Mr. Rogers First Appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson - 09/04/1980

[Applause] fred rogers is the host of the emmy award-winning popular children's show which has been doing for years called mr rogers neighborhood and he recently created a new program which is also on pbs called old friends new friends we've had a lot of fun with his show we've done a couple of uh satires on it so just to refresh your memory uh we thought we'd play like a minute of the last one we did so here is part of our version of mr rogers [Applause] neighborhood [Music] it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood a beautiful day to be neighborly won't you be my neighbor [Music] hi neighbor are you having a nice day i am i certainly am do you know that you're the most wonderful person in the whole world yes you are and i love you see mrs mr codges could use a cup of water eaters in his shoes [Music] that aroma would start the windmill on an old dutch painting [Applause] let's go over here and talk to mr parrot here's your breakfast [Music] well it seems kitty cat's been up to some mischief again i i guess it's riddle time when is mr parrot really mr froggy give up when he croaks that was a fun riddle would you welcome to your friend roger [Applause] no that's right slip-on right i didn't know whether you were showing up with a lawyer or just to be a guest or to sue us tonight did you see either one of those sketches we did of course they did what kind of reaction did people get angry because you've been doing your children's show and it's a wonderful show you read a remarkable job and we did kind of a not a put down but we showed you a little bit different light a little different yeah and i wonder what kind of reaction you did people think we were excessively uh cruel most of the people that i know like fun just as much as you do yeah [Applause] you have you really have a a wonderful voice and a wonderful attitude you have with the kids kids are not easy to fool they're much brighter than most people give them credit and they're and they're hip to catch on to any kind of real phoniness are they not i really think that the most important thing that we do is being honest yeah how long you've been doing this over 25 years 25 years i suppose kids that you've entertained when it first started [Applause] i suppose kids that you used to entertain have gotten married and had kids of their own and you've got a second generation of kids again right and i've seen some of them in the halls here they said i grew up with you all right now i have some children of my own yeah you used to work at nbc but not doing the children's show right yes when i first got out of college i was a floor manager for the network and did such things as the kate smith hour and the voice of firestone and the hit parade and the nbc opera theater so you go way back to the network how did you get into the children's uh how did that start every day that i had free i would go visit some children's center an adoption agency or something and for some reason i felt as if i wanted to work with children yeah and so when the first public station started in pittsburgh i applied my friends at nbc thought i was nuts to go to a station that hadn't even been on the air yet right but i think i was led to do that yeah you uh you give kids a lot of advice what kind of reaction you get you get a lot of mail from children asking to see specific things or you more or less kind of set the tempo and decide what you want to do yourself do you have a studio audience at all not at all no as a matter of fact i feel that it's important to have a rapport with the person at home the child at home and so i just look at that one person i remember gabby hayes one time when i was floor managing him do you remember oh you i'll tell you story about gabby because he's very funny but go ahead i asked him what do you think of when you look at that camera know that there are millions of people watching and he said freddie i just think of one little buckaroo and that really impressed me yeah the idea in television you're supposed to assume that they're just a few people i knew him quite well in his later years and he would come into new york with bill boyd hop along cassidy and he used to get all dressed up and we would go to danny's hideaway in new york and to see gabby hayes with that full beard in a tuxedo going over the copacabana to see a floor show was hysterical he'd sit there and say it's a wonderful show ain't it he talked exactly exactly that way and he had a box at the opera yeah he was a very cultured man yeah now on the show you've done things that uh we said they're very smart for example you've gotten a haircut on the show because you go back to a lot of childhood experiences that were i suppose traumatic or kind of terrifying at the time and then do them for the children at home right well children are concerned when they get their first haircut that the barber's going to cut more than hair right ears nose and other things so what do you do you had the barber come in and i go to the barber shop right on film and then i ask him do you cut anything besides hair and he said no that's why i go to school to learn to cut just here somebody said you also had a cast on your arm once because that's another thing the kids go through when they get the cast with a broken bone or something sure and when the doctor removes the cast they're afraid that they're going to take the arm right along with it and i if you actually have a broken arm or no just had the cat just put the cast on and did it wouldn't go that far for them [Music] do you ever discuss now we were discussing sex when we did the takeoff on your show uh did you ever do you ever started are they too young for that you never get into that's where they learn the differences yeah how do you handle it what do you do to explain what's your age range would you think that watch the show mostly preschoolers but i hesitate to say that because there's many older people who absolutely but there's a song called everybody's fancy that i think some are fancy on the outside some are fancy on the inside everybody's fancy everybody's fine your body's fancy and so is mine [Applause] but the second verse is very important now what's the second verse boys are boys from the beginning girls are girls right from the start everybody's fancy everybody's fine your body's fancy and so is mine because sometimes children think that they might change they might have to change after a while and you know we laugh about that now but it's because we had that concern when we were little yeah because you're really not sure and you thought maybe you become a girl or a girl would become a boy right exactly happens frequently out here [Applause] what have you done on the show that's had the biggest response it's kind of fooled you some things you've done that you got a tremendous reaction well many children are concerned about going down the bathtub drain and if you have ever had a two-year-old and have pulled out the plug that two-year-old may have screamed if he or she had been in the tub and there was a man beside me in the airplane he said you know you did that song about you could never go down the drain i thought it was crazy until i saw my kid screaming in the water and so he said i pulled out the plug told him to get out that he could not go down the drain and it made all the difference in our family that's a good approach we have to take a short break we'll be right back

Channel: Johnny Carson

Views: 388,975

Rating: 4.9343147 out of 5

Keywords: Mr. Rogers

Id: aOcrlJuF9wU

Length: 8min 54sec (534 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/dalgft]

M.R. Had more game than JC

[u/scratison]

Fred is a boss. In a nice sort of way.

[u/bobthemuellerlied]

jc handled that interview really well especially with the audience laughing

[u/scoot23ro]

God Bless Mister Rogers