For Laughing Out Loud

by Ed McMahon

  One morning, just after I'd been put back in the class, Father Hart walked into the classroom, reached up and pulled the string to turn on the overhead lights, and continued to bless himself. "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost . . . ," he intoned, concluding, "and will Mr. McMahon see me after class today." I didn't know what he wanted, but at least I was in good company.

  After class he asked me to walk with him. I was astonished; Father Hart was not known to commune with students. To me, this was sort of like taking a stroll with God. Finally, he sighed and asked, "Why are you doing this to me, Mr. McMahon? Why do you keep cutting my class?"

  "I don't want to cut your class," I explained, "but I've got a wife and a child and to pay the bills I sell pots and pans and vegetable gadgets and I have this dry-cleaning business. Sometimes when I go to pick up the cleaning my customers make me wait while they take the hooks out of the curtains . . ." After listening to my explanation, he raised his hand to stop me. "Okay, all right, I understand. You can stay in my class, so long as you keep up your grades and hand in all your required papers. However, Mr. McMahon, let me point something out to you . . ." With that, he stopped and faced me. "Mr. McMahon, philosophy is for the idle man."

  Philosophy is for the idle man. Isn't that beautiful? It was precisely the kind of observation that I would have loved to have been able to contemplate; unfortunately, I was too busy.

  Father Hart was a large man, big and stocky, not fat, and although he often seemed distracted, he missed nothing that went on around him. One day Alyce was very sick so I had to bring Claudia with me to metaphysics class. She was almost three years old. As we got to the class, I warned her, "Sweetheart, Daddy loves you very much, but if you make one sound in that class, I'm gonna kill you. This is very important to me; I want you to sit on my lap and not make one peep."

  I waited until Father Hart was right in the middle of his opening prayer. While everyone was standing and his eyes were closed in devotion, I snuck into the room. One of my classmates was a nun who had been in China for forty years. She was a big woman and I slipped in right behind her. I figured I could hide behind her without being seen. After the class sat down, Father Hart began his lecture. "Babes in arms and suckling babes," he said softly, "none are too young to learn metaphysics."

  My grades at Catholic University were very good. In fact, the only reason I did not graduate cum laude is that I flunked one course: German. I took it to fulfill my language requirement, feeling quite confident that since I'd already taken two semesters of German at Boston College I certainly would be able to pass it. Well, I fooled myself right there. Even today German remains a foreign language to me.

  I moved to Philadelphia after graduating from Catholic University and immediately—I mean the day I got there— I had my own show on WCAU, the local television station. Television was so new at that time that the television set was the star. It didn't matter what program was on, as long as the TV set was on. So I grew up along with television.

  Within two years I was a television star. I was Philadelphia's Mr. Television. I was on the first cover of TV Digest, which eventually evolved into TV Guide. And perhaps when I returned to Catholic University to visit my old friends, I did walk with a bit of a swagger. As I walked into the office, the girl I'd paid to type my homework papers was operating the switchboard. Big star that I was, I naturally gave her a little kiss. "Guess what?" she said. "I'm working for Father Hart now. Hey, let me call him and tell him you're here."

  I didn't want to bother Father Hart, but before I could stop her she had called him and he'd invited me to his quarters. This was really something special, like being invited to the White House—only more exclusive. I didn't know anyone who had ever been in his apartment. I walked into his living room and I couldn't believe it; the room was filled with piles of books, papers, reports, pamphlets, and brochures, tall piles of knowledge. As we sat down, he told me, "I'm glad you're here, Mr. McMahon. There is something I would like to ask you about . . ."

  I had no idea what that could possibly be. Father Hart was a respected philosopher, an explorer in the wilderness of ideas. Even those times in class when I couldn't quite follow him, I knew I was being forced to learn how to think. He was someone I admired and respected tremendously. I couldn't imagine what he possibly could want to ask me.

  "Mr. McMahon," he finally asked, "what's it like being on television?"

  He had been asked to appear on local television shows several times, he explained, and had refused. But eventually he was going to have to do it. So he wanted to know as much as possible about it: how hot the lights were, where the cameras were situated, whether it was always necessary to use makeup. I ended up spending an hour with this great teacher, teaching him about television.

  I certainly was qualified to do it. Just as I had been when my daughter Claudia was born, I was standing outside the door at the birth of commercial television. When I started in Philadelphia, we were doing only a few hours of programming every day, inventing television as we went along. I cohosted the first television program I ever saw. I had the advantage of being able to make my mistakes while almost no one was watching. Our programs were budgeted at somewhere between "Ed, you got any change in your pocket?" to "That's way more than we can afford." Our ratings weren't in numbers, but rather by name: "Jesse Stevens over at O'Reilly's Grill saw your show the other night," or "I heard that a friend of my girlfriend's friend watched it." I did talk shows, quiz shows, and cooking shows; I introduced movies; I hosted variety shows and documentaries; I did commercials; I even did a brief humor piece on the evening news. Television was so new that there were no rules, so we didn't have to worry about breaking any of them. We did some wonderfully creative things. On one of my shows, I interviewed a tree trimmer as we sat on the branch he was cutting. No one, I guarantee you, no one turned off that interview.

  I was one of the first television personalities in Philadelphia, so as the popularity of television grew, so did my own. And with practice and experience, my work got better and better. By 1952 I was working on several programs, among them a daily morning chat show called Strictly for the Girls — that might have been the first morning show on television—and a Saturday morning circus program called The Big Top. But I wasn't satisfied just being the biggest clown in Philadelphia—I was determined that someday I would be the biggest clown on network television.

  It almost happened. WCAU was part of the brand-new CBS television network, and CBS executives in New York liked my work. They thought I had a comfortable presence on the air, a high "likability." At a meeting in Philadelphia, they suggested broadcasting my morning show regionally and the circus show nationally. This was the opportunity I had been working for since my days in Katie's parlor. I was thrilled. And as it turned out, there was only thing that could keep me from accepting their offer. The Korean War.

  At times people mistakenly refer to me as an ex-marine. I politely correct them, explaining that there is no such thing as an ex-marine. "Once a marine," I tell them, "always a marine." I love the United States Marine Corps and I'm extremely proud to be a marine. But, gee, sometimes the Marine Corps does have a terrible sense of timing.

  Officially, the Korean War was not a war; it was a "police action." But if the North Koreans knew the difference, they certainly didn't show it. None of us who fought in Korea thought that the North Koreans had invaded South Korea just to screw up our lives, but it was hard not to take it personally. Many of us were World War II veterans and when we received our discharge papers in 1946 we sort of thought the government meant it. Many of us were just beginning to get established when we were recalled. Certainly no one would have objected if we felt our national security was clearly in danger, but Korea was more complicated than that. We tried to keep things in perspective, but there was a lot of bitterness. It was often said sarcastically, "This might not be the best war in the world, but it's the only one we've got."

  Being recalled came as a great s
hock. I was on vacation in Florida with Alyce, Claudia, and our new baby, Michael, relaxing poolside for the first time in years, when I saw the chilling headline TED WILLIAMS CALLED BACK INTO MARINE CORPS. Ted Williams! Ted Williams, arguably the greatest baseball player of that time, was also a marine pilot who had served in World War II. We'd entered the service about the same time, gone through training about the same time, and gotten our gold wings at the same time. The military did everything by the numbers: if they were going to recall Williams at the height of his baseball career, I knew I would soon be packing my bright red circus nose, the nose that lit up and proclaimed HELLO!

  The letter arrived several weeks later: "You are ordered to report to the Willow Grove Naval Air Station . . . for duty involving flying. Have all civilian affairs in order. Be in uniform. Bring no civilian clothing and be prepared to transfer."

  The person I most worried about was my mother. She had never been a very strong woman, and her health was not good. I was afraid what this news might do to her. My father and I did everything possible to hide it from her until the last possible moment. We hid newspapers, we didn't tell anyone. But after six weeks' training in the Philadelphia area, I was ordered to report to the Third Marine Air Wing being formed in Miami, Florida. She cried for a weekend when we finally told her.

  It took me three days to drive Alyce and the kids to Lacoochee. When we arrived, a Red Cross representative was waiting there to tell me my mother had died. Her fears for me had been too much for her heart to bear.

  The morale among the troops was awful. Nobody understood what we were doing there—and we were still in Miami. While waiting, and wondering if I was going to be shipped to Korea, I was made the Air Wing's public information officer because of my media background. My job was to keep a lot of bored and bitter people happy. This was a hard job. I organized dances, parties, and concerts. I had my own radio show. I also started a theatrical group and we toured with a play called Kiss and Tell that I had produced, directed, and cast. I even started a talent show on Miami television, sort of a military version of Star Search. I picked the talent from the base: the singing mess sergeant, the dancing clerical corporal, the bad ventriloquist. I managed a basketball team that won a league championship. I did everything I could think of to keep these people occupied and entertained. But the waiting was devastating, and worse, none of us had the slightest idea what we were waiting for.

  After several months I finally got my orders to Korea, by way of the El Toro Marine Air Station in California. This was the first time in my adult life I'd been to southern California, and I wanted to see Hollywood. A friend of a friend was the assistant musical director at 20th Century Fox and he invited me onto the lot. We spent a brief time together and then he asked, calmly, as I remember it—much the same way he might have asked if I wanted a cool drink— "Captain McMahon, would you like to meet Marilyn Monroe?"

  Calmly, as I remember it—as casually as I might have acted if he had asked me if I would like to be king of England—I said, "Yeah. That'd be great." Meet Marilyn Monroe? Not a difficult question. I probably could even have answered that one in German. I mean, that's like asking someone if they would like to take their next breath.

  Marilyn Monroe was shooting How to Marry a Millionaire. When she finished her scene, they brought me to her trailer. They explained to her that I was a TV star from Philadelphia who had been recalled and was on his way to Korea. Her face lit up. As soon as she finished the picture, she told me, she was going to go to Korea to entertain the troops. And then she invited me inside her trailer.

  It was just the two of us in her trailer, just Marilyn Monroe and Ed McMahon. We spent a half hour together. Marilyn Monroe in person was as beautiful as she was in the fantasies of every American male. She was dressed casually in a pair of slacks and a loose blouse, but she was radiant. She was also sweet. I don't remember what we spoke about, but as I prepared to leave, she said, "It's so nice to meet you. Now I'll know somebody when I get to Korea. How can I find you when I get there?"

  The Marine Corps would know where I was stationed, I replied, then said, "I've got to ask you a favor. If I could have a picture of you I could show the guys in the squadron, I'd be the hero of heroes. They'd go wacko!" Actually, looking back, "wacko" was probably a poor word choice.

  "I've got a better idea," she said. "Why don't we take a picture? Let me just fix my hair and I'll be right out."

  I waited outside for her. When she finally came out, she was dressed in a gorgeous fur coat. She kind of snuggled in next to me and, as the photographer got ready to take our picture, whispered to me, "You know, Ed, I don't have anything on under this."

  So that's why I'm smiling so broadly in that photograph.

  A few days later I met Montgomery Clift. Eventually I would meet just about every major celebrity in America, and I'd become close friends with several of them. But at this time the most famous people I had ever met were the host of a local dance show named Dick Clark and a local Philadelphia newscaster named Jack Whittaker. Nice guys, but hardly international movie stars. Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift were major movie stars. I met Montgomery Clift in the Cine Grill of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel my last night in the States. I was in uniform and he kept sending me drinks, so naturally I kept sending him drinks. Then he sent me more drinks and I . . . well, eventually we started drinking together and I can't remember a single thing we talked about. Maybe drinking, which would be the reason I can't remember what we talked about.

  That was some first week in Hollywood. I can't imagine what Alyce thought about all of this. Supposedly I was leaving for Korea to fight Communism, but then I called and told her that I'd just spent a half hour alone in a trailer with Marilyn Monroe. Now, if she found that difficult to believe, a day later I called to tell her I'd spent much of the previous night drinking with Montgomery Clift. I'm sure she must have wondered what exactly I was drinking.

  I arrived in Korea in February 1953. Finally, I was going to do what I had been trained to do ten years earlier: fly in combat. But when I got there I was assigned to a new airplane. The hottest planes in Korea were the brand-new Sabre jets. I hadn't piloted any type of aircraft in eight years and I wasn't qualified to fly jets, so they put me in a small plane, a very small plane, a very small plane with fabric wings, a Cessna. Think of the kind of safe, slow plane people fly out of local airports on Saturday afternoons. That was the Cessna. Now think of that same airplane flying low over North Korean lines with absolutely no armament. That was me piloting the Cessna in Korea.

  I would be piloting artillery spotters. We were stationed at a makeshift base about two miles behind our front lines. It was like M*A*S*H, but without the great writers. Korea was cold and wet and very dangerous. The Cessna was not much more elaborate than a kite with wings. We often flew through enemy fire, everything from antiaircraft fire to shots from small arms. Sometimes we got bounced around pretty good by the flak. At those times I just couldn't help but think how crazy this whole thing was: only months earlier I'd been hosting television programs in one of the great cities of the world; now I was living in a tent with a mud floor, and complete strangers were trying to kill me. Critics of my work in Philadelphia were tough, but at least they weren't armed.

  Avoiding enemy fire required skill, luck, and intuition. Skill meant never repeating a flight pattern. By continually changing altitude and direction, we prevented the North Koreans from getting a bead on us with their radar. They never knew how high we would be flying or when we would turn. The worst thing a pilot could do was get complacent and forget to take evasive maneuvers. Luck was . . . just luck. Intuition—that was interesting. I would be flying a particular pattern and suddenly I'd get a feeling that would cause me to alter my course. There was no reason for the feeling, but I always respected it. We always flew with an artillery spotter, and these men liked to follow a certain pattern because it made their job easier. So we were torn between helping these guys do their job and being cautious.
We never knew when we would be fired on. One lovely afternoon, I was flying a relatively straight pattern and suddenly, I'll never know why, I made a sharp turn to my right. "What the . . . ," my observer started complaining. A split second later—poomp, poomp, poomp, poomp, poomp —five bursts of flak exploded directly in our former flight path. If I hadn't turned, I would've flown right into them. There's no doubt in my mind that we would have been shot down.

  We would fly for six weeks, then have a six-day leave in Japan. Six weeks of danger, six days of pleasure. Near the end of this nonwar, my close friend Chuck Marino, the pilot with whom I flew in rotation, and I took a leave together. We spent six wonderful days in Tokyo, then returned to base.

  Our first day back I flew an ordinary two-hour hop over the front lines, then he relieved me. Normally, the transfer of this responsibility was conducted in strict military fashion: the relief pilot would salute and report, "Captain McMahon, you are relieved. I'm up on station now." But a popular song of that time asked the question "What did I do to make you mad at me this time, baby?" to which there was some sort of response, "Well, baby . . ." So instead of the official "You are relieved . . . ," he would salute and ask me, "Captain McMahon, what did I say to make you mad at me this time, baby?" and I would respond with the appropriate lyric.

  Two hours later I returned to the station to relieve him. He never came back. He had been shot down. We spotted the wreckage of his plane in no-man's-land, but there was no sign of life. For a time there was some hope he had survived. There were reports that one person had parachuted out of the plane and been captured. That turned out to be his observer.

  It didn't seem possible. This was my best friend in Korea. We'd just spent six days together in Japan raising hell. One mistake, one bit of bad luck, and he was dead. Just like that. It didn't take very long for the initial shock to disappear, to be replaced by the terrifying, selfish knowledge that it could have just as easily been me. With his death I lost all my bravado; I lost my belief that it couldn't happen to me. The next few days I flew with white-knuckled concentration. But gradually the routine of daily life in the middle of a war took over, the parties continued, and we fell back into our old habits as we did our jobs.