Did TV host Johnny Carson comfort dying woman Barbara Martinez while taping the March 17, 1983, episode of NBC's Tonight Show? No, that's not true: Social media posts about it did not include the actual recording of the purported event, sharing an AI-generated image instead. Lead Stories found no credible sources ever mentioning the supposed dance.
The claim originated from a post (archived here) published on Facebook on December 29, 2025. The caption read:
Did you know?
Parts 107 : She COLLAPSED on Live TV and Johnny Carson Did the UNTHINKABLE
#JohnnyCarson #hollywood #thetonightshow #history #storytime
This is what the attached video's thumbnail looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at facebook.com/groups/1311219280016624)
The clip, which exceeded 15 minutes, told a supposed story of a terminally ill woman who came to The Tonight Show in the final hours of her life to dance with its host, Johnny Carson, to "Moon River", her wedding song.
The voice-over began:
Johnny Carson's producers were screaming in his earpiece to keep the show moving, but Johnny ignored them. He walked off the stage, took a dying woman's hand and did something that would force NBC to re-edit the entire episode and save one woman's soul. It was March 17, 1983, and The Tonight Show was taping at Studio 6 B in Burbank. The audience was in high spirits. St. Patrick's Day energy filled the room, and Johnny had just finished a hilarious monologue about green beer. Doc Severinsen and the band were setting up for the next segment, and Johnny was settling in to interview his first guest actress, Sally Field.
It continued:
Barbara Martinez sat in the fourth row wearing a green dress that hung loose on her thin frame. She was 42, though aggressive ovarian cancer made her look 60. Her husband, Miguel, sat beside her, gripping her hand. On her other side sat their daughter Elena, 17, trying not to cry. Barbara had been given three weeks to live. Six months ago, she'd beaten those odds through sheer willpower. But two days ago, her oncologist was direct: 'You have maybe 48 hours, go home'. Barbara surprised everyone. She didn't want to go home and wait. She wanted to do one thing she'd dreamed about: dance with Johnny Carson.
Despite being a video file, the video track did not contain any footage proving that this actually happened -- social media users saw a still image for the entirety of the clip.
AI-produced picture
Google's About this image tab said that it was created with Google AI:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of page at google.com)
Manual examination of the picture also showed signs consistent with AI generated content. For example, the background was unusually blurred for a professionally recorded episode of the TV show. Furthermore, three members of the audience strangely held identical white handkerchiefs, and one of them mysteriously blended with the hand of the woman in the blue dress:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at facebook.com/groups/1311219280016624)
Furthermore, the hands of "Barbara Martinez" and "Carson" appear to grow into each other:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at facebook.com/groups/1311219280016624)
Additionally, the conductor's baton in the background suddenly became a continuation of his thumb:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at facebook.com/groups/1311219280016624)
No media reports
When Lead Stories searched for Carson's and Martinez's names outside of Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and X, Google showed no relevant matches (archived here).
At the 12:18 mark, the clip on Facebook claimed that the TV host would recall the dance during his final show decades later.
The last episode of The Tonight Show hosted by Carson aired on May 22, 1992 (archived here). His departure following the three-decade-long tenure in that role was covered by major news outlets. Yet, Lead Stories found no mentions of him talking about "Barbara Martinez".
The next day, the New York Times (archived here) wrote about Carson's final episode:
His last turn was not the (sic) quite the same as the other 4,500-plus editions he hosted. For once a main feature of the night was tears, not laughter, as he thanked his staff and family and remembered his son, Rick, who died in a car crash last year.
Another article (archived here) published in the same edition by the same newspaper read:
As a parting shot, Mr. Carson ribbed not only General Electric, the owner of NBC, but Vice President Dan Quayle, a favorite target, as well.
'I want to thank Dan Quayle for making my final week so fruitful,' Mr. Carson said. He added that now that he was leaving the show, 'I'm going to join the cast of 'Murphy Brown' and become a surrogate father to that kid.'
That piece included interviews with Carson's fans, but they were not members of the "Martinez family":
One Carson fan in her mid-30's, Raina Bowsher, who runs a computer store with her husband, Jim, in Mont Evisto, Colo., said: 'We've camped out here for 30 hours. We grew up with Johnny. He's tucked us into bed every night. We haven't done anything crazy since high school, and I thought coming here would be kind of spectacular.'
In 2005, when Carson passed away, the Los Angeles Times published an obituary (archived here), but it said nothing about the purported dance with a dying woman.
Lead Stories couldn't immediately locate the recording of the March 17, 1983, episode (archived here), but confirmed that Carson's final show, available on the Internet Archive, said nothing about "Barbara Martinez".
Self-contradictory description of the claim's source
The group on Facebook (archived here) that published a video reviewed in this fact check was not a media organization. It described itself as a "gaming video creator," and its manager was located in Indonesia, despite the group claiming it was based in the U.S.:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of page at facebook.com/hollywordcmussa)
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of page at facebook.com/hollywordcmussa)
