Comedian Johnny Carson hosted NBC's Tonight Show for 30 years, from 1962 to 1992. The iconic and personable host would not only interview interesting guests from the world of entertainment and other areas of notoriety, but would also participate in a number of entertaining skits. He developed a number of characters, including announcer Art Fern, common man and hunter Floyd Trumbo, and the mystic Carnac the Magnificent.
As Governor of California, Ronald Reagan was a guest of Carson's and the two appeared to have an easy rapport. An interview that Carson had with Reagan on March 13, 1975 can be found here, two months before Reagan announced that he was challenging President Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination for President in 1976.
On May 7, 1982, Carson paid homage to Reagan in a skit in which Carson played the part of the President in a funny interaction with Reagan's chief of staff, James Baker (played by an uncredited member of the "Mighty Carson Art Players"). The skit is similar to the comedians Abbot and Costello's famous "Who's on First" routine, as the names of Interior Secretary James Watt, Chinese Premier Hu and Yasser Arafat as used as foils for a similar routine. If you've never seen it, here is a YouTube video of Carson as Reagan:
Earlier, in 1981, Carson was hosting the annual Academy Awards show, and had planned to do a number of jokes about Reagan. As luck would have it, it was then that Reagan was shot was attempted assassin John Hinckley Jr. Carson had prepared a lot of joked about Ronald Reagan, and much of his monologue consisted of Reagan jokes. Just before the Oscars, the Academy was considering postponing the show. When news was received that Reagan had survived, the show's producers decided to do a live feed from Reagan's hospital bed.
In his monologue, Carson retained some of his planned material about Reagan. He said "Reagan cut $85 million from the arts and humanities. This is his biggest assault on the arts since he signed with Warner Brothers." Carson added: "That should get him up and out of bed."
According to author Henry Bushkin in his 2013 biography of Carson, the two were not close friends. Bushkin relates an incident in which Carson was furious over being pressured to host a night of entertainment before Reagan's inauguration in 1981. According to Bushkin, Reagan did not want to make an enemy of Carson and called him the following day to apologize.
