S5E2: One For My Baby (and One More For The Road) | Johnny Carson & Mickey Rooney and Ava Gardner and Artie Shaw

For our second dive into the Ocean's Eleven: 12 Degrees of Frank Sinatra season, Stacie has the Rat Pack-adjacent comedian and original King of Late Night, Johnny Carson. He was a private person who was possibly America's most beloved and public figure for three decades. His three divorces – and final, apparently happy marriage, reveal the split-screen that was his life.

Then, Alicia has the tragic early years of Ava Gardner: her rural North Carolina upbringing, her discovery by the MGM star machine, and her first marriages, to Mickey Rooney and Artie Shaw. It's all prelude to her final, tumultuous marriage to Sinatra, which is coming up later this season.

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Stacie's Receipts:

Fifteen Years of the Salto Mortale, a profile of Carson, by Kenneth Tynan. The New Yorker, 2/20/1978.

Obituary of Joanne Carson, Los Angeles Times, May 2015.

Classic Hollywood: The timeless humor of Johnny Carson captured on new DVD sets, Susan King, Los Angeles Times, September 23, 2017.

Johnny Carson, Low-Key King of Late-Night TV, Dies at 79, Richard Severo and Bill Carter, New York Times, January 24, 2005.

Johnny Carson wikipedia.

The Tonight Show wikipedia.

Alicia's Receipts:

Ava: My Story. Ava Gardner's autobiography, published shortly after her death in 1990.

Lana: The Lady, the Legend, the Truth. Lana Turner’s autiobiography, published in 1982.

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