O'Brien was always meant for the stage - just a smaller one. His "Tonight" was good but also the sort of acquired taste that the show's typical viewer was never going to acquire.
Whom to blame? In hindsight, most likely no one. He lashed out at NBC and Leno, and - in the film documenting that strange period ("Conan O'Brien Can't Stop") - his own staffers and himself too. Wounded, he launched his Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour, which was to become one of his "four stages of anger," as he would later put it.
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NBC paid O'Brien $40 million to go away, and not appear on TV for a year. ("It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed!") Nobody in this life gets exactly what they think they will get but if you work hard, and are kind … amazing things will happen." Roosevelt couldn't have said it better himself, and in a way, already had, many times before.
O'Brien was mad but no one likes a sore loser, least of all that guy who charged up San Juan Hill, so he also made certain that he would leave on a high note: "Please do not be cynical," he told viewers in the closing seconds of his ill-fated "Tonight." "I hate cynicism. "The Tonight Show" must never air at 12:05, he presidentially declared - and therefore, I must be going. O'Brien made certain everyone knew he was quitting on principle, after NBC suggested he move his "Tonight Show" to 12:05, making room for an 11:35 return for Jay Leno. That lilly-white skin, never thick to begin with, got even thinner. Like Roosevelt, humiliation was not something to be worn lightly then discarded. O'Brien's "Late Night" success lead to the singular late night prize, "Tonight," only to lose that seven months later amid a crushing avalanche of media hype and bad feelings.
"Man was never intended to become an oyster." O'Brien was no oyster. Never inclined to run in place, he built a particularly good show ("Late Night") out of his own early, raw efforts. He learned and - this is particularly Teddyesque, says his great-grandson, Tweed - O'Brien absorbed. He beat the odds, TV critics, quixotic network suits, and shifting audience tastes. Obsessions are funny too, and as O'Brien leaves the late-night stage he's held - at times precariously - since 1993, his obsession with TR offers a way to assess that long run. Harvard - where else? - with a specialty in Who Else? If NBC hadn't picked a talented but especially green no-name to succeed David Letterman almost 28 years ago, that no-name might have gone on to teach college-level history. Life is funny, those paths-not-taken too. Tweed Roosevelt further elaborates: "It's very easy to find something you like about TR and it's very easy to find something you do not like about TR." Clearly, O'Brien has found much to like. They are (were) hams and master storytellers practiced in the art of self-deprecating humor. Both are (were) hyper-overachievers bursting with nervous energy and a drive to occupy center stage. " That's why I have these people back here."īeyond that Harvard pedigree, there are comparisons with Roosevelt that might explain this obsession. "They mean … better times are coming," he explained. Eisenhower pencil-holder, and a line drawing of Lincoln over his right shoulder: During a pandemic show outtake posted on YouTube, O'Brien referred to a bust of TR over his left shoulder, a Dwight D. That obsession has occasionally leaked out on the air. In this handout fron NBC, Actor Bruce Willis (L) and Host Conan O'Brien appear on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" Main New York City. O'Brien has a bust of TR in his home office, and a plaque on his office door on the Warner lot that reads "President Theodore Roosevelt." When he registers at hotels, he signs his name "Theodore Roosevelt," or sometimes just "POTUS." While a certified Tedhead, O'Brien is also a presidential history nerd, and has been since his days at Harvard where he graduated summa cum laude with a degree in English literature and U.S. Who knew? Faithful Conan fans, maybe, who have stayed with him these past 27-plus years and will say goodbye Thursday when his final edition of "Conan '' airs on TBS. "People who are huge fans of TR are 'Tedheads'- I'm not using that in the pejorative way - and Conan's a Tedhead." "Conan is an example of somebody we would not normally think knows a lot about TR, but in fact he knows a tremendous amount," says Roosevelt who had reached out to him when he found out about his passion for all-things-TR, including his Cove Neck home, Sagamore Hill, which he had visited often. By clicking Sign up, you agree to our privacy policy.