 Whether it was after an egg fight with Dom DeLuise or standing amidst
the wreckage of a skit that had gone horribly awry, Ed McMahon and
Johnny Carson remained true to themselves, and to each other. One would
look to the other and say, "Two grown men", while the other would
complete the second part of their inside joke by replying, "Graduates
of major universities." A little phrase that displayed the depth of a
friendship that sustained and carried them through forty-six years of
varying levels of fame. Along the way, an intimate unspoken admiration
was firmly cemented between these two men, making them the most
recognizable, admired, emulated, parodied and well beloved duos in
comedic history.
Philadelphia already recognized Ed McMahon's rising
star as early as 1952, when he had thirteen shows on the air. Having
served in the Marine Corp in World War Two, Ed was once again called
into military service to serve in Korea, thus interrupting his
burgeoning television career. By the time he made it back stateside,
all thirteen of his shows had been cancelled and he was forced to start
from scratch, scheduling audition after audition from a Penn station
phone booth. Fate intervened one night when he was invited to a party
at Dick Clark's apartment and, after conversing with someone named
Gordon, was foisted into the role of 'entertainer' for the evening.
After telling a few jokes, Dick Clark's producer took notice of him and
when an announcer's position suddenly opened up for the game show 'Who
Do You Trust?', Ed was first in line. Ed's did not think that his
interview with the show's star went well at all. Apparently the show's
star, Johnny Carson, thought otherwise.
J.T.: Now, I read your
book 'Here's Johnny' (Rutledge Hill Press - 2005) and the first thing
I'd like to say is it was really refreshing to read a memoir that
didn't turn into some nasty, tabloid style tell all book.
McMahon: I would never do that. I would never, ever do that…at gunpoint I wouldn't do that.
J.T.: Now, my only critique of the book is that the anecdotes didn't seem to
go far enough. It was like '…and then what happened?'…and it was off to
another story. Now, is your series, Ed McMahon's Memories of the
Tonight Show, an extension of the book?
McMahon: Yes. In other
words, both things in my mind are tributes to Johnny. My idea with the
book was, everybody wants to hear the 'Heeeere's…', you know, J.T. …I
get that all the time, all over the country. 'Will you say hello to my
mom?' 'Well, what's your mom's name?' So anyway, I'll do a 'Heeeere's
Mary!' or whatever it is…
J.T.: So you're like the most recorded cell phone answering machine.
McMahon:
(Laughs) Yeah, that's right! I thought the book should be, not the
'Heeeere's Johnny' but 'Here's Johnny'. Everybody wanted to know what
he's like, you know, what's Johnny all about. So, that was my idea. So
then, with Memories of the Tonight Show, it's just another tribute. So,
it's some of the book, but it's more like a night club show.
J.T.: Is it more of a conversational theater type show or is there a multi-media aspect to it?
McMahon: Oh sure, I have clips that people have never seen. Like an Aunt Blabby
skit that fell apart one night. I have things like that and I have
silly things that we did, like the thing I call 'The Tie Fight'. One
night, we got involved with something, and all of a sudden, we're
trying to pull each other's ties off, you know. Reflecting, that’s
reflecting the fact that we were pals, you know. People wonder are they
really friends? A lot of the couplings in our business, they were not
pals. Like Laurel and Hardy were not pals. The Marx brothers feuded all
the time. You know, we were buddies. If we had met in the Marine Corp,
we'd have gravitated towards each other because we liked the same
things and we laughed at the same things. So there was a camaraderie
that’s explained and shown in a clip where it's just so silly, like two
kids kicking a can down the street. There's this humor and the feeling
that you know what the other guy is going to do. That's pretty good if
you have a coupling like that.
J.T.: Your relationship with
Johnny was definitely unique and has never come close to being
duplicated, as far as mutual respect. It seems that many these comedic
teams allow their egos to destroy what they have.
McMahon: Right!
J.T.: With your other projects, did any of them ever come close to interfering with your relationship with Johnny?
McMahon: No. You know what I did? I was very smart. What I did was, I always
went in and took everything by him. When I got that film 'Fun With Dick
and Jane' with Jane Fonda and George Segal, that was a big moment for
me. Well, before that happened, I went to him. I would go to him and
run everything by and say, 'What do you think about this?'. 'What do
you think about 'Star Search?' You know, other people didn't do that
and got in a lot of trouble.
J.T.: Now, going way back, when
you were paired with Johnny on the game show 'Who Do You Trust?' in
1957, do you think that you both would have made it as big had the
"Tonight Show" not been available as your vehicle?
McMahon: I
think so, because I was doing other shows in Philadelphia. My attitude
was, I just thought that 'Who Do You Trust?' was fine. That was a big
thing to me, a network show and so forth. If it hadn't have worked, I
would have gone back to Philadelphia or I'd keep plugging in New York,
and do something else, you know. I don't think there was any
question…you know, we both had talent and it was unique that we found
each other. When I say in my motivational speeches, " I ran into a guy
named Johnny Carson." …well that old phrase, 'hitch your wagon to a
star', I hooked my wagon to a star.
J.T.: Later on, when you
would do various tour across the country, performing at state fairs and
such, would you ever arrive in some backwater dump and just look at
each other and say, 'Why are we doing this?
McMahon: (Laughs) That’s a good question! You've done your homework! Anyway, we always
had a great spot. We'd do like the Ohio State Fair, we'd play the New
York State Fair. We always geared what we were doing right to the
audience. In other words if we were in a town where there was a lot of
oil drilling, Johnny would be an oil rigger and I would be interviewing
him. He'd be Wildcat Sam, and I'd have the clipboard, and then we'd
have to joke. But we would tailor it to the locale, so that helped us,
you know. Even if we hit any…we never really hit any bad spots, but if
you hit a bad spot, it was so right on that the audience was with us.
Let's say your in Houston, Texas or you're in a smaller town like
Milford, Texas where oil rigging is a big thing, you know, we were
right on. Regardless of what else happened, we had that. We had
preparation.
J.T.: When you toured did you ever do any of the USO shows or spots at the military bases?
McMahon: No, but I'm very military. I was in two wars. I was in the Marine
Corp. for, between active duty and retired duty, twenty-three years and
I came out of the Corp a Colonel, so I was very active in the Marine
Corp, but we never…I did some USO shows, but we never did any together.
J.T.: " How is your program "Operation DVD" doing? Is it garnering support from the movie distribution industry?"
McMahon: This program accomplishes two things: the troops are entertained and
they know that citizens at home care and support them." Ed McMahon
stated during a ceremony at the Palm Spring's Airport's USO facility.
The program collects new and used DVDs and distributes them to the
soldiers stationed overseas. They have collected approximately 250,000
DVDs in the year the program has been running. My attitude is that, no
matter what you think about the war, it doesn't make any difference;
young men are fighting it, so you've got to support them.
J.T.: I was never in the military, but I have been in the quasi-law
enforcement arena and a lot of people would look at this and say, 'Are
people just sitting around in Iraq watching DVDs all day?' and they
don't understand that that type of life is ninety percent tedium and
ten percent sheer terror.
McMahon: Yeah and the fact that you
can't play baseball, you can't play soccer, you can't play basketball
because you're a target. People just don't understand that. My attitude
is that, and I said this while I was doing publicity for this, no
matter what you think about the war, it doesn't make any difference;
young men are fighting it, so you've got to support them. We're in it
no matter what and you've got to support them.
America was home
and witness to the most enduring comedic coupling of our time, and for
this, we are fortunate. The snippets of scenes showing Johnny with a
marmoset on top of his head, the endless parade of guests who's career
were launched from that Burbank stage, the booming laughter of Ed
falling under the spell of his friend; all of these memories are
magical. Yet, that is what they are now; collective memories. Although
the 'Tonight Show' spanned decades and created it's own culture of
comedy, for all of us, the multi-colored curtain closed too soon…too
soon.
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