Dr. Johnny Fever is an off-the-wall character and disc jockey (DJ) on the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. He was inspired by Atlanta DJ Skinny Bobby Harper.[1] The character was portrayed by Howard Hesseman.
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Johnny Fever, whose real name is John Caravella, comes to WKRP from a major station in Los Angeles, where he worked under the name "Johnny Sunshine" and did a popular show called "Johnny Sunshine, Boss Jock." After he said the word "booger" on the air, he was fired with a year left on his contract. (He sued the station for wrongful dismissal and received a large cash settlement after a few years.) After leaving L.A., he led a nomadic existence, going from town to town. His next job was hosting a garden show in Amarillo. He has used many on-air names, including Johnny Duke, Johnny Style, Johnny Cool, and even Heavy Early. (Most of these names appear on the side of Johnny's coffee cup.) He finally hit "rock bottom," in his own words, when he landed in Cincinnati at the worst radio station in town, WKRP -- the only station that would hire him. He found himself hosting a "beautiful music" show in the morning, so obviously bored with the music that he didn't even bother to make up a new name or on-air persona.
When Andy Travis takes over as program director of WKRP and changes the format to rock n' roll, Johnny is initially doubtful that he can succeed as the morning man in the new format; conscious that he is older than the average morning DJ, Johnny advises Andy to find someone "about fifteen years younger," but Andy insists that he can handle it (and gives him permission to say "booger" on the air). When he gets on the air the first time after the format change, Johnny comes alive, signaling the change with a loud drag on the playing record (a fictional cover of "(You're) Having My Baby" by the Hallelujah Tabernacle Choir) and literally folding the record album in half. He immediately adopts the new, hyper-excited persona of "Dr. Johnny Fever," by playing the first record, and telling his listeners:
He then starts the station's first rock record, and then triumphantly says, "I almost forgot, fellow babies: BOOGER!"
On the DVD audio commentary track for this episode, series creator Hugh Wilson credits Hesseman for largely improvising this entire speech.
The "Doctor" is a great talker to his radio audience when he is in a confident mood. He can jive with the best D.J.s of his era. He once gives Bailey Quarters, nascent newswoman, this sage advice: "Talk into the microphone as if you were talking to your best friend." Later, in that same episode ("Mike Fright"), he would have to gather the courage to take his own advice.
Never a fan of disco, the new music fad of the era, he is a lover of rock and roll, although he feels he is getting too old to be a DJ in the genre (aside from two episodes on which he adopts a disco persona for a high-paying television job--see below). Tunes like "Hey Jude" are used for bathroom breaks or extended chats with friends.
Though the format of WKRP is supposed to be Top 40, Johnny frequently refuses to play any songs off the station playlist, choosing instead to highlight old favorites like Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Otis Redding. A consultant hired by Mrs. Carlson at one point describes Johnny as being "stuck in 1962". Andy frequently tries to get Johnny to stick to the playlist, pleading with him: "Play the playlist. Play a part of the playlist. Play one song off the playlist. Play a part of one song off the playlist!" But Johnny continues picking his own music, to the point that Andy actually goes into a state of hysteria when he hears Johnny playing "The Long Run" by The Eagles: "That's a hit! He's playing a hit!" Fever's unorthodox choice of music pays off as the series goes on, and by the final episode he has become the number-one morning DJ in the city. Johnny's views towards his music and his audience were perhaps best summed up when, picking a record, he exclaims "Sacred music...B.B. King!" Once, during a bomb threat, he remarked "If I die, who will teach the children about Bo Diddley?"
Herb Tarlek, the account executive, can never land the big accounts. As a result, Fever and the other DJs on WKRP have to do voiceovers (done live in that era) for spots for funeral homes and Red Wigglers, the "Cadillac" of worms (to which Fever adds the tag line "available at finer worm stores everywhere!"). However, he has his scruples, as when he walks out of a recording session for sports aids when he realized his dialogue is laced with euphemisms for dangerous drug effects. While it is strongly implied that Johnny is a frequent user of marijuana, he doesn't go in for harder drugs, and leads a campaign to shut down a businessman who is trying to sell speed to teenagers. He also discovers his brief successor, Doug Winner (Philip Charles MacKenzie) has been accepting cocaine for airplay under a payola scheme with a sleazy record promoter. Johnny doesn't rat Doug out, but cautions him about the dangers of cocaine abuse, knowing he'll eventually hang himself with his own noose, which subsequently happens and Johnny gets his old job back.
WKRP settles Johnny down and establishes a relatively stable ensemble of associates for him, although the tradeoff is a cramped apartment and low pay; however, this arrangement doesn't seem to overly concern him much (at one point he describes himself as "a 40-year-old man who lives like a college student"). He is also believed to have been incarcerated at least once, in Mexico, where he says he was involved in a "minor misunderstanding with 145 Mexican cops." He was a hippie in the 1960s, 10-12 years before the show's time frame. It is implied that he smokes marijuana by his overall character, and occasional references to drug culture (e.g. Mr. Carlson once dismissed a business as a front for selling drug paraphernalia, and Johnny immediately asked where it was.) He is often seen wearing a Black Death Malt Liquor T-shirt, designed by Rip Off Press underground comic artist Dave Sheridan.
He has been married twice, with both of his ex-wives collecting alimony; he also has a college-age daughter, Laurie (Patrie Allen),[2] who briefly moves in with him. There is some suggestion in one episode that he might still be in love with his first wife, Paula (Ruth Silveira), though they agree that their relationship is over, and Paula marries another man (Hamilton Camp). Johnny's second wife never makes an appearance. Their parting was not as amicable: she tried to kill Johnny with a Ronco Veg-O-Matic.
Beginning in the second season, he becomes on and off romantically involved with fellow employee, Bailey Quarters. Though the staff seems indifferent at first, the rumor mills begin humming when Bailey invites Johnny to stay at her apartment while his apartment is being fumigated (he claims it's for lizards). Though Johnny is flattered by the attention at first, he quickly tires of the leering gestures from some of the male staffers and tells Andy that the rumors of him and Bailey shacking up aren't true, and expresses his dissatisfaction of the treatment Bailey has been getting. Andy, knowing he can do nothing until the rumors die out, counters by giving Johnny (who is in a perpetual state of poverty from ongoing alimony payments) a raise of another $50 a week.
Out of all the staff, Johnny appears to be the closest to fellow DJ Venus Flytrap, to the point where Venus gives him financial advice, bets on horses and football games with him, and even knows which seedy bars Johnny spends time at (for his part, Venus once claimed that he came to WKRP specifically "to work with the Doctor").
In the second season episode, "God Talks to Johnny," God speaks to Johnny, who concludes that he must be going crazy. The rest of the staff seem to agree. When Johnny checks himself into a hospital, he is met by Carlson, who tells him that there is nothing wrong with hearing God's voice. At the end of the episode, God's entire message is revealed: He says He loves Johnny, wants him to seek knowledge, and wants him to become a golf pro.
In an early episode, Johnny's new persona and his immediate popularity earn him a job offer from another station in L.A. -- the biggest competitor of the station that fired him. His co-workers at WKRP throw him a party where they try to convince him not to leave; he admits how much he loves and cares about the people he works with. But in a reversal of sitcom conventions, Johnny actually takes the job in L.A. However, in the next episode, Johnny returns: he is almost instantly fired in L.A. for saying something much worse than "booger" on the air.
Later in his WKRP career, Johnny Fever is approached by a female television producer (Mary Frann) to be a TV DJ for her disco program (based on Merv Griffin's Dance Fever) "Gotta Dance". "Rip Tide," his TV persona, is money-hungry, disco-loving, and has a very different voice and personality. In the two-part episode, Fever becomes Rip Tide during WKRP on-air time (he loses control of who he acts like). He seems to be totally taken over by the Rip Tide persona until sanity (in the persons of Andy Travis and Jennifer Marlowe) takes hold. He then defiantly turns down the big bucks from the TV producer, and Rip is R.I.P. for good.
Dr. Johnny Fever never leaves the WKRP "family" of employees for the duration of the series, but in the New WKRP in Cincinnati series, he has moved on to at least two more stations. He admits this is a good situation for him, but does wonder from time to time about what he is missing by being "under wraps" and largely out of the national limelight by staying.
In the final episode, Johnny is rated the #1 morning disc jockey in the Cincinnati ratings book. When Mrs. Carlson decides she wants to eschew the now-successful rock format for an all-news station, it is Johnny that figures out that she never wanted WKRP to be profitable (it's a tax write-off for her), and blackmails her with the information in order to make sure it continues as a rock station.
The role of Dr. Johnny Fever was originally intended for Richard Libertini, but he became unavailable. Howard Hesseman was known to WKRP's production company, MTM Enterprises, from his recurring guest role as Mr. Plager on MTM's The Bob Newhart Show. He was originally considered for the role of Herb Tarlek, but when he read the pilot script, he decided that Johnny was the part he really wanted. He was particularly suited for the part because he had actually been a disc jockey at one time, and he brought some of his experience to the character of Johnny -- including picking most of the songs that Johnny played on the show. Also, Hesseman had played wacky hippies before in Dragnet and in the film Billy Jack.