Joan Rivers and Johnny Carson's feud is now the stuff of legend, having sparked four decades ago. Their fraught relationship has recently been re-examined by Mark Malkoff, who authored Love Johnny Carson, with the writer sharing the real reason behind their rift.
Joan first appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1965 as a last-minute guest, and charmed both Johnny and his audience with her sharp wit. She went on to appear on the show more than 100 times, both as a guest, and a guest host when Johnny was away.
The pair built a strong professional relationship, and Joan considered him to be her mentor. Their friendship soured, however, in 1986, when Joan was offered her own late-night talk show in direct competition with Johnny.
Her final appearance on The Tonight Show came in April of that year, when she celebrated the 21st anniversary of her debut on the show. Just days later, she announced her own talk show with Fox, yet reportedly did not forewarn her mentor about the move.
According to Mark, Joan refused to tell Johnny ahead of time, and instead, NBC president Brandon Tartikoff had to break the news. "Tartikoff took a deep breath, knowing he was about to break the heart of the network's biggest star," he wrote in the book.
Johnny was devastated by the news, said Mark. "She handled it terribly," added Peter Lassally, the executive producer of The Tonight Show.
"Because if she had come to him anywhere during those negotiations and said, 'Hey, I've got another offer that's very tempting, and I really want to take it, [Johnny] would've said, 'Go with my blessings.' She couldn't have made a worse decision."
At the time, Johnny only made a single public statement about Joan: "I wish her the best in whatever she does."
Joan refuted the idea that she never told Johnny about her big move in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. The comedienne shared that she had called him ahead of time to relay the news, and he immediately hung up.
"I adored Johnny. In the '70s, I did opening monologues, I was hosting. The turning point was when I left the show," she said of their friendship.
"The first person I called was Johnny, and he hung up on me – and never, ever spoke to me again. And then denied that I called him. I couldn't figure it out. I would see him in a restaurant and go over and say hello. He wouldn't talk to me."
"I kept saying, 'I don't understand, why is he mad?' He was not angry at anybody else," she continued.
"I think he really felt because I was a woman that I just was his. That I wouldn't leave him…For years, I thought that maybe he liked me better than the others. But I think it was a question of, 'I found you, and you're my property.' He didn't like that as a woman, I went up against him."
She added that the press took his side in the feud. "When you've told the truth and you read a lie, there's nothing you can do about it. To this day, I'm very angry about that." Joan passed away in 2014 aged 81 due to complications from a throat procedure. Johnny died in 2005 aged 79 after a battle with emphysema.