📍Norfolk, Nebraska, USA
1933 – 1943“I was born in Corning, Iowa, in October 1925, and my father's job as a manager with a power company kept us moving around the small towns of south-west Iowa until, when I was eight, we settled in Norfolk, Nebraska, a farming and railroad town on the Elkhorn River in the north-east of the state. My father, Homer, was steady and quiet, and my mother, Ruth, was stern and hard to please, and I spent a lot of my boyhood trying to make people laugh. When I was about twelve, I found a book on magic and sent away for a mail-order magician's kit, and I practised for hours in my bedroom, perfecting my tricks and my patter. In 1939 I gave my first paid performance, at the Norfolk Rotary Club, as The Great Carsoni, and soon I was doing magic and ventriloquism at lodges, church suppers and picnics around town. I listened to Jack Benny, Fred Allen and Bob Hope on the radio and studied their timing. At Norfolk High School the yearbook gave me an A in humour. After graduating in 1943 I joined the Navy, then studied at the University of Nebraska, and began in radio and television in Omaha. In 1962 I became host of The Tonight Show, and I stayed for thirty years. I always remembered Norfolk; I gave generously to its schools and arts, and the town's museum has a gallery about the boy who started out as The Great Carsoni.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today