Mobster Orders Hit on ‘Scumbag’ Johnny, But a Megastar Saves Him

In the spring of 1971, fresh off his separation from his wife of seven years, Joanne, a heavily inebriated Johnny Carson nearly got himself killed for groping the girlfriend of a Mafioso.

A number of blatant untruths surround the incident, thanks to Henry Bushkin’s book Johnny Carson.

Bushkin said he got the story from his then girlfriend, actress Joyce DeWitt, who had been given the story by bar owner Jilly Rizzo years after it occurred.

Bushkin wrote that, in 1970, Johnny was thrown down a flight of stairs and beaten, and that the resolution to Carson’s bad behavior was worked out between William Morris agent George Wood and mob boss Joe Colombo. (Wood died in 1963, eight years before any of this allegedly occurred!)

A different version was told to me by Tom Dreesen, a comic who opened for Frank Sinatra for 15 years and who appeared on Tonight some 60 times.

Dreesen heard the story both from Rizzo – Sinatra’s best friend, sometime bodyguard, and the owner of Jilly’s Saloon, a popular celebrity hangout in Midtown Manhattan – and from Sinatra himself.

According to Dreesen, the versions told by both men were identical.

‘You gotta remember,’ Dreesen explained to me, ‘that Johnny was a naval officer, a college grad, a well-educated, well-mannered guy until he had a couple of drinks. Then he became a fool.’

On the dark night in question, Johnny, already plastered, walked into Jilly’s Saloon along with his sidekick Ed McMahon – the man responsible for Carson’s iconic catchphrase, ‘Heeeeere’s Johnny!’ – and Robert Coe, McMahon’s manager.

Rizzo was there to greet them.

Spotting an attractive woman at the bar, Carson, in Dreesen’s words, ‘put his hand up her miniskirt.’

The lady screamed.

Rizzo reacted quickly, knowing the woman was the girlfriend of ‘Crazy’ Joe Gallo, a wise guy with a notorious trigger temper, who was in a meeting in another section of the saloon.

Gallo had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in his youth and was a feared enforcer for the Profaci crime family.

After a decade in jail, he had just been released that April.

Rizzo told McMahon: ‘Get Johnny the f**k out of here!’

‘Johnny resisted,’ Coe told Laurence Leamer, author of King of the Night: The Life of Johnny Carson. ‘He didn’t want to go.’

But according to Dreesen, McMahon was able to drag Johnny out.

‘When Gallo returned, his lady friend was still screaming,’ said Dreesen.

‘Joe asked her what was wrong. She was hyperventilating and couldn’t answer. So, he smacked her so hard she fell to the floor. She finally said, ‘Johnny Carson reached up under my dress and grabbed me and went out the door.’

Crazy Joe went berserk. ‘Go find him right now!’ he ordered his boys. ‘Go find him and beat his brains in!’

But by the time Gallo’s guys reached the street, Carson, McMahon, and Coe were gone.

Crazy Joe ordered a hit on Johnny.

‘The word all over Manhattan was “Carson’s a dead man… He’s gotta go into hiding,”‘ said Dreesen.

When the story reached Dave Tebet, NBC VP of talent, Tebet immediately went to Jilly’s, where he was also a regular.

He asked Rizzo to intervene on Johnny’s behalf. He explained that if the five dons of New York couldn’t reason with Gallo, neither could he.

What about Sinatra? Tebet pushed Rizzo to ask ol’ Blue Eyes for help. But the singer’s initial response was the same as Rizzo’s: Gallo answers to no one.

Sources claimed that, to smooth things over, NBC brokered a deal with Joe Colombo.

Ed McMahon was friends with the mob boss and, as Don Capria, the don’s biographer, told me: ‘Colombo had relationships with NBC executives for the duration of the Italian American Civil Rights League’s existence.’

That group was founded by Colombo in 1970.

In exchange for Carson’s safety, Joe Colombo’s son Christopher told me, NBC News agreed to air a positive story on the boss. Such a segment did, in fact, run on May 4, 1971, which would match up with the time frame of the incident.

Still, it wasn’t certain Colombo had complete sway (or any sway) over Gallo. Capria told me: ‘Gallo hated Joe Colombo more than any person on the planet.’

Sinatra and Tebet believed another step was necessary to ensure Carson’s safety.

Despite his initial hesitation, Sinatra agreed to help.

Dreesen recalled that, about a week after Gallo put the hit on Carson, Sinatra put a simple plan into action.

He invited Gallo and his family backstage after one of his shows and lavished attention on them.

When the family left, Gallo thanked Sinatra for his graciousness and asked if there was anything he could do for him.

Sinatra answered with two words: ‘Johnny Carson.’

Those were the two words Gallo didn’t want to hear. He shook his head, pacing the room. He grabbed Sinatra’s mouth hard. ‘You stick up for that piece of s**t, that scumbag!’

Rizzo, who was also present, said you could see Gallo’s fingerprints on Sinatra’s cheeks.

‘He’s so sorry,’ Frank said. ‘He would come right now on his hands and knees, but he’s terrified. I’m asking you to give the guy a break.’

The mobster started to leave in a fury, but then turned around. He looked at the singer and said: ‘You tell Johnny Carson that he breathes only because he knows Frank Sinatra.’

‘I don’t believe anybody but Sinatra could have saved Carson’s life,’ Dreesen said.

Love Johnny Carson: One Obsessive Fan’s Journey to Find the Genius Behind the Legend by Mark Malkoff is published by Dutton, October 21.