Bill Zehme’s long-awaited biography of Johnny Carson — thought to be lost when the Chicago writer died last year — will be surfacing after all.
Publisher Simon & Schuster says “Carson the Magnificent” is scheduled for release on Nov. 5. Zehme’s former research assistant Mike Thomas, who went on to write for the Sun-Times, completed the 384-page book from writings and research Zehme left behind.
Zehme, a magazine writer and author of books about Frank Sinatra, Andy Kaufman and Jay Leno, spent almost a decade interviewing Carson’s colleagues and friends for the bio, but a cancer diagnosis and treatments cut his work short. He died at Chicago’s Weiss Memorial Hospital last March at 64.
Simon & Schuster says the book will “illuminate one of the most inscrutable figures in entertainment history” with details about his youth in Nebraska, his Navy service during World War II, his three marriages and his struggles with alcohol.
