing.

Bill wrote books about Hugh Hefner, Frank Sinatra, and Johnny. What ties these three 20th-century icons together?

They were all pioneers in their respective fields, but they all, in their own ways, had an element of cool about them. I think that’s part of what Bill was attracted to: their individual personas. But even though Bill put him on a pedestal, Johnny did something that was the most tangible to Bill. Bill wasn’t going to sing like Sinatra. He wasn’t going to lord over the Playboy empire. But maybe he could host a TV show, and he did try. [In 2002, Zehme briefly hosted a Bravo series called Second City Presents, an Inside the Actors Studio for comedians.] One time when he was at Johnny’s office, Johnny said, “I hear we have a new talk show host,” and Bill was just tickled that Johnny was aware of his efforts on that front.

Bill got the “gets” no other interviews did. Johnny rarely did interviews. How did Bill land him?

He had a lot of work to back him up. He was persistent. He had patience. He spent years just showing up at Johnny’s retirement office and he got to know the staff. Once in a while, Johnny would come through and they would shoot the shit. It was never a proper sit-down until Bill talked to him for Esquire. He played the long game on that, man. I found the first letter he ever wrote to try and get Johnny to talk, in 1991, for Rolling Stone. Johnny was entering his final year on The Tonight Show. It took Bill a decade, but he finally landed him.

This book was Bill’s passion project. Did you share his zeal for Johnny?

I wasn’t as intense a fan as Bill, but I appreciated Johnny’s place in the late-night firmament. Few people are as intense fans as Bill was. He watched Johnny as a teenager. I knew that Dave [Letterman] idolized and learned from Johnny. So doing this book, I learned more about Johnny the man. All I knew was Johnny the performer. This is as far underneath the surface as anybody is bound to get. Bill’s great skill is that tightrope walk writing about these flawed but hypertalented guys and separating the art from the artist.

One of Johnny’s most indelible legacies is the break he gave to stand-up comedians, for whom doing The Tonight Show was a rite of passage.

They wanted Johnny to like them. A successful shot on Tonight meant the next day you might get booked everywhere. You might have a TV show offer.

I imagine sources you went back to were thrilled that the book would finally be completed.

People had this love for Bill, and he had earned their trust. I went to folks to fact-check and for additional details. I just wanted a little further illumination on stuff. Mike Barrie, one of his monologue writers, gave me this great explanation on how they crafted Johnny’s return-to-TV special that was supposed to air in 1994 and never did. I had a draft of it, and I wanted to know more about crafting it. People were very eager to help.

Does Johnny still matter?

Of course Johnny still matters. He influenced everyone who came afterward. He influenced Dave, he influenced Kimmel, he influenced Conan [O’Brien], and now they are influencing somebody else. And there are reruns and he’s all over the web. If you want a Johnny fix, he’s out there somewhere.

What was it like to come to the end of the project?

I think the moment for me was getting the physical book and seeing both our names on the cover. I’m in the acknowledgments of all the books we worked on, but he and I have never been on the cover together. That was the ultimate full-circle moment.