Dr. Nancy Connors Oral History

Johnny Carson's 45-minute interview with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison on The Tonight Show was recorded on January 31, 1968. Unlike the light celebrity interviews often seen on late-night television, this was a particularly serious and hard-hitting conversation in which host Carson asked a number of critical and well-informed questions about the assassination. Garrison supporters later accused Carson of being unnecessarily rude and harsh towards the district attorney. Filmmaker Oliver Stone dramatized this controversial interview for his 1991 film, JFK, but the scene was not included in the original theatrical cut. It was inserted into the extended Director's Cut which added sixteen additional minutes (and today is the only version of the film commercially available). In JFK, Garrison (portrayed by Kevin Costner) appears on the fictional "Jerry Johnson Show" with actor John Larroquette portraying a more flamboyant version of Johnny Carson. As filmed by Oliver Stone, the scene suggests that host Johnson deliberately tried to suppress evidence, physically stopping Garrison from showing a photograph on camera, while an offstage director orders the camera to quickly pan to the audience as the host suspiciously cuts to a commercial. This far more sinister and inaccurate interpretation of the Tonight Show interview was based on Jim Garrison's personal account of the experience in his book, On the Trail of the Assassins (1988). -- Stephen Fagin, Curator