The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (TV Series)

Carol Burnett/Tim Conway/Robert Easton/Tracee Talavera (1979)

Johnny Carson: Self - Host, Floyd R. Turbo

Quotes 

• Johnny Carson : You can always spot a Chrysler nowadays. The St. Christopher statue is holding a gas can and a siphon hose.

• Johnny Carson : [on President Carter's plan for the recession]  He's asking Congress to give each of the nation's poor families...

  Man in Audience : A Chrysler.

  Johnny Carson : [laughs, amid an uproarious audience reaction]  ... Sure - one is easy, when you're hidden. It's standing out here in the light that's tough... That might be better than what I had.

• Johnny Carson : [on President and Mrs. Carter's vacation plans]  They're taking an eight-day steamboat, on an old paddlewheel sternwheeler down the Mississippi River. And, uh... the president's pulling out all the stops to try to look folksy, but I think having Andrew Young sitting by the paddlewheel in overalls, singing "Ol' Man River", is pushing just a little too much.

• Floyd R. Turbo : Why do we...

  Floyd R. Turbo : [gestures to himself and the audience]  need lifeguards? People who drown are stupid! You don't see fish drownding, and fish didn't go to no high school. Lifeguards are sick! It is unnatural to spend all your time standing on sand, unless you are an A-rab, or a cat.

• Floyd R. Turbo : Firemen got it made! On a hot day, they can take out a hose and squirt themselves. They get paid for running around with funny hats and rubber coats, sticking their nozzles in hot places.

• Floyd R. Turbo : I have come up with a way to get rid of your garbage. Drop it in your local mailbox - then the Post Office will lose it for you.

• Tracee Talavera : Put your hands down.

  Johnny Carson : Put my hands down here?

  Tracee Talavera : Yeah - and lift your feet up.

  Johnny Carson : And lift my feet up...

  Johnny Carson : [he struggles to balance himself on his hands, to kidding from the audience and band]  Now, stop that, you guys. I have a feeling I'm going to do something terribly obscene.

• Johnny Carson : [on Jimmy Stewart]  Does Jimmy dance any faster than he talks?

  Carol Burnett : No, he - he - he dances stutteringly.

• Johnny Carson : [recalling Carol Burnett singing on "The Ed Sullivan Show"]  The first thing I ever saw you do.

  Carol Burnett : I did it on the Paar show - excuse me - first.

  Johnny Carson : That's - what do you mean?

  Carol Burnett : On the Jack Paar show.

  Johnny Carson : Oh, sure.

  Carol Burnett : Yeah.

  Johnny Carson : That's perfectly normal to say that.

  Carol Burnett : Was it?

  Johnny Carson : Sure.

  Carol Burnett : OK.

  Johnny Carson : Jack's up talking to a moose somewhere in Maine.

• Johnny Carson : I'm a professional - jesting is my business!

• Carol Burnett : [on her grandmother]  She only admitted to me that she was married three times, but she *was* married six times. And, uh, when she passed away, she left me some trunks that I was scared to death to open...

  Johnny Carson : Yeah.

  Carol Burnett : For quite a while, because I wasn't quite sure what I'd find in there.

• Tim Conway : [on getting his car stolen at a party]  If a guy comes up, and you're parking for a party, and they have ca- er, valet and everything - a guy comes up in a red coat and says, "Can I have your car?", wouldn't you give it to him?

  Johnny Carson : I guess so.

  Tim Conway : I did.

• Johnny Carson : You have made a movie - and you, uh, wrote one, and you...

  Tim Conway : Yeah - down in Tijuana, called, uh, "Peggy and Her Pony", which, uh, was a...

  Johnny Carson : No.

  Tim Conway : No? Oh - the one for, uh, Disney! Disney!

  Johnny Carson : Not the training film.

• Tim Conway : And then another one coming out. Another one with Don Knotts and I - where Don Knotts and I are...

  Johnny Carson : [correcting his grammar]  Don Knotts and me.

  Carol Burnett : Don Knotts and me.

  Tim Conway : No, no - you guys aren't in it.

• Johnny Carson : [explaining grammar to Tim Conway]  If it's the subject, you say "Don Knotts and I"; if you say "with", it's "Don Knotts and me".

  Carol Burnett : Right.

  Johnny Carson : It's really not a...

  Carol Burnett : See, what to do is you leave out "Don Knotts", and you say "with me", and...

  Tim Conway : He's gonna get steamed about this. He's... I don't think we can cut him out of it!