He finished college and enrolled in Brooklyn Law School. “I had no real interest in becoming a lawyer, but for awhile it kept me out of the Vietnam War. When I eventually received a medical deferment, I quit.”
To do what?
“Write jokes,” says Mike.
Huh? Mike’s father was pissed. He was doing well at law school, and Milt believed his son was on the way to making a real living in a real profession. But Mike wanted to give writing a try. So, with some pages he'd written, he walked into a Manhattan nightclub.
It was called Upstairs at the Downstairs. The comedian in residence was Joan Rivers. When she finished her set, Mike introduced himself and asked if she would read some material he'd written for her. A week later, she handed Mike a check for $70 for ten jokes. Seven dollars a joke. Mike was in show business! And his father Milt started talking to him again.
Mike went to work for Joan on a five-day a week morning chat show she hosted for NBC called, “That Show.”
Mike explains: “The show was a half-hour long, with one guest. If the guest were a famous chef, Joan’s opening monologue would be all food and cooking jokes; a hat maker, all hat jokes. It was good writing practice. Once a week, all the writers would sit around the living room of Joan’s Park Avenue apartment and she'd pick the jokes for the week’s shows, while feeding her baby. She was like a hilarious, gossipy, Jewish aunt.”
As much as he liked working for Joan, Mike longed to find a higher paying writing job. Maybe nine dollars a joke. Dick Cavett was hosting a nightly talk show then. One night, with a few typed pages in hand, Mike waited for him outside the Little Theater on West 55th Street where his show was taped and ambushed him as he exited with an entourage.
“Once he realized I wasn’t deranged and violent, he was very nice,” says Mike. “He told me to come up to the office, sign a release, and he would read it.”
But by the time he got a response, the Cavett Show had been cancelled. The good news was that one of Dick’s writers complimented the writing and encouraged him to continue.
That’s where hair comes in again.
Milton would get his hair cut at a barbershop in the Warwick Hotel on West 54th Street near his office. It’s where the Beatles stayed on their first American tour. As it turned out, Jeff the barber was the same man who regularly cut the hair of Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson’s announcer on the Tonight Show.
So, at his father’s suggestion, Mike gives his old man some pages written for Carson, and his father gives them to the barber. Eventually, Ed is in a smock having his hair trimmed, a very captive audience, when Jeff the barber hands him the stuff. Ed reads. Ed laughs. Ed brings it to Johnny.
And Michael Barrie, at 22, begins his long association with Johnny Carson.
Mike, do you remember the first joke you wrote that Johnny used?
“Yes, though it’s probably more trouble setting it up than it’s worth. Johnny’s jokes about Ed McMahon all had to do with how much Ed drank. At the time I started on the show, an often-aired beer commercial was for ‘Rheingold, the beer with the 10-minute head.’ And that week there was a blood drive in NY. So the joke was, ‘Ed gave blood today. He’s got the only blood with a 10-minute head.’ Not much, but I was ecstatic. He actually used three of my jokes that night. I was flying high for about ten seconds, till I realized I'd have to start all over the next day with nothing, and the day after that, and the day after that…”
Mike worked with Johnny—except for a six-year break in the ‘70s—until Carson’s very last appearance on the Tonight Show, May 22, 1992. Early in that long run, Barrie teamed up with another Tonight Show scribe, Jim Mulholland. The guys had first met in Joan Rivers’ living room when they were both writing for her. About a year after Mike started with Johnny, Jim came on the show. At some point, they teamed up.
“It was a little easier and a bit less lonely with someone else in the room,” says Barrie. “Johnny then got only one monologue instead of two from us, but didn’t seem to mind.” In 1994, they went to work on the “Late Show with David Letterman,” where they remain today. They contribute digitally from Los Angeles.
I always thought Johnny’s humor was the best of American humor. Whenever I was in America for my work and wanted to have a laugh it was the Carson show I turned to. Unlike today, however, it was the only late night talk show.
Periodically, various competitors tried to gain footing, but it was just Johnny who survived. And as the only game in town, Carson had enormous influence. If you were a politician in his sights and found yourself repeatedly in his opening monologue, your days might be numbered. “We aggravated many of them,” says Barrie with fond memories. “Nancy Reagan was angry when we referred to her as ”the Evita of Bel Air.“ And both Reagans were upset with, ”It’s true, Reagan doesn’t dye his hair. He bleaches his face." Silly to think they would be that thin-skinned!
Barrie and Mulholland were with Johnny for the five Academy Award telecasts he hosted. Mike remembers the first Oscar show they did, seeing Johnny pacing up and down backstage. “It looked like he just wanted to get in his car and drive home. In all the years we‘d worked with Carson, we’d never seen him this nervous. Johnny felt that four hours was too long for anything.”
“I see a lot of new faces here, especially on the old faces...”
“Charlton Heston is the only actor besides Warren Beatty who all of Hollywood has known in the biblical sense...”
“But once the monologue worked on that first show, Johnny walked off into the wings and said, ‘From here on, it’ll be a cakewalk.‘” The toughest Oscar show would have to be the one scheduled for March 30th, 1981. Barrie recalls, “I called Johnny at home that morning and said, ’You‘d better turn on the TV. President Reagan was shot, he’s in the hospital.’ When everyone finally heard Reagan was okay, they decided to go ahead with the Oscars a day later. It’s hard to kill a president, it’s even harder to kill a Hollywood awards show.”
Carson did this joke anyway:
“Reagan cut $85 million from the arts and humanities. This is his biggest assault on the arts since he signed with Warner Brothers.” Then he added, “That oughta get him up and out of bed.” Big laugh.
Through the years, Michael Barrie and his partner have been nominated for 20 Emmy Awards. “No wins,” he reminds me. They did, however, garner a prestigious Writers Guild Award for their Showtime movie, “The Ratings Game,” directed by Danny DeVito and starring DeVito and his wife, Rhea Pearlman.
Their feature film writing credits include “Bad Boys,” starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence; “Oscar,” the only French farce to star Sylvester Stallone; and “Amazon Women on the Moon,” a “cult-classic,” which according to Mike means “no box office.”
