101 Nights with Johnny

Carol wayne is setting up an appointment on the phone. "When do you want to see me?" she asks. How about Thursday? comes the reply. "Thursday," she muses. "How do you spell that?" Who can blame the person on the other end of the line for wondering whether or not he's the victim of a put-on? But that's the effect--calculated or not--that Carol Wayne seems to have. She parlayed her ample physical attributes, her high-pitched, cartoon-character voice and a talent for dizzy logic and double-entendres into 101 appearances on The Tonight Show, usually as the unsuspecting Matinee Lady to Johnny Carson's lecherous Art Fern, host of the "Tea Time Movie." Later in the show, when she joined the rest of the guests, the real Carol--such as she (text continued on page 160)101 Nights with Johnny(continued from page 56) is--would surface.

Once, for instance, she was paired with Don Rickles. "How's your mother?" she asked him.

"She lives in a condo in Miami," he answered.

"Oh, Miami Beach," cooed Carol. "That's God's little waiting room." Rickles liked the line so much he had it needle-pointed and framed and hung it on his mother's wall.

It was the strange mixture of the stereotypical dumb blonde who also has a penchant for the inspired and unpredictable one-liner that would leave the audience--and probably her fellow panelists--wondering just how much of Carol was real and how much was an act.

"This is not an act," she insists, sounding as if Little Annie Fanny had come to life. "This is it. This is who I am. It's no box of chocolates."

Perhaps her life is no Whitman's Sampler, but it's been a good living. Besides The Tonight Show, she has appeared in dozens of episodes of Love, American Style, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I Spy and numerous game shows and movies. "I'm also famous for being the bunny rabbit on Bewitched," she maintains. "Paul Lynde was Uncle Arthur, and he turned Tabitha's bunny into me."

Meryl Streep might not want to make that claim, but Carol is well suited to her career and reputation. "I'm a second answer on Family Feud," she says proudly. "They asked a family, 'Name five people in show business named Wayne.' I was second, right after John Wayne. I mean, Wayne Newton, Wayne Rogers, they were way down the line. I was second. That is, I have broad appeal"--she bats her eyelashes to emphasize the word broad. "That's what Fred Silverman said about me."

Much of that appeal--and that talent for double-entendres--was displayed at its best on The Tonight Show. "We were always pleased when the 'Tea Time Movie' sketch came along," claims Freddie de Cordova, the show's executive producer. "Carol is a thorough professional and much more intelligent than those silly parts she played."

It's a compliment she is quick to return. "Johnny's the best. He knows exactly what he's doing and he does it very well." Carol hasn't been on the show since Carson cut it back to one hour in 1981, but she says there are no hard feelings. "No, always soft and warm and toasty feelings. I thank him for what he's given me--he's given me the best past life.

"The amazing thing about being on The Tonight Show was that Johnny never actually figured me out," Carol explains. "I always threw him off, so it was always spontaneous. I don't have an act; I only talk about myself and what's going on in my life. And I only tell the truth, because I talk in my sleep and everyone would know. I was always fresh to him, and I did it for 13 or 14 years.

"You live and die on that show. Even though you're pre-interviewed, it's never the same. Johnny has the audience all on his side. If he thinks you're funny, the whole audience thinks you're funny. You live and die with him. He's always loved me, and I've always loved him back. It's always been real good between us."

In fact, host and guest hit it off so well onstage, it seemed only logical they'd get together offstage. "There was always bad timing," sighs Carol, who, like Carson, has been married and split three times. "We were never not together when we were apart," she says, which translates from Waynese into "We were never between spouses at the same time." She sighs again. "Maybe it was the best timing."

If pressed, Carol can get both mystical and misty about Johnny. "He loves me," she says. "I love him. It's an understanding, a given. He still sees me every day in his dreams. When he shuts his eyes, what does he see? Me."

What all that really means will probably never be clear--it's part of Carol's act that isn't really an act. And it's a situation that's enhanced by her unusual, sexy squeak of a voice, which can make innocent statements seem suggestive and suggestive statements almost Disneylike.

"My whole family has this voice," whispers Carol. "Now, this will be an amazing story to you. My sister, Nina--with this voice--is a telephone operator; in fact, almost a supervisor. To think that you get my sister as a super when you ask for help at the telephone company...."

Nina, who is 12 months and 12 days younger than the 41-year-old Carol, was also in show business, appearing in the forgettable Camp Runamuck TV series. The two sisters were raised as virtual twins, sentenced to a life as performers by a worried mother.

"Remember the polio scare?" asks Carol. "My mother thought that no polio germs could live in an ice rink." Such healthful logic resulted in years of ice-skating lessons. "Our grandmother made all of our clothes. We were never in fashion. We were Chinese one year, Pilgrims another. We did shadow skating, and because we were tall and had long legs and stupid ponytails, we were offered a professional contract when we were 15 and 16. Yes, we didn't finish high school. Yes, zip education."

For three years, the "nerd Wayne sisters" did their 42-city tour with the Ice Capades--that is, until the big accident. "See this?" Carol says, pointing to a five-inch scar on her knee. "Sometimes, people would unconsciously or perhaps on purpose throw pennies that would stick on the ice and make you"--she claps her hands nursery-rhyme style--"all fall down. It was a very unforgiving sport. When your blades hit something that wasn't meant to be, you crashed."

While she later returned to the Ice Capades to finish the tour, it was the end of the duo's skating career. For Carol, it was just as well. "When you train for something so young and become good at it, you never know if that's what you were meant to be or if it was just because it was someone else's idea. I missed a childhood because of it."

Nina and Carol found jobs in Las Vegas with the Folies-Bergère. "We were two pretty girls with no education. There was nothing else to do," Carol says.

Although there were probably few polio germs backstage at the Tropicana, their mother was not necessarily pleased. "Girls," she complained, "could you ask them for a couple more feathers?"

Las Vegas was close enough to Los Angeles to get the pair discovered by Hollywood. "My sister and I would always go to L.A. when we got off, so to speak," Carol explains. "One time, I went to a party and a man said to me, 'We're looking for a girl just like you.' I thought, Sure they are. He said, 'Meet me at Desilu studios in the morning,' and I did, just being silly. They gave me a screen test and I got the part. And I got all my parts ever since then."

Las Vegas had already introduced Carol to husband number one. Less than a year after the wedding, they split. "Skating taught me to be limber," she says cryptically, "but this marriage really taught me how to be flexible."

Hollywood was the scene for marriage number two, this one to rock artist and photographer Barry Feinstein. When they met, Feinstein was married to Mary Travers, of Peter, Paul and Mary (Carol still likes to refer to the trio as Peter, Paul and Scary). After he and Travers got a divorce, Carol found herself dividing her time among a brand-new son, Alex, the music world her husband inhabited as an album designer and concert photographer and her acting career.

Seven years later, Carol claims, she tired of the rock existence--"the Frye boots, the Levi's--I couldn't stand the whole New York cowboy thing anymore." Feinstein became, in Carol's words, "my second-to-last ex-husband."

Her last ex-husband, provided she never marries and divorces again, was Burt Sugarman, who produced the long-running rock TV show The Midnight Special. That marriage ended in 1980.

Today, Carol has neither The Tonight Show nor a husband to occupy her time. She still acts. "I'm on an airplane right now," she says, which means, of course, that a movie she's in, Savannah Smiles, is currently playing the upstairs transcontinental circuit. But it seems that she spends most of her time being corrupted by her 14-year-old son, Alex.

He goes to Beverly Hills High School, where, Carol remarks, "The kids all know how to spell omega but not cat. They all know the year of your Rolls-Royce but not that two dimes and a nickel make a quarter."

At Alex' suggestion, Carol has taken up smoking, but it's not what you may think. At irregular intervals, she will pull out a clove cigarette, the aroma of which is strong enough to get them banned from several local restaurants. "I decided I should get a new bad habit," she reports. "Alex said, 'Mommy, cloves. They will give you a good head rush.' So I've learned to smoke, except that I smell like Easter. Remember baked ham on Easter? Remember the cloves? That's what I smell like. I bought my first lighter today. I'm going to get an ashtray next."

And what will Alex say about his mother's appearance in Playboy?

"Alex is cool," maintains Carol. "Obviously, there's no other mother in school who looks like me, anyway."