1. JOHNNY CARSON
He was America's night-light. From 1962 to 1992, the nation didn't fall asleep until Carson said good-night. No matter what was going on in the world — Vietnam, Watergate, the AIDS crisis — he was there, swiveling behind his desk on NBC's Tonight Show, providing a place the whole country could flip to for collective comic relief. At his zenith, 15 million viewers were tuning in to watch him chat with the biggest stars in the world...or just some lady with a potato chip shaped like Bob Hope. Of course, there are scores of iconic moments. The time Tiny Tim married Miss Vicki. Or when one of Joan Embery's cheetahs sent him leaping into Ed McMahon's arms. But we're picking more of a movement, one that Carson repeated each night: that golf swing before the first commercial break, a gesture as smooth and graceful as Johnny himself.

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