It’s easy to forget that every successful comedian’s act and career is always a work in progress and rarely is what you see from them now the same thing you saw them from them when they first launched their career.

But thanks to the magic of YouTube, it’s now easy to look back and study what many legendary comedians were doing in the early days of their career. So, I thought I’d compile some video examples of that in this post to inspire and educate you.

Below you’ll find the debut appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson of 8 stand up comedians who would go on to become some of the most successful comics of all time.