::TV NEWS::
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Jay Leno Retires From Tonight Show - And
Ends Up In Ontario Source: www.thestar.com - Richard Ouzounian (May 23, 2009) It's a fair question: Following his final appearance as Tonight Show host next 
Friday, why isn't
Jay Leno
taking a vacation, instead of showing up at Casino Rama to
perform just four days later?At the start of our interview, even he can't explain it. "Look, I'm a comedian, what else do you expect me to do? Go off on a cruise somewhere like a lot of other chubby middle-aged guys and sit there sipping drinks with funny umbrellas in them?" The 59-year-old comic sounds just a tiny bit defensive – or maybe he's just overworked. "Heck, right after the last program I'm flying off to Atlantic City to do a show there on Saturday." He's on the phone from his dressing room at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, about to begin one of what he proudly calls "160 dates a year I've been averaging, in addition to doing The Tonight Show." Do the math: that's 160 nights on the road plus his formidable TV hosting duties, not to mention the considerable amount of charity work he does. Not much time left for real life, it seems, but maybe that's the way Leno likes it. He says he has "the same wife I started with," the former Mavis Nicholson, whom he married in 1980. But with so little time at home, you wonder whether he has to have someone on his staff to reintroduce them every now and then. Don't get me wrong. Leno is an affable, seemingly open guy ("Just call me Jay"), willing to answer any and all questions, although when I return to his workaholic habits, he gets just a bit edgy. ("You're not letting up on that one, are you?") He quips that, for the past 17 years, "I've been the guy that most of America goes to bed with" – and he's actually right. After a shaky start in his first season, fuelled by all the behind-the-scenes drama and bitterness over whether Leno or David Letterman would inherit the throne that Johnny Carson had occupied for 30 years, The Tonight Show moved into the No. 1 ratings position for its time slot and has been there ever since. "If I had any fears about the job, it's been in the last year," Leno admits. "After so many years at the top, I felt a real need to go out that way as well. I've said that it's kind of like the America's Cup race: you don't want to be the one who screws it up." And he didn't. For one thing, on March 19 he nimbly hosted Barack Obama, the first sitting U.S. president to appear on a late-night talk show. When the President made a politically incorrect joke about his 129 bowling score qualifying him for the "Special Olympics," Leno said he "knew the president had kind of put his foot in it, and for a split second I thought about editing it from the broadcast tape. But then I realized that everyone would have heard about it anyway and besides, we just don't do things like that. Not even for the President." In the end, he's handing over a winning vessel to Conan O'Brien and – in an interesting insight into Leno's character – his final guest will be his replacement. Not for Leno the "Holy Week" of self-canonization that greeted Carson's farewell, with Bette Midler tearfully (and literally) singing his praises or Johnny himself alone on the climactic show playing a reel of his favourite moments. Leno just wants to demonstrate to the corporate folks at NBC that things are secure in the late night kingdom. After all, he'll be returning to the same network this fall with the tentatively titled Jay Leno Show, which will begin airing at 10 p.m. five nights a week. "I never wanted to be a TV personality," Leno unexpectedly says after a rare pause. "I'm a nightclub guy. I tell jokes. "Doing The Tonight Show has been exactly what I thought it would be: a great time. The real trick to show business is to observe it without actually becoming a part of it. Like I always said, `Sure it's a lot of fun, but you don't fall in love with a hooker.'" Leno becomes surprisingly serious as he broods over the shallowness of his profession. "If you let yourself get immersed in this business, you lose a sense of what's real. You get blinded by a totally false sense of values. "I once had a big film star on the show and during a break he told me he was looking for a really cool sports car and asked me to recommend one. I told him the new Ferrari was great and he snorted, `Everyone has a Ferrari.' I actually got mad and said to him `Don't you let anybody hear you say something like that. No, not everyone has a Ferrari. Man, I was 26 years old before I even saw a Ferrari.'" Leno says he stays grounded through "all the time I spend out on the road connecting with real people ... I still have the friends I had in high school, and yeah, I may own 80 cars, but that's just part of the whole kid in the candy store thing. Okay, that's my one craziness." But the most important factors in understanding Leno and his drive to succeed through perpetual motion lie in his childhood. He was born in New Rochelle, N.Y., on April 28, 1950. Both his Scottish mother and Italian father worked in show business, but Leno found his attraction to the world of comedy on his own. "I was in the fourth grade, and we were studying Robin Hood. The teacher was talking about the Sheriff of Nottingham and how evil he was. She said he wanted to boil all of Robin's Merry Men in oil. "I raised my hand and said `Tuck wouldn't have minded that because he was a friar.' That was the first time I was conscious of saying something that made other people laugh, and I loved it." But things weren't easy for young Leno. His high-school grades were so bad that his guidance counsellor actually recommended he drop out and go into manual labour. "I'm a big believer in low self-esteem. The only people who have high self-esteem are criminals and actors," he says, bravado hiding the long-ago pain. "I've always felt I should walk in and assume I was the dumbest person in the room." An attitude he likely picked up from his loving, but no-nonsense mother. "I remember her sitting down with me one day to tell me what she saw as the truth," Leno recalls. "She said `Look, you're not very good looking and you're not very smart, so you'll have to do twice as much as everyone else to succeed.' "I decided then that if I worked hard enough, it would make up for any of my deficiencies." So that's why he does 160 nightclub gigs a year and is coming to Casino Rama only four days after he finishes 17 years on late night television? "I guess that's right." He chuckles at the revelation. "Hey, what do you know?" Just the facts Where: Casino Rama When: June 2, 8 p.m. Tickets: ticketmaster.ca |
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