{"id":361130,"date":"2025-12-20T20:41:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T20:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/361130\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T20:41:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T20:41:07","slug":"carsons-tonight-show-talent-coordinator-was-85","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/361130\/","title":{"rendered":"Carson\u2019s \u2018Tonight Show\u2019 Talent Coordinator Was 85"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCraig Tennis, who booked acts including Billy Crystal, Tiny Tim<\/a>, Freddie Prinze, Bill Withers<\/a> and Gabe Kaplan as the head talent coordinator on The Tonight Show<\/a> Starring Johnny Carson<\/a>, has died. He was 85.<\/p>\n

\n\tTennis died Tuesday of heart disease at his home in Fallbrook, California, his wife of nearly 39 years, iHeartMedia news anchor Brie Tennis, told The Hollywood Reporter.<\/p>\n

\n\tTennis joined The Tonight Show in 1968 when it was based in New York and moved with the program to Burbank in \u201972 before quitting in \u201976. Trying to anticipate what Carson would like, he found and auditioned new talent and prepared them for what would be perhaps the most important gig of their careers.<\/p>\n

\n\tTennis often spotted talent at The Improv clubs owned by Budd Friedman<\/a>, he noted in the 2017 book The Improv: An Oral History of the Comedy Club That Revolutionized Stand-Up.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was my job to use the club as an educational tool for both me and them,\u201d he said. \u201cI would know pretty much the 20 minutes they would do [and how] we could cut them down to six.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy rule was that you\u2019d better have that second appearance ready and it better be better, because Carson was going to want you back in 10 days, and you had to score that second time. The third time meant that he was going to start looking at you as a potential threat, and if you could get past a fourth and fifth time, that meant you were going to be OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the air, Carson would tease Tennis in running monologue jokes about the women he dated.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1980, the talent coordinator authored the book Johnny Tonight! about his experiences on the show. \u201cThis may sound eerie, but I firmly believe that no one \u2014 including Johnny\u2019s own family \u2014 really knows him intimately,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tCraig Giroux Tennis was born in Manhattan on July 24, 1940. His mother, Janice Kelly, acted on Broadway and in a few films, and his father, Guy Giroux, was an actor as well.<\/p>\n

\n\tRaised in Sioux City, Iowa, where he was adopted by his stepfather, Neil Tennis, he graduated from Central High School in Sioux City and then the University of Colorado in 1963.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile working in New York as PR executive, Tennis joined The Tonight Show on a temporary basis, but it took him only three of four weeks before he became full time. \u201cThey loved his ideas,\u201d his wife said. During those years in New York, he hosted an annual holiday party that Carson would attend (no small feat).<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter he exited The Tonight Show \u2014 he had \u201cgone as far as he could go,\u201d his wife said \u2014 and was replaced by Jim McCawley, Tennis moved to The Alan Hamel Show, a talk show based in Vancouver.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe then served as an associate producer on Saturday Night Live for a few months in 1980, wrote episodes of The Love Boat in 1984 and worked on The Midnight Special, David Letterman\u2019s NBC daytime show and several broadcasts of the Emmys and Battle of the Network Stars.<\/p>\n

\n\tA devoted runner since the 1960s, Tennis also penned stage comedies and compiled more than 7,000 quotes for the 2011 book Show Business Is Faux Business.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1986, he was among the showbiz types who opened a bar on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City called Re$iduals<\/a> (it\u2019s still there, and it\u2019s where he met his wife).<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAll of the 12 partners,\u201d he told<\/a> the Los Angeles Times back then, \u201care New Yorkers, by birth or circumstance. We wanted the kind of bar we\u2019d known in New York, a neighborhood bar for this end of the Valley. We draw from the area from CBS to Disney.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSurvivors also include his daughter, Kelsey, and his brother, Kit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Craig Tennis, who booked acts including Billy Crystal, Tiny Tim, Freddie Prinze, Bill Withers and Gabe Kaplan as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,196796,31481,85,747,46535],"class_list":{"0":"post-361130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-johnny-carson","11":"tag-obituaries","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tennis","14":"tag-the-tonight-show"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}