John Davidson – From Prime-Time to Club Sandwich: The Reinvention of a Variety Icon

PopEntertainment
Nov 3
3 min read

Updated: Nov 3

John Davidson

From Prime-Time to Club Sandwich – The Reinvention of a Variety Icon

By Ronald Sklar

For decades, John Davidson was all that and a jar of Miracle Whip – a Broadway lead, a smiling television host, and one of Johnny Carson’s most trusted guest substitutes. Today, at 84, he has reinvented his career far from Hollywood, performing in a charming converted barn in rural New Hampshire.

His self-created venue, the aptly named Club Sandwich, is everything Davidson has dreamed about concerning his own professional revolution.

“I’ve always wanted to have a small venue where people were no more than 20 feet away from me,” he says. “It’s me and my guitar… tremendous freedom. If I want to take a bigger breath or more breath, you just vamp until you’re ready to sing. You’re in control.”

Every detail is designed to bring the audience into his world, where he has seen some things in his day. His shows blend live performance with rear-projection multimedia.

“Behind me I can show pictures of Kenny Rogers if I’m doing a tribute,” he explains. “I can be walking through the woods. I can be walking at the beach in Portsmouth.”

It’s personal. It’s nostalgic. Most of all, it's just plain fun. And every season sells out fast.

This quieter chapter of John’s latest act is set in Sandwich, New Hampshire – a place Davidson stumbled into while performing Wicked on tour. He and his wife at the time were searching for a farmhouse close enough to Boston to visit their adult daughter. What they found felt like destiny.

“I really didn’t know what Sandwich was until I walked downtown and discovered this little Norman Rockwell New England town,” he says. “People here have accepted me, and they don’t make a big deal about my being here. At this point, nobody makes a big deal about me being anywhere,” he adds with his familiar mischievous grin.

Despite the easy charm he projects, Davidson’s inner life is more complicated. The son of an American Baptist minister, he once considered following his father into the pulpit. He even became a philosophy major and preached in churches.

But the calling didn’t take. “I realized I don’t have enough religion to do that,” he admits. “I just like to get up in front of people and speak. That’s not a good reason for being a preacher.”

Instead, he forged a character – “John Davidson,” the performer.

“If you really look at yourself, you know that you’re nothing – at least I do,” he says, being surprisingly candid. “So I created a character that is not phony… just those parts of yourself that work with the way you look.”

For him, that meant All-American positivity. “It works better if I sing a positive lyric… There is hope in life. Not everything is just dreary.”

That charismatic optimism carried him through an expansive career: starring roles in Oklahoma! and Disney films, over 80 guest-hosting nights on The Tonight Show, and his own run taking over The Mike Douglas Show.

He broke the mold only occasionally, such as a darker turn on The Streets of San Francisco. “I played the part of a female impersonator who killed men,” he recalls. “It got a lot of reaction.”

He’d happily return to television – especially now that streaming offers roles for seasoned veterans (see Carol Burnett). “If somebody called for a series, I would jump at it,” he says. “If the part had some real interesting things to do. I don’t want to be just a ‘star’ – something interesting, yeah.”

But for now? He has 50 devoted audience members waiting for him in a little New England barn each weekend. And that is enough. For now.

“I’m enjoying life,” Davidson says. “I’m doing what I love. And I feel very fortunate.”