Customer Reviews

Heeere's Johnny - The Definitive DVD Collection from The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Wish this box set existed a year ago when I bought two of the Johnny Carson collections: The Ultimate Collection & Timeless Moments. For those of you who don't own any Carson yet, you should definitely think about getting Heeere's Johnny. I love the two sets that I already have and I suppose you'd actually be getting a lot more here for less than I paid. My only complaint is that there's no new material that is never-before-seen in the other collections

Johnny Carson was awesome...but he was on TV for decades. So why does this company continue to rehash the same stuff, only with different packaging? The Carson Tonight Show years were vast and they could be releasing so much MORE content, but instead it's the same clips over and over again. I bought the "Ultimate Collection" originally and LOVED it. Then, they changed the box cover which seemed to be misleading to fans as though it was something different. Now, this mega-box includes the "Ultimate Collectin" AGAIN! If you are a Johnny fan like me, then you may have purchased the DVDs that were only available through the Carson Club on his website. Well, be warned...all of those titles that were supposedly exclusive to the Carson Club are also in this box! My guess is the die-hard Carson fans have every bit of this material already. Check what you have and know what this is beofre you spend a dime!

I was thrilled to see the "Heeere's Johnny" DVD collection released on Amazon.com. I was able to pre-order the set for $69.99 and I received it just one day after the official release date. My wife and I have been slowly working our way through the collection, one DVD at a time. Johnny is an icon and legend of late night television. This collection does a great job of spanning much of Johnny's years of being the Tonight Show host. However, the picture and sound quality is sometime quite bad. The overall picture quality is average at best. I would have thought that the old video would have gone through some sort of restoration process. Obviously this isn't the case in this collection. There are some scenes that flicker and have lines running through them, and the sound sometimes becomes garbled. Another dissapointment is that this collection has no specific order. There is no way to easily work your way from oldest to newest, or in any other manner. This collection is actually made up of several other collections. One of the included collections is made entirely of stand-up commedian guests that appeared on The Tonight Show. I bought this to watch Johnny, not to see a young Jerry Seinfeld, or the early (and yet still irritating) years of Rosanne Baar.

Overall this is an excellent collection of Johnny Carson's golden years in television. I just wish it was better organized, had more clips of Johnny himself, and wish the video and audio had gone through some sort of restoration process. For the money this is definately a good buy, if you are a die hard Carson fan. =o)

Hold your wallets until more is known.

The description says that the The Ultimate Johnny Carson Collection is included. If that is so, then you may not want this set either. The Ultimate Collection is cropped---especially the last show---the entire music segment is deleted.

I fully understand why something like this can happen. The music publishers believe their product is gold and ask ridiculous licensing fees to have their music in these box sets. Regardless, no warning is given to the consumer from the DVD makers, so that is the reason for this early review. Remember, once you break the seal, your money is gone.

This is the second time (at least) that this company has put previously released material in a new wrapper. 30 years of Carson and we keep getting a rehash (and rehash of rehash!) of previous titles. If the company and Mr. Carson's estate are too inept or lazy to dig a little deeper into the tens of thousands of hours of available Carson-era "Tonight Show" material, then just release DVDs of the old syndicated cut-up series "Carson's Comedy Classics", or even the old prime-time anniversary specials. We'd finally get to see some new material with minimal effort on the company's end.

I joined the Carson Club a few years back and got 6 DVD's over 6 months for well over $100. Now, Timeless Moments is being offered - which is the same content - along with 3 other collections for less than $100! I wish this set had been available back then! The packaging looks really cool. If Amazon drops the price further during the holidays, I might just have to buy it anyway for the other sets inside.

And what have we been given? Just a mere smattering of the performers, skits, music and desk side chatter from the world's ultimate next day's water cooler show. I cannot believe it!

Please issue DVDs of selected full shows. I remember that so many shows were great not because of any single performer but because of the entirety of the whole program, from monologue to conclusion.

I recently purchased the big box set and it's really nice to have these performances of this comedian or that country star. Or some of the memories and the heart breaking last two shows. I gave it 5 stars just for the emotional aspects, the nostaligic reasons, to be able to once again catch a few glimpses of the finest talk and entertainment show this nation's ever had. I owe Johnny that.

But really what's really missing are the banter between Johnny and his many personal close friends and fellow performers, the interviews, Johnny just being Johnny letting others have their time in the spot light but always adding his quips and charming laughter, his suave cosmopolitan presence anchoring the whole thing.

In all these DVDs there's really precious little of Johnny himself!

We fans, fans of all ages, would greatly appreciate having DVDs of many selected full shows. Especially at its peak during the late '60s through the '70s when so many of the classic stars, now long gone (Bob Hope, Dean Martin, etc) AND the up and coming newer stars who are still around today were all mingling together on the hour and a half shows.

Whole DVDs could be devoted to the appearances of specific guests like Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope, and so many others.

Not only were there an awful lot of incredibly funny stuff back then. But I easily recall, especially on the shows before it went down to just one hour, the great conversations he had with so many people!

After what for many of us was the better portion of our TV lives spent watching The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson to only have the little that's been doled out is, in many ways, very sad. That show provided so much in the way of coloring our culture and it and we deserve more that the nice, but very stingy, teasers from all those years, really the best years of American culture at its peak.

Please, please consider doing so much more than just what's been done.

Thank you, from millions, a whole nation, of Johnny Carson & The Tonight Show fans.

It really is cool to have virtually everything ever released on DVD by Carson's Tonight Show all in one package...but, it would have been even nicer to include another large collection of as-yet-unreleased material. This box is a compilation of Carson Country, Animal Hijinks, the 3 DVD Ultimate Carson set, Stand Up Comedians and the Timeless Moments collection that was previously available to the Carson club members (some of these Timeless Moments can all be found in the recent release The Best Of Carson Volume 1).

I can also confirm that the 3 DVD Ultimate Carson set has been edited from it's original release, because I own the original release and was able to see what was cut out, most notably the montage of music stars that appeared on The Tonight Show over the 30 years from the very last show on May 22, 1992. For those of us who abhor things like that, the loss of that montage is a major disappointment! I have a feeling that it was cut out for some kind of music licensing reasons...but if it was put in the original, come on!!

For those of you who have never bought any of the other releases, this box set is the bomb-diggity...go for it!

But Respond2 or some other DVD releasing production company (Carson Productions perhaps?) needs to get extremely busy and release more of the gems from the more than 2500 available shows that are sitting on shelves out there somewhere (I'm not counting the 1500 shows from the 60's that are permanently lost). There's a lot of money to be made from the release of much more material (How about starting with the 120+ Carson Comedy Classics that were aired in syndication in the 80's?).

Vroom Vroom folks...let's get some more of this stuff out there!!!

As a big Johnny fan - I own most of the DVD collections in this set, and as other reviewers have pointed out - these are DVDs that have been available at select retailers or to fans who bought DVDs through the Carson Club. However, this is the first time they have all been put together in one big box set, and at this price it is an incredible deal(around 5 bucks per DVD), and a great retrospective of Johnny's career. The 3 disc Ultimate Collection is perhaps the best "TV on DVD" set ever released, and in the comics collection you get to see how some of today's biggest stars (Seinfeld, Drew Carey, Ellen and many more) got their start. I am ordering as gifts, as this would be a terrific addition to any home video collection, and everyone loves and misses Johnny!

Who else out there misses Johnny Carson as much as I do???? No one has been able to even close to replacing him in the 15 years that he has been off the air. While all of this box set has been for sale before in different forms and pieces over the past few years, having it all together in one set, and really at a terrific price for 12 discs, is great for a collector like me.