Remembering when the host of The Tonight Show accidentally sent Americans en masse to buy mounds of tee-pee.

Johnny Carson, host of The Tonight Show from 1962–1992. Image via NBC

Documentary filmmaker Brian Gersten is making an animated short film about an incredibly peculiar incident in American television history: Johnny Carson, host of tremendously popular The Tonight Show, accidentally spurred a run on toilet paper throughout the country. “It’s a great case study about misinformation in the media. It goes beyond the base level of this bizarre event. There are lessons throughout about how we consume media,” said Gersten during a phone interview.

A shortage is defined by a situation in which demand for a product greatly exceeds its supply in a market. The toilet paper scare, like many scares and shortages of the seventies, started with an unsubstantiated rumor. After a reported shortage in Japan, a lone congressman, Republican Harold V. Froelich of Wisconsin, who represented a district in which the paper industry was a major employer, released two statements, the second of which caught Carson’s eye. Representative Froelich’s statement only alluded to the idea that there could be a toilet paper shortage, not that there actually was one. “People at the time were prone to panic and shortages,” said Gersten. Two months earlier in 1973, the American people experienced the first of two energy crises during the decade.

Photo from a gas station during the 1973 oil shortage. Image via NPR.

“You know, we’ve got all sorts of shortages these days. But have you heard the latest? I’m not kidding. I saw it in the papers. There’s an acute shortage of…of toilet paper!” On December 19, 1973, Carson uttered those infamous words in his monologue. Between his twenty-million nightly viewers and word of mouth, actual fears materialized.

The infamous comment!

Soon, American consumers rushed to grocery stores to purchase pallets of tee-pee. “There are newspaper reports about the incident from all around the country,” said Gersten. When Carson returned to the air following the show’s Christmas hiatus, he apologized, but the damage had been done. “Carson was forced to hold himself accountable for saying something that wasn’t true. We rarely see that sort of accountability in media,” said Gersten.

Because the event in question happened over forty years ago, in the era before home taping on VCRs was commonplace, video of The Tonight Show and other television programs is hard to find. However, this particular program is available in the Paley Center’s extensive archive, which contains hundreds of Tonight Show episodes, and is available to watch at our New York City and Los Angeles locations. In his mostly archival film, Gersten cleverly decided to fill in gaps with animated sequences. Additionally, part of Gersten’s quest with this project is to uncover footage from an era when digital catalogs were not universal. “Even though I have footage of Walter Cronkite reporting on the Tee-Pee crisis, sadly a lot of footage doesn’t exist,” said Gersten.

The teaser for Brian’s film “The Great Toilet Paper Scare”

In making this short film, Gersten hopes to better frame this silly occurrence in American history and illustrate the importance of the late-night pulpit. “No late host today has the power Johnny Carson once had.” You can support Gersten in his quest to uncover the meaning behind the great Tee-Pee Crisis of 1973 by donating to the project’s Kickstarter.

Paley Matters is a publication of The Paley Center for Media.