Wayne Newton Recalls The Pain Of Being The Richard Simmons Of The Carson Era

Until we saw this on Larry King Live last night, we honestly had no clue how hard Johnny Carson made things for our secretly favourite Dancing with the Stars contestant, Wayne Newton, who couldn’t pull on a single, sequined polyester outfit and launch into song in a Las Vegas floorshow without having the late night despot crack some crass joke questioning his sexuality. Watch as the consummate entertainer revisits the painful time in his career, clearly still scarred by the memory of The Tonight Show host ripping open the edge of a white envelope, blowing into it, and producing an index card that read “Name a cancer, a dancer, and a prancer,” (the response to Great Carsoni divination, “Lung, Barishnokov, and Wayne Newton”) to the audible delight of the studio audience.7

• Larry King Live