Johnny Carson's friend shares intimate details about the King of Late Night's final days
Tech mogul, Howard Smith, spent many dinners sitting across from The Tonight Show host, but the last one was different than all the rest.
Carson, who died in January 2005 at the age of 79, had invited Smith and his wife out after catching his friend at a pharmacy in Malibu.
He picked the pair up and drove them to a dinner, where they'd spend hours laughing.
'John was the funniest I've ever seen him,' Smith told Fox News. 'He went on and on, told stories about different people that he had on the show… We just laughed so hard.'
Previous dinners, they would only spend a few hours together before parting ways, but just days before his death, Carson insisted on keeping everyone out late.
'We were the first people [at the restaurant] and the last to leave,' Smith explained. 'Looking back, there must have been something going on in his head that night.
'At the end of the night, he drives us up to our house, gets out of the car. He gave both my wife Jane and me a kiss and a hug. Then he tells us: "I love you." John was not standoffish, but I'd never seen him do anything like that.
'I think he knew he was dying, but didn't want us to worry.'
Carson then took off back home and 16 days later, he passed away.
'When I think about that night, I feel he wanted to tell us that he would be okay, and that he loved us. That's the John I knew,' he told the outlet.
Smith also recalled watching his friend deteriorate.
The two often played tennis together, but eventually, it switched to coffee at John's after the comedian admitted the physical activity became too much.
'On Saturdays and Sundays, you come over to my house. I'll make you a coffee, and we'll just sit around, talk about life,' he recalled Carson saying.
The pair had played tennis multiple times a week and it created a lifelong bond, even if Smith didn't know it at the time.
'I'm still grateful for that day when we first decided to play tennis together,' he told Fox News.
Now, Smith has written a book called My Friend Johnny: The Last 20 Years of a Beautiful Life with Johnny Carson and Friends.
He wrote the book because he wanted people to see Carson as he had seen him behind the scenes.
'I wanted people to know John – the John I knew,' he said.
Carson hosted The Tonight Show from 1962 to 1992, which garnered him the nickname King of Late Night. The show won six Emmys.
The heavy smoker died of emphysema, a lung condition that causes shortness of breath, in 1999.
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