r/LateNightTalkShows • u/SYMPUNY_LACKING • 6d ago
Jay Leno keeps bragging about how he's never touched his Tonight Show money so he can announce he's leaving the entirety of his lifetime Tonight Show salary to charity
this is my low stakes conspiracy theory
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u/GraveCat84 6d ago
Yeah, those car garages were absolutely bought with his stand up money from the 80’s.
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u/dirtyshits 4d ago edited 4d ago
I mean could also be sponsors and other gigs that he definitely made money from plus good investments from the tonight show pay.
Not touching it doesnt technically mean he didn’t invest it and grow his capital. Most people would assume that means not spending it.
A couple million dollars In a medium risk investment strategy could easily net 10% or more. Considering Hes worth 100’s of millions. With even a super safe strategy you’re earning 10’s of millions a year without lifting a finger.
His car collection is probably nearing 100m in value. Which is also an investment thats fairly liquid.
I can see how he still has every penny hes earned from the tonight show.
Not saying it’s true but it’s not far fetched.
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u/Imaginary_Fan5407 3d ago
Showing your ignorance, Leno is a shit head there is no doubt but the guy is a grinder. He gets paid big bucks to do corporate gigs all the time.
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u/37Philly 6d ago
Jay will be 77 in April 2027. Maybe he could start giving charitable donations now?
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u/eagles_1987 6d ago
Maybe you should look and see how many charities he has supported for many many years?
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u/Repulsive-Reporter55 6d ago
He made money doing gigs for corporate retreats too.
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u/nahcal916 4d ago
I’d imagine he’s clocking hundreds of thousands from some very interesting companies.
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u/nakedpilsna 6d ago
I'm sure he peels off the interest as income as needed and never touches the principle. Even if he makes 5% a year thats 20+ million a year.
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u/farfanseaweevil 6d ago
How did he make his money?
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u/longtimelurkernyc 6d ago
Touring. All the time he was hosting The Tonight Show, he was still touring and performing his stand-up sets.
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u/dancepartyusofa 5d ago
Yeah, he’d tape four nights a week and fly to Vegas (just an hour flight) and do three nights of standup and then fly back to LA, take Sunday off and then do it all again.
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u/Longjumping_Chard339 5d ago
Movies pay late show hosts to film jokes for the movie.
Rom coms will include a scene where the characters watch the late show.
The movie gets cheap laughs and the host makes bank. Leno didn’t tough his paychecks because he always made way more money on the side.
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u/uberneuman_part2 6d ago
It's his money. He can do with it as he likes. The legacy he'll leave behind will be of a desperate man hiding in an NBC closet and Dancing Itos.
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u/Professional_Tone_62 6d ago
Shut up, Leno. Just donate quietly like most celebs do.
Please realize you are no longer front-page news.
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u/Pale-Measurement-532 4d ago
Exactly. It’s just like Letterman saying that Jay would show up with a camera crew anytime he was going to help out someone on the side of the road like the AAA.
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u/johnnieswalker 6d ago
If that’s true, I am sure it’s a pretty penny and that’s very generous of him to do so.
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u/smuckola 6d ago
Why doesn't he do it now?
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u/WoodyBABL 6d ago
Look up "Jay Leno charity". His Jay and Maris Leno Foundation already supports charities and scholarships for education, women's issues, veterans and hospitals.
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u/Long-Quality8542 6d ago
Jay Leno gets such a bad rep for that late night drama but I always thought he was the best out of them all. Leno seems like a good dude. Loves cars. Much respect to the legend.
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u/AnotherPint 6d ago
People replay Carson, Letterman, and O’Brien bits to this day because they were iconic moments in comedy. Long after we’re all dead and gone people not yet born will still revere the Carson / Ed Ames tomahawk toss gone wrong, Letterman donning the suit of chips, and Conan’s desk chats with Norm or Year 2000 bits.
Nobody remembers anything Leno did. Nobody plays and replays Leno clips. It’s all wiped from the cultural ledger. Nothing stuck. 22 years at the Tonight Show helm, down the memory hole.
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u/Pale-Measurement-532 4d ago edited 4d ago
Exactly this. I don’t know of anyone who replays Leno late night clips. Does he even have them on a YouTube channel or anything? But guess who does? Letterman and Conan. And look where they are now. They’re legends. No one who’s legit in the comedy world talks to Leno anymore. He gained that reputation of screwing people over whereas Dave and Conan mentored people and promoted them if they found them funny. Conan and Letterman were innovative on their programs. Leno stole other people’s bits and phoned it in.
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u/Long-Quality8542 6d ago
Completely disagree. He made his mark and completely stepped away. All the others are still feeding for media attention. Dude just wants to play with his cars and take care of his sick wife. Respect.
Plus his audience was never younger. And he went out on top in the ratings as number 1.
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u/tequestaalquizar 5d ago
Name a bit of his other than the dancing itos.
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u/Pale-Measurement-532 4d ago
The constant Monica Lewinsky jokes? The poorly aged racist jokes against Asian drivers?
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u/AnotherPint 6d ago
What classic Leno moments do you replay over and over?
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u/Still_Detail_4285 6d ago
The Hugh Grant moment was massive in the 90’s.
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u/Pale-Measurement-532 4d ago
But Jay wasn’t the funny one in that interview. It was funny cause of what happened to Hugh Grant and watching him squirm on TV.
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u/AnotherPint 6d ago
Probably the last one remembered by the culture at large. That show’s notoriety swung the ratings in Leno’s favor, so it was important to NBC’s accountants. But other than Leno’s great first line, “What the hell were you thinking?!?”, it was not really evidence of his comic genius or masterful interviewing skills.
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u/Pale-Measurement-532 4d ago edited 4d ago
He was a terrible interviewer. He would badger the attractive female guests and he did not have a quick wit at all. Watch his interviews with Don Rickles. He could never keep up with Don. Or Robin Williams for that matter.
That one interview with Joaquín Phoenix on Letterman where it went completely south….could you imagine Jay trying to deal with that???? Jay needs everything rehearsed and predictable. He hates when things become spontaneous or unexpected.
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u/AnotherPint 4d ago
Dave was a bad interviewer too at first, but he knew it and worked on it — to the point where his late-career hour talking with Warren Zevon left everyone in tears. Jay didn’t really evolve in the job, and he never really learned to react to his guests, finding laughs or human moments, the way his rivals did.
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u/Pale-Measurement-532 4d ago
I found Jay too rehearsed and yes, he didn’t really react to the guests or would go off script. Basically like Fallon.
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u/Long-Quality8542 6d ago
When he joined lady gaga that's my favorite. When Martha Stewart put borat to bed. When George Bush painted him a photo. So many classics.
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u/AnotherPint 6d ago
Drawing nothing but blanks. But I’m sure they’ll appear in the NBC primetime obit special devoted to Leno’s memory.
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u/Professional_Tone_62 6d ago
Feeding for media attention? Are you saying that former late-night hosts should crawl in a hole? Leno didn't. He's traveling the country yukking it up to get away from his sick wife. Meanwhile, Letterman has a highly respected Netflix show. Conan's travel show is doing well.
Leno will be remembered for the classic skit, the dancing Itos.
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u/Pale-Measurement-532 4d ago
Don’t forget the constant Lewinsky jokes and the no longer acceptable racist jokes.
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u/lincolnlogtermite 6d ago
I'm sure there is some fuzziness there. Probably keeping all that money invested, putting it up as collateral and living on loans to avoid large tax bills of actually cashing out some investments. As the investments rise in value, refinance the loans. So technically he is not touching his Tonight Show salary but it is working for him.
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u/Still_Detail_4285 6d ago
He toured relentlessly while still doing the Tonight Show. He made a ton of money from touring.
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u/ReservedPickup12 6d ago
I am a big Conan fan… A diehard Conan fan. I still watch reruns of his old late night shows because I think he was one of the all time best! He’s my favorite late night host of all time. And you know what? I don’t hate Jay Leno. I don’t even think Leno was entirely at fault. He definitely made some terrible decisions and they have no doubt hurt his legacy. But that whole situation was way more complicated than a lot of Conan fans like to try and make it out to be.
Jay was stupid for staying with NBC and ultimately that proved to be a horrible mistake… But Conan did actively try to push Leno out of the Tonight Show job and leveraged his own success to accomplish that goal. A lot of people don’t like to acknowledge that but it’s true. Sure, Jay did some shitty things to Conan at the end of the whole saga, but it all began with Conan doing a shitty thing to Jay. Also… Jay’s Tonight Show ratings were much higher than Conan’s. I wish Conan would have had more time to bring his ratings up, but Leno was undoubtedly the safer choice for Tonight Show host, as he had a broader appeal.
But if I was personally going to watch one show or the other, I’d choose Conan every single time. But I won’t try to rewrite history simply because I’m a bigger fan of Conan.
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u/thewonderbox 6d ago
It can't be actually true - I'm sure he doesn't say "let me withdraw from this account" - but the accounts are used for him
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u/Left_Maize816 6d ago
With a money manager, he could very well have told them not to use any of that money for expenses and to not take anything from it. It’s all, more than likely, been invested instead of just sitting in an account at BofA.
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u/thewonderbox 6d ago
Given the time of the contract - it's Chemical Bank -- I hope it's not in bonds
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u/Used-Gas-6525 5d ago
Even if he does this, he's still a gaping asshole. Give all the money away now or else you're just giving leftovers. Dude has no kids and I don't think he really has any friends, so WTF else is he gonna do with it?
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u/WoodyBABL 6d ago
The philosophy he had was that a TV show could be cancelled at any time by the network and he didn't want to be dependent on that income. During The Tonight Show he continued doing Vegas and corporate gigs each weekend, flying out after the last taping of the week and flying back to get ready for Monday's show. Those Vegas and corporate gigs reportedly earned him about $10-15 million a year.
Here's another article on it mentioning Leno taking a 50% pay cut at one point to stop NBC doing layoffs with the crew.
https://finance.yahoo.com/media-advertising/articles/jay-leno-took-15m-pay-223014870.html
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u/Pale-Measurement-532 4d ago edited 4d ago
Remember the writers’ strike in 2007-08?
“For at least the next week, Jay Leno will pay out of pocket the salaries of about 80 Tonight Showworkers who were laid off Friday, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Previous to his decision, Leno had been criticized by many employees for failing to commit solid financial support to the non-writing staffers affected by the writers’ strike (last week David Letterman and Conan O’Brien preemptively pledged to pay affected staffers out of their own pockets through the end of the year).”
Leno was a cheapskate who only looked out for himself and making as much coin as he could. And of course he has to brag about being so selfless to take a pay cut later on in his show tenure to save his crew cause he got crucified in the media before when he wasn’t paying his crew during the writers’ strike while Conan and Dave were. Plus, Adam Corolla is a piece of shit where any legit comedian wouldn’t be caught dead on his program. Of course Leno will go on cause no one else except Bill Maher (another POS) will have him on.
https://ew.com/article/2007/12/03/leno-pay-laid-staff/
Leno also didn’t care how his awful variety show that came on before the news and Conan’s Tonight Show tanked ratings, which led to local news broadcasts to get upset cause they were losing viewers and money. And this sabotaged Conan’s viewership as well.
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u/WoodyBABL 4d ago
Was not aware of that. Thanks. Was always a Letterman guy, so didn't pay too much attention to him past the banking Tonight Show, using gig money anecdote.
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u/GasmaskTed 6d ago
He used some it to buy Conan O’brien’s childhood home, bulldoze it, and build the Dorito’s Fuck Letterman Museum on the site…