Prime time for Leno

Jay Leno guides a 1930 Packard convertible through the serpentine streets of Ocean Drive, greeting onlookers with a friendly wave and a toot of the car’s horn. Spying a vintage vehicle languishing by the roadside, he strikes up a conversation with the passengers and asks the driver if he’s having mechanical problems. The fellow assures him everything is fine. Had he answered otherwise, it’s a sure bet Leno would have hopped out, rolled up his sleeves and been peering under the hood before the driver knew what hit him.

If there’s two things Leno is passionate about, it’s cars and people. And since the former "Tonight Show" host acquired a Newport home two years ago, he’s been able to indulge his love for both, mixing with locals over meals at Gary’s Handy Lunch, talking shop with spectators at Cars & Coffee, and serving as chairman of the Audrain Automobile Museum’s first-ever Concours & Motor Week, which concludes Sunday in Newport.

For a man who famously hates taking vacations (he actually asked his bosses at NBC to give him less time off), it’s ironic that Leno should purchase a home in one of America’s premier vacation destinations. But the comedian doesn’t spend much time here (he figures he’ll log about 18 days in Newport during all of 2019), and the home is for his extended family as much as it is for him and his wife, Mavis.

“All my relatives are on the East Coast,” explains the comic, who grew up north of Boston, in Andover. “Now, the relatives all come here. There’s a pool, there’s the ocean, and everybody leaves and I don’t have to vacuum. It’s fantastic.”

Leno and his wife first admired the house around 30 years ago, when he was in Rhode Island for a standup gig. In 2017, the couple drove by it again — only this time, they stopped.

“Let’s see if it’s for sale,” Leno said, taking advantage of a departing gardener to slip through the open gate and drive up to the front door, where a caretaker greeted him. “Is this house for sale?” Leno inquired. The man confirmed that it was.

“And I bought it,” Leno says, still dazed by the serendipity of it all. Set on nine oceanfront acres, the Norman-style stone chateau features a dozen bedrooms spread over nearly 16,000 square feet of living space. “It looks like the front of a Harlequin novel,” Leno guffaws. “Every time I pull up to the gate, I just laugh.”

Not bad for a guy who once confessed to Oprah Winfrey that as a young comic, he’d sneak into closets at the end of real estate open houses so he’d have a place to sleep that night.

The house came fully furnished, which was one of the main appeals for Leno. “I haven’t done a thing,” he says. “I didn’t want to be sitting going, ‘Honey, what do you think of this swatch for the living room?’ That’s my nightmare.”

When he’s not entertaining relatives or high school buddies, Leno likes to fix things around the house — only hiring someone if his own attempt fails. He and Mavis like to drive around looking at old Colonial houses or have dinner at Sardella’s or La Forge, where he finds the egalitarianism refreshing.

“You go to California and rich people are here, middle-class people are here, and poor people are here,” Leno says. “Here there’s a real sense that everybody mingles together. You really can’t tell what somebody does by how they look or what they’re wearing.”

Isn’t he worried about being besieged by fans?

Leno smirks. “When you’re a 69-year-old comedian, believe me, people don’t come running down the street at you.”

Although Leno enjoyed hosting "The Tonight Show" for 22 years, a part of him is glad he’s not in that position anymore.

“I did it when Clinton was horny and Bush was dumb,” he explains. “Most of the failings you made fun of were human ones. The stakes are higher now. It’s really funny if you catch a pilot who’s drunk before he gets on the plane. It’s not funny if the pilot is drunk on the plane.

“Now, the pilot’s drunk on the plane.”

These days, Leno keeps busy hosting "Jay Leno’s Garage" on CNBC, appears occasionally on Tim Allen’s sitcom "Last Man Standing," does voiceover work, and still finds time to perform more than 200 standup engagements a year.

The comedian attributes his tireless work ethic to his New England upbringing and his parents, whose self-effacing pragmatism reverberates through his brain at every waking hour, compelling him to keep busy. Although he’s owned a house in Beverly Hills for 30 years, he’s never used the swimming pool. “I walk up to that pool and I hear that Boston voice: ‘What? This is what you do? You’re a rich guy? You sit in the pool?’ The last time I went in was to fix the light."

“I’m a huge believer in low self-esteem,” he adds. “I think low self-esteem is the key to success.”

That low self-esteem was burned into Leno’s brain at an early age. Dyslexic, he languished academically until a high school teacher named Mrs. Hawkes saw him telling jokes to his classmates and suggested he take a creative writing course. “It was the first time in my life I enjoyed doing homework,” Leno recalls. “It was like the first 'A' I ever got. She said, ‘You should think about becoming a comedy writer.’”

Grateful for her guidance, Leno ended up establishing a scholarship in her name. It’s not the first time he’s done so: Leno handed out more than 50 scholarships in June alone.

“I think the most horrible thing for young people now is to be in debt when they get out of college,” he says. “I mean, to be 23 and owe $250,000? I like to help kids out with that stuff.”

The comic has no children of his own, unless you count his 187 cars and 163 motorcycles. He buys a particular car because it played an interesting role in automotive history, not because of its investment value. (Although, he confides, “some have increased in value so crazily that I actually look smart.”) He’s never sold any of his vehicles, and claims (like a good parent) that he doesn’t have a favorite.

“He’s one of the two or three greatest automobile people in the world,” says Nick Schorsch, a friend and chairman of the Audrain Automobile Museum. “He likes the story behind the car. That’s his thing.”

In his short time in Newport, Leno has become an integral part of the Audrain, offering input on exhibitions, finding cars to display, forging connections with industry heavyweights, and introducing a 30 Under 30 class at the Concours to honor young car enthusiasts who have fixed up cars for less than $30,000.

And of his 187 cars, how many are in Newport?

“None,” Leno replies. “I rent a car when I’m here.” The ocean air would rust a car that was left here, he explains, the battery would die, and he doesn’t have any tools in Newport. (The Audrain loaned him the use of the Packard the day we spoke.) Besides, he notes, much of his time back in California is spent tinkering with cars and motorcycles. He wants his excursions to Newport to be about spending time with his wife.

Leno finds that working with cars is a good complement to a career in show business.

“Entertainment is pretty subjective,” he muses. “Some people liked it, some people think it sucked. But if you take an engine that’s not running, and now it IS running, no one can say it doesn’t work.”

This article was published in the Sept/Oct 2019 issue of Newport Life magazine. Click here to see more from Newport Life.