There's Johnny. 4.

Okay.
Cut to: seventeen years later.
I am in my "Odd Couple" office on the second floor of building H on the Paramount lot.
Downstairs, offices were set up for Carson Productions, Johnny's production company.
On my way to lunch, every day, I'd pass by the Carson Productions offices.
Never seeing hide nor hair of Johnny.
Months into the process, as I was headed for the commissary, I passed right by the entrance door to Carson Productions, and coming out of it, big as life itself, was Johnny.
This was a rare sighting.
He almost never came to his production office.
I figured that I had a story to tell him that he might find interesting and amusing.
So I engaged him in conversation, told him about the time when I was an eleven year old fetus and I asked him for his autograph and presented him with my mother's torn envelope and stubby pencil, and he, upon receiving these items, replied "....neat!"
I thought I told it rather engagingly.
He seemed interested.
He seemed amused.
He seemed very much like Johnny Carson.
He was very pleasant about it.
I came back from lunch.
Johnny was long gone.
A couple of hours later, one of Johnny's production company assistants, who knew me, and from Johnny's description had no trouble putting two and two together, confronted me.
"You talked to Johnny, didn't you?!"
I admitted that I had.
"Well, you know what it is that you did?!"
I had to admit that I didn't.
"You just simply depressed the hell out of Johnny! That's what you did!"
At that moment, I searched my soul, and couldn't for the life of me figure out what I could have said that would have depressed the hell out of Johnny.
She continued----"Here you are, this fully grown adult (She was being kind. I was a fully overgrown adult.), and you tell him how you asked him for his autograph when you were a child! (I almost corrected her and said "fetus", but in the state she was in, I didn't think that would help.) You made him feel ancient! Like he was a hundred years old!"
All I could say was that it was certainly not my intent to do that.
And I figured, however famous I'd ever become, I'd blown the only chance I ever had to appear on "The Tonight Show"
My best shot would be one of those nights that David Brenner was hosting.

In reference to my father appearing on "Who Do You Trust?", a couple of ironies:
Four years later from about 1963 to 1966,, my father became Johnny's limo driver on the Tonight Show.
"Who Do You Trust" had never been brought up again.
And a couple of years after that, he did most of the limousine work for The Merv Griffin Show, which was broadcast from the Little Theatre on 44th Street, where "Who Do You Trust" had been broadcast from.
Show business can be a small town.

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My books, "Show Runner" and it's sequel, "Show Runner Two", can be found at the Amazon Kindle Store.
Along with the newer ones, "The Man Is Dead", and "Report Cards".
You can search by typing in my name, Cindy Williams, Laverne & Shirley, The Odd Couple, or Happy Days.
Check them out.
You don't need a Kindle machine to download them.
Just get the free app from Kindle, and they can be downloaded to an IPhone, IPad, or Blackberry.
The paperbacks, "Mark Rothman's Essays", and my new novel, "I'm Not Garbo" are available for people without Kindle.
I have many readings and signings remaining, and the thing about Kindle is you can't sign one.
If you'd like one, contact me at macchus999@aol.com.
And now, we've got my reading of my "Laverne & Shirley Movie" screenplay on YouTube.

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