For Laughing Out Loud

by Ed McMahon

  Unlike in World War II, during which we knew that the entire country was mobilized for the war, the feeling in Korea was that life back home was moving forward without us. In Philadelphia, three people had taken over my programs, and within months all the shows were off the air. In our situation the only way to maintain our sanity was to create our own unique world. Which is why, soon after I arrived in Korea, I decided to build the most beautiful bar ever seen in that war.

  When I arrived in Tungaree, as this area was called, the so-called officers' club was in a filthy old hospital tent with dirt floors. It was lit by a single two-hundred-watt bulb, which was the best thing about it, because it made it impossible to see how awful this place really was. I sat there one night, looked around, and decided, "I'm gonna build a great club right here." If I built it, I knew, boy, would they come. Talk about a captive audience.

  Everybody thought I was crazy, so I fit right in. With six hundred dollars I had raised from fellow officers, I built a lovely club. The bar was made out of Philippine mahogany; we cut ammunition crates in half, then roped them together to make bar stools, cleaned up the tent, added tables, chairs, and a little jukebox, and covered the floor with the squadron emblem. I paid the Korean kids in gum to collect fresh flowers every day for the tables and installed some subdued lighting. It wasn't the Copacabana, but it was a lot more appealing than a dirty old hospital tent. And if you stayed there long enough, it began to look a little like the Copacabana.

  The night we opened for business we had a special treat: nurses! The Red Cross had arranged an exchange of prisoners, and the nurses were there to treat wounded soldiers. As a surprise to my fellow officers, I imported six, count 'em, six lovely nurses for the dedication of this club. And indeed, my fellow officers were dedicated to these nurses. I got the nurses there for the opening. For what happened after that, I bear no responsibility. But I never saw them again.

  Because we were so close to the front lines, we were not permitted to sell drinks by the glass, although officers were permitted to keep bottles of liquor. So you could buy a bottle of vodka, but you couldn't order a single martini. I beat that system by cutting out paper chits for individual drinks in the shape of a gin bottle. My customers would buy one of these "bottles," a piece of paper, and trade it for a single drink.

  The world-famous "Mactini," famous at least in that little part of the world, was invented in my club. I am a martini drinker; however, I drink martinis only when there is something to celebrate. Often what I am celebrating is the fact that I have a martini to drink. We got our liquor from Tokyo, where it was very cheap. One morning, as a pilot got ready to take off on a whiskey run, I told him to bring back some Noilly Prat vermouth. He returned with six cases. Six cases is enough vermouth to make, I estimate, one hundred thousand martinis. And we made a beautiful martini: we poured vermouth into a shaker filled with ice, then emptied the shaker, and used only the vermouth that clung to the ice to make a martini. Or Mactini, as it became known. We sold them for fifteen cents.

  By any name, a martini is a very strong drink. As the great Dorothy Parker once wrote, "I like to have a martini, Two at the very most. After three I'm under the table, After four I'm under my host!" I held the squadron record for Mactinis. Ten. After that I rested on my laurels. Actually, I gently went to sleep on my laurels.

  My officers' club was so successful that the NCOs, the noncommissioned officers, asked me to build one for them. After that was completed I built a beer hall for the enlisted men. As mess officer I instituted a system in which soldiers could order breakfast prepared the way they wanted it, instead of having to take whatever the cook piled up. Now, that might not sound like a very important contribution to the war effort, but anyone who has ever had to look at a mountain of cold fried eggs at six o'clock on a freezing cold morning in Korea will appreciate the magnitude of that particular change.

  Bob Hope never showed up. Marilyn Monroe came to Korea, but never called. We didn't exactly get the top-name entertainers. We got . . . an accordion player. A famous accordion player who had been a conscientious objector during World War II was trying to make amends by touring the frontline camps in Korea. I was asked to serve as master of ceremonies for the evening. After the accordion player had concluded his concert, somebody suggested, "A lot of people aren't aware of this, but Captain McMahon sings the blues. Let's get him to sing for us."

  I don't think anybody wanted to hear me sing the blues. But this was a great opportunity for me; this was my chance to fulfill the dream of every entertainer who has ever set foot on a stage. I was following the accordion player!

  It didn't really matter how good or bad I was; I was following the accordion player.

  Let me brag a little bit. I can sing the ad-lib blues. I can get up on a stage with a band that knows how to play the blues and make up lyrics that make sense and rhyme. I have no idea where this talent comes from, but I've always been able to do it. I discovered I had this ability as a teenager in Boston. When I would take a date out to the Totem Pole, a dance club, I would make up my own lyrics to whatever music the big band was playing. My girl and I would be dancing close, the band would be playing, and I'd sing my song softly just to her. I remember one song in particular. So why don't you just settle back and let me do it for you? It goes a little something like this:

  Come on up to my house, baby,

  I'll show you my purple room;

  That's right, come up to my house,

  I'll show you my purple room.

  Be careful not to rub against the walls,

  They've been painted with perfume.

  Maybe it isn't Doc Severinsen and the NBC Orchestra, but as an ad-lib lyric in the Totem Pole it was very effective.

  The song I created that night in Korea was not quite as romantic. At the time, there was a type of infection being spread mostly between American soldiers and Korean women that was called a "nonspecific infection." It was spread by close contact, very close contact. So I titled this song "The Nonspecific Blues."

  If you're just now coming over, I've got info for you, dad. Take the saki and the hot bath, but please avoid the pad. They'll serve you steak and saki, and wicky-wacky woo, When she threw that hot bath at me, what else could I do? I've got the nonspecific blues, those mean old, nonspecific blues. I was greeted at the doorway by a girl named Lotus Face, She wore a loose kimono, this must be the place . . . Well, I flew my hundred missions, I got my DFC, I'm s'posed to go home Thursday, my wife's expecting me. She'll be most unhappy when she hears my tour ain't ending, But since I got that other discharge, lover boy's extending. I've got the nonspecific blues, oh yeah, those mean old,

  nonspecific blues.

  Thank you, thank you very much. Now let's hear the accordion player squeeze a few bars in his book!

  After I'd flown sixty-three missions, I took R and R in Japan. While in Tokyo, I met the major who was running the Armed Forces Radio and TV Network in the Far East. My timing was almost perfect. He had been offered the chance to run the operation from Hawaii if he could find a qualified replacement to take over Tokyo. He offered the job to me.

  It was a really plush job. You got to live in a nice apartment in Tokyo instead of a tent, you spent your time with broadcasters, and no one was shooting at you. The major submitted a formal request through channels that I be transferred to Tokyo upon completion of my flight duty, while I went back to Korea to complete my missions. A complete tour of duty consisted of one hundred missions; I had thirty-seven more to fly. I wanted to get finished as quickly as possible so I started volunteering to fly several times a day. One day I flew five missions and spent ten hours over enemy lines. I flew eighty-five missions. I was on the runway getting ready to take off on my eighty-sixth mission when the fighting stopped. The war that wasn't a war ended without an ending. The fighting just stopped. There was no peace treaty, no armistice, but a cease-fire was declared.

  I immediately requested a transfer to Japan. During a meeting with my command
ing general, he asked me why I hadn't requested this transfer sooner. "If I had," I explained, "you would've thought I was trying to get out of flying my missions."

  He paused to consider that. "You're absolutely right, marine," he said, "but I'm still going to turn you down. This thing is ending; you won't be there long enough to make any difference."

  I was terribly disappointed. Head of the Far East Network– Tokyo was a big job. It would've really looked impressive on my résumé. Imagine if I had gotten that job; I could have returned to the States and really been successful in TV.

  Instead, he put me in charge of a radio station at a large base. I made myself the all-night disc jockey. I did music with commentary, using my stories to introduce the songs I loved. "It was a long trip on that train taking us from Boston to Texarkana," I'd say softly, "and late at night, when most of the men around me were sleeping, I'd keep changing stations on my radio until I heard the soothing tones of Miss Peggy Lee, singing this great song, 'Why Don't You Do Right?' Ladies and gentlemen . . . Miss Peggy Lee."

  I worked all night and during the day floated on a raft on the Yellow Sea.

  We were all homesick. While we were fighting the war, staying alive occupied most of our attention, but once the cease-fire began, all we wanted to do was get home and get back to our lives. I had an additional concern. Just before I'd left the States, Alyce had gotten pregnant. As her due date approached and I didn't hear anything from the Red Cross, I got more and more anxious. Finally I got special permission to fly to Tokyo to call the hospital. This was only a few years after the end of World War II, so the international telephone system was only a little better than a tin can and an eight-thousand-mile-long string. There was a long waiting list to call the States; I had to sign up and wait my turn. I waited almost a full day, most of it in the bar at the Imperial Hotel. And as I waited I got more and more nervous. Why hadn't I heard? Something must have gone wrong. Was my wife all right? What about the baby? I worked myself into a state of pure anxiety.

  Finally, finally, my number was called. It was about two o'clock in the morning in Florida when I got through to the hospital. It was a bad connection and I was screaming into the phone. The switchboard transferred me to the maternity floor. When the night nurse answered the phone, I yelled, "I'm calling about Alyce McMahon. She's there having a baby. I need to find out . . ."

  "I'm sorry," the nurse said, "she's sleeping now. They're both sleeping now." And before I could explain that I was calling from Japan, that I'd been trying to get through for a day, she hung up. No good-bye, no explanation; she just hung up. I had to go back to the rear of the line and work my way back up to the phone. Another day later I learned that Alyce was fine and that our daughter Linda had been born.

  I flew eighty-five missions, but it was with my pen that I became a hero in Korea. I was scheduled to be discharged in December, but I wrote a letter to the commandant requesting early release, explaining that the new TV season began in September and that in order to get a job I had to be home by then. Otherwise I might have to wait a whole year. My request was rejected right up the entire chain of command. It was rejected in Korea, rejected in Tokyo, rejected in Hawaii, rejected at Treasure Island in San Francisco, but amazingly, when it got to Washington, it was approved. I received a letter from the Commandant, United States Marine Corps, ordering "that this officer must be in the continental limits of the United States no later than September 10, 1953 . . ."

  When other marines heard that I had been successful, they asked me to write similar letters for them. I wrote a letter for Jerry Coleman, the New York Yankees infielder, enabling him to get back to New York in time for the World Series. I wrote letters for businessmen explaining that they had to be home to prepare for the Christmas season, for advertising executives who needed to pitch new accounts, even for lawyers asking to be home in time for the holiday lawsuits.

  My career in the marines did not end when I returned home. Although I never flew again as a marine pilot, I stayed active in the Marine Corps Reserve. I completed twenty-three years in the marines and retired as a full colonel. My pride in the Marine Corps has never diminished. The corps taught me to be on time, to have everything I need with me wherever I go, and to leave each place I go as it was when I got there. I've learned that in life, as in the marines, the job is to finish what you start and if you get lucky, as I have, to give something back. I've been asked often how I felt about my career in the Marine Corps. And my answer is that it just pleased the hell out of me.

  Including all ten Mactinis.

  3

  One night, after I'd spent a long day taping a series of commercials for independent banks, making a guest appearance on a quiz show, working out my schedule for our next season with the producers of Star Search, finalizing plans to cohost the Thanksgiving Day parade, doing an interview with a reporter about the Muscular Dystrophy telethon, looking at clips for the Bloopers and Practical Jokes show Dick Clark and I would be taping later that week, meeting with NBC executives about a Christmas special they wanted me to host, and finally, appearing with Mr. Carson for about the 3,965th time on The Tonight Show, I was having dinner with my close friends Don and Barbara Rickles. "You know, Ed," Rickles said philosophically, "you just have to find a way to get on TV more often. If this goes on too much longer, people are going to forget what you look like."

  Sometimes I think that the only shows on television that I haven't done are Sermonette and America's Most Wanted.

  In preparation for my career in professional broadcasting, I enrolled in a broadcasting club the summer after graduating from Lowell High. Essentially, this was a thirteen-week course held at Boston's Emerson College in which we learned basic broadcasting techniques. My class met once a week, on Thursday night. The instructor was a former Shakespearean actor who emphasized clear and precise speech and taught us how to modulate our voices so that even the patrons in the back row could understand every word. I began the course by taping my first commercial, a spot for a mythical product called Praise linoleum. In the deepest, most eloquent tones I could muster, I promised, "You'll like the way Praise displays linoleum." Thirteen weeks later I did the commercial again, this time incorporating everything I'd learned. There was no doubt I had improved; I was finally able to sound just as William Shakespeare would have if he had been selling linoleum.

  During the daytime that summer I worked on a construction crew building culverts and digging ditches at Ft. Devens. The men on my crew were tough, hardworking middle-European immigrants who enunciated mostly one word, the F-word. The F-word was used in every possible context: it was used as a noun, verb, adverb, adjective, and pronoun; it was used as a preposition and conjunction; it was used in all tenses; it was used to modify itself. At times it would be used five times in the same sentence. As far as I was concerned, using the F-word was proof that I was a man. So all week long I'd use it like an "F-word" sailor, then on Thursday night I'd get out of my filthy clothes, put on a suit and tie, and attend my class. I'd stand in front of the microphone and explain, "Now I would like to show you something rather impressive . . ."

  At work, I'd try to practice what I'd learned in class. Instead of saying, "Please tell that 'F-word' guy to get that 'F-word' truck over here," I'd say, "Is it possible that we might have that truck here by three o'clock?" The guys on my crew loved it; they loved to hear me speak good. Whenever a laborer from another crew came by, they'd tell him, "You gotta hear this 'F-word' guy talk." Then they'd turn to me and tell me, "Do some of that talk."

  To which I would respond, "And what is it that you wish me to say?"

  "Yeah, that's it. Man, you sure speak 'F-word' pretty."

  "That is very kind of you." That summer I stopped cursing. I don't think my kids have ever heard me use foul language. I make one exception, when that word is absolutely necessary in the punch line of a great F-word joke.

  With my years of experience in Katie's parlor and my certificate of attendance from the broadcasting cl
ub, I was ready to break into big-time radio. Many of the jobs left vacant when men went into the service at the beginning of World War II could be filled by women, but radio sponsors wanted men, whose voices dripped with authority, reading their commercials. A local station, WLLH, held open auditions for announcers in the high school auditorium. Hundreds of males showed up, but I didn't know why they bothered. I knew this job was mine. I had it nailed. I'd been preparing for it my whole life. In my mind I was already a professional.

  When I was hosting Star Search, this is the story I told those performers who did not win their competition. I went to the audition and, to my shock, I finished second. The station hired a kid named Ray Goulding. I'd like to describe how I felt when I heard the results of the audition, but as I've explained, I had stopped using that language.

  As I later discovered, the only reason that Ray Goulding won the job was that he was better than I. In fact, he was so good that he soon got a better job in Boston, where he met Bob Elliott and they formed the legendary comedy team Bob and Ray. When Ray Goulding left WLLH, the station manager remembered that I had finished second and offered me the job. So as I told the competitors on Star Search, my whole career is proof that in show business you don't always have to come in first.

  At WLLH, the Synchronized Voice of the Merrimack Valley, I was on the air each night for six hours. Just like in my parlor, I introduced records, read the news, sports, and weather, and did interviews, features, and all the commercials. Although it was basically a one-man show, I figured out how to do live remotes from the Hofbrau House, a dance club with a full orchestra eleven miles away in Lawrence. After a nice and easy introduction, I put a sixteen-inch acetate record on the turntable, which would fill about twenty-five minutes of airtime, then got in my car and raced to the Hofbrau House. When the record ended, I'd go on the air to introduce the orchestra: "While Dick Stabile is off in the service of his nation, lovely Grace Barrie takes baton in hand and leads the orchestra in that age-old question, 'Who?' " As the band played a set, I'd get back in my car and race back to Lowell in time to resume programming when they finished.