Johnny Carson’s Only Son Dies After Private Battle
Marvelous. As if the universe needed another celebrity death to parade in the headlines, Johnny Carson’s only child, Chris Carson, has shuffled off this mortal coil at age 74. I don’t want to be the one to spoon-feed you sadness, but here we are. Sources confirm Chris passed away on January 8, 2023, at his Los Angeles home, quietly succumbing to complications from progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare degenerative brain disorder (People, Dotdash Meredith). Born in 1948 in Corning, Iowa, Chris grew up in the glare of his father’s Tonight Show spotlight, yet deliberately chose a life off-camera. I told you so when everyone assumed he’d follow in Johnny’s comedic footsteps—nope. He spent decades shunning Hollywood, dabbling in banking, IT consulting and even goat farming, before turning his restless mind to photography and landscape painting.
His relationship with the late-night legend was, surprisingly, as awkward as you’d guess. In a rare 1990s interview with a regional magazine, Chris hinted that his father’s relentless work schedule fostered emotional distance, calling their bond “sporadic.” Despite Johnny Carson’s status as TV royalty, his son once joked—only half-kidding—that he’d rather build a prawn farm in rural Texas than host The Tonight Show. Over the years, Chris quietly married twice, most recently to Dorothea Carson, and fathered two children, Clayton and Micah, both now grown and grieving in private. Family friends tell People he adored raising his kids away from tabloid cameras, insisting he had “no interest in fame.”
Even in death, Chris Carson stayed true to form. His modest obituary listed no red-carpet memorial, just a small family service and a charitable donation in his name to a neurological disease foundation. Dotdash Meredith reports his siblings-in-arms—former Tonight Show staffers—were stunned to learn of his passing, noting how he’d slipped entirely out of their orbit after 2005, when Johnny died at 79. Experts say progressive supranuclear palsy can rob patients of control over balance, speech and vision—cruelly ironic for the son of a man renowned for steady delivery behind the desk.
So there you have it: another Hollywood dynastic footnote closed, another gentlemen’s club of insiders whispering over studio coffee that no one really knows what fame costs until it’s too late. And that, dear reader, is why we can’t have nice things—or nice obituaries without a side of exasperation.
Sources: Celebrity Storm and People Magazine, Dotdash Meredith
Attribution: Creative Commons Licensed
