For Laughing Out Loud

by Ed McMahon

  I was eighteen years old. All it had taken to enable me to break into radio was the greatest war in the history of mankind. Being on the radio was every bit as exciting as I had always imagined it would be. I loved every minute I was on the air. I loved the challenge, the spontaneity, the improvisation, every bit of it. I think I could have—I know I could have—very happily spent the rest of my life talking to a small part of the world from a glassed-in studio, but then they went and invented television. I was present at the birth of commercial television. I've spent my lifetime working inside that box, fifty years, half a century. In that time I've hosted or appeared on just about every type of program, and if I haven't actually been on the air more than anyone else, I'm certainly among the top three or four. But after all that, in my heart I still consider myself a radio man.

  Everyone in radio was aware that television was coming. One of the most popular attractions at the 1939 World's Fair had been a demonstration of television. But no one really knew what to do about it. No one could even guess what type of programming would be successful, or even whether people would accept it in their homes as they had radio. Some journalists predicted it would be little more than an interesting gimmick. Most often television was described as radio with pictures.

  But almost instantly people realized it was much more than that. It allowed people for the first time to bring every entertainment medium that ever existed into their own home. People who had never seen a major league baseball game could watch the World Series. People who hated opera could see as much of it as they desired. When television first became available, the screens were small and often disguised as more traditional pieces of furniture; almost all programming was produced locally and broadcast in black-and-white; and the biggest attraction was Milton Berle, a comedian who, among other things, ran around dressed as a woman.

  While I was a student at Catholic University I'm not sure I recognized immediately that television would eventually change the world, but one important thing about television immediately became apparent to me: it was going to be a lot easier for me to get a job in television than in radio.

  I got my first job in television the old-fashioned way: my father had a friend in the business. Years earlier my father had been a partner in an Atlantic City boardwalk booth with a wonderful man named John McClay. They used to stage phony arguments over the value of a prize to convince winners that the broken or scratched lamp they'd picked was actually the most expensive prize. John McClay Jr. had been on radio station WCAU in Philadelphia, but when that station decided to make the big move into TV, he had become their program manager. In April of my senior year in college I went to see him to apply for a job, any job, at the station. "When you graduate," he told me, "come on up and we'll find something for you to do around here." That's the way television worked in 1949.

  Although I was very excited, I told John that the only way I could afford to take a job in television was to first spend the summer selling slicers on the boardwalk. The real money was in gadgets, not television. When the sun shined I knew I could earn as much as a thousand dollars a week, and if I was careful and saved enough, I could be on television. We agreed I'd start my TV career in the fall.

  While I was in Philadelphia I responded to an ad for a place to live. I rode the trolley out to a new development called Drexelbrook and put down a twenty-five-dollar deposit on a beautiful two-bedroom apartment that would be ready to be occupied in September. That was the last twenty-five dollars I had to my name, but as it turned out, that was one of the best investments of my life.

  During the summer of 1949 I earned enough money on the boardwalk in Atlantic City to become a television star. In late August John McClay Jr. told me that WCAU was going to try a daring experiment: they were going to broadcast a program during the day and he offered me a job as cohost. Now, you have to understand, no one had ever seen me on TV, no one knew if I had any talent at all, but that didn't matter. My talent was that I was available and I could afford to work for seventy-five dollars a week. That was enough. Besides, putting on a TV program during the day was considered pretty revolutionary; while people were at work or doing something at home they could have the radio on in the background, but it was very questionable that they had time to stop whatever they were doing during the day to watch television. Besides, at that time there were fewer than two million television sets in the entire country; probably a majority of them were in bars, and the bars were mostly empty during the day.

  John McClay Jr. told me that the format of the show was anything that would fill three hours and cost nothing to produce. So the "something to do around here" that he had promised to find for me turned out to be my own show. The station actually had to pay me less to be on the air than to work behind the scenes. That's how fast people became television personalities in those days.

  My first show, The Take Ten Show, named after the channel number, went on the air at noon, September 12, 1949. Rather than using a catchy stage name, like most other performers, I did something far more daring—I didn't use any name at all. I never identified myself on the air. I'm not really sure why I did that, perhaps to protect my family if I was terrible, but it worked. Scattered viewers began wondering who the guy on that show in the afternoon was.

  My cohost was a veteran nightclub and vaudeville comedian named Bob Russell, and we did anything we could think of to fill three hours daily. We did contests, interviews with anybody willing to come on the air—including the tree surgeon who sawed off the branch on which I was sitting during the interview, which ended with my falling onto an unseen mattress—we had local models doing fashion shows; I remember we had a young bricklayer who wanted to be in show business named Al Martino on the show—we introduced him as "the Singing Bricklayer" and we had him sing several songs while constructing a brick wall. We used our imagination and creativity to fill the time. The whole world was open to us, as long as it didn't cost anything. In retrospect, I think it is fair to say that we were the best show on the air during that time period. We were also the only one.

  My style in those days was to not have any style, which was a forerunner for later years, when my talent was to make it appear as if I had no talent. Like most television performers in the early days, even though I was the cohost and producer of my own show, I didn't own a TV set. I didn't make enough money doing television to buy a television set. But our neighbor across the street, the bandleader at the Warwick Hotel, did have a TV set. Pennsylvania's blue laws prohibited the hotel from serving liquor Sunday nights, so that was his one night off and he would take his wife out for dinner. I volunteered to baby-sit his kids so I could watch his TV. I don't really remember, but I think the first TV show I ever saw was Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town. I watched Bert Parks hosting the quiz show Break the Bank. But the person who most impressed me was Dave Garroway. Garroway wore a bow tie and big glasses and had the most casual style, but most of all he was incredibly polite. I liked that about him, and I decided to pattern myself after him. So I spoke softly and I was very polite and very nice to all my guests. I wanted viewers to feel comfortable having me in their homes.

  I had no idea how I looked on television. I wouldn't see myself on television for years because every program I did was live and it was much too expensive to make the rudimentary film known as a kinescope. If Alyce wanted to watch my show, she would have to go into the local drinking establishment and convince the barkeep to turn it on. If a Phillies baseball game was being broadcast, she didn't have a prayer. Often she would bring Claudia, who was almost four, into the place with her and the two of them would sit at the bar watching the show. Claudia had no concept of what television was; to her it was real life, just a lot smaller. Once, for example, I did a duet with a girl singer. We sang "Walking My Baby Back Home," and as we finished the number, we strolled off the set arm in arm. Well, Claudia just started crying hysterically; she thought I'd left her mother for another woman and she would never see me again.

 
The show was everything the station had hoped it would be, three hours long and cheap. I thought I was doing okay, but after we had been working together for about three weeks, my cohost decided we had to have a serious conversation. We weren't friends; we had just been teamed by the station. We went out into the parking lot and sat down on a barrier. "Ed," he began, "believe me, I'm telling you this as a friend. I'm telling you this to help you. I don't think you're right for TV, I think you should stay in radio . . ." I didn't have the right personality for television, he explained, I didn't seem to have any charisma. I listened to him because he was a TV veteran, he'd been in the business hours longer than I had. And who knows what would have happened if I hadn't been too busy doing the television show to realize I shouldn't be on television.

  After several weeks the station gave me my own show. My show, now called Take Ten, went on at 5:30 in the afternoon; unfortunately, I was on opposite the most popular show on television, the classic puppet show hosted by "Buffalo" Bob Smith, Howdy Doody. The most incredible thing about my show was that there were no strings attached. The station really let me do just about anything I could figure out how to do. These were the pioneering days of television, when anything was possible. We were inventing it as we went along. There was a tremendous sense of creative freedom; viewers didn't seem to care what was on TV, as long as the TV was on. The real star of television was the television set. People would watch whatever was on, and when the broadcast day concluded—the "11 o'clock news" went on at nine o'clock—and the test pattern was being shown, they were so fascinated they would watch the test pattern. I didn't know how good I really was, but I knew for sure I was more entertaining than a test pattern.

  This was the ultimate on-the-job training experience. I learned what worked on television by doing it on television. I'd have singers and dancers, Girl Scouts selling cookies on roller skates, fire eaters; I'd do cooking segments and interview authors about their books; we had animals ranging from dogs who balanced plates to baby elephants. One of the first major acts I had on the show was the Clooney Sisters, who agreed to appear on my show to promote their upcoming concert. I interviewed them and then they sang a few songs. Getting the Clooney Sisters was a big coup for me. Only after they appeared did I realize, wait a second, they weren't doing me a favor; they actually wanted to be on television! I just hadn't realized how important a television appearance could be to someone trying to sell or promote something. I mean, it wasn't as important as radio, but it certainly helped. Until that time I didn't even know what a public relations person did, and I didn't know how important they could be to me. Eventually PR people began offering me their clients as guests on my show—I didn't even have to plead with them.

  It was on Take Ten that I did my first commercials. I think that the first television commercial I ever did was for a pants presser. The gimmick was that you would insert this device inside your pants and it would stretch your pants enough so that while they were hanging in the closet all the wrinkles would come out. To figure out how this thing worked I had to go downtown to Wanamaker's department store to watch the salesman demonstrate "this amazing new product that actually stretches the wrinkles out of your pants while you are sleeping! Forget about steam irons . . ."

  Certainly among the most memorable segments on The Tonight Show were the things Johnny did with animals and reptiles and insects. For me, that started in Philadelphia. A small circus was in town and we were going to have a performing bear on the show. Before the show, I was rehearsing a commercial for Dole pineapple juice when the bear's trainer mentioned to me, "Oh, he'll probably want some of that."

  I stopped. All the instincts that had been honed in the carnival suddenly sharpened. I asked, "You think the bear'll drink this?"

  "Oh sure, he loves it," the trainer said, then added, "He can even hold the glass."

  There was a God. "You're kidding me!" This was just too good to be true. This cute bear drank the sponsor's product. If I had had this bear working with me on the boardwalk, I would've been a millionaire. Viewers would enjoy it and the sponsor would love it, and if the sponsor loved it, the station manager would love it and I would love it. We rehearsed the spot with the bear, and sure enough, he actually drank the pineapple juice from a glass. It was unbelievable.

  I rewrote the commercial to feature the bear. "Our wonderful bear, Rosco, would just love some of that delicious pineapple juice," I said when we were on the air, "wouldn't you, Rosco?" I poured a glass of juice and he picked it up with his paws and drank it. "See, even bears know . . ." And then Rosco let out the loudest, deepest growl I had ever heard. Rosco wanted more juice. I mean, he really wanted more juice. I leaped out of the way. The bear growled again, louder. I held up the juice can and tried to look sincerely into the camera, as I had been taught, and said, "I guess you'll find that one glass isn't enough . . ."

  Today almost all programming is produced by independent production companies, but in the early days of television the local stations produced most of their own programming. The performers worked directly for the station, and often appeared on several different shows. So after Take Ten proved to be a success, WCAU began assigning me to some of its other shows. Six months after my first appearance on television I was starring on four different shows, which ran twelve times a week; I was actually on the air seven hours and forty-five minutes a week. Another six months later I was doing thirteen different shows a week, had been honored as Philadelphia's Mr. Television, and the local chapter—actually the only chapter—of the Ed McMahon Fan Club had almost one hundred active members. It was just about impossible to watch television in Philadelphia for more than a few minutes and not see me.

  It's nice to know that some things never change.

  I did just about every type of show on the station. Several nights a week I hosted the Million Dollar Movie, and just like Johnny Carson's Teatime Movie host Art Fern, I would do six minutes of commercials after five minutes of an old movie. For forty-five minutes every morning of the workweek I hosted the breakfast show, Strictly for the Girls. At noon each day I played the role of Aunt Molly's mischievous nephew on the homemaker's program Home Highlights, a role that consisted of my sampling Aunt Molly's cooking and asking silly questions to our guests. Wednesday nights I served as emcee for a quiz show with musical entertainment called Cold Cash, during which I stood in front of a freezer filled with Birds Eye frozen foods and the station's cash; viewers would phone in to win that cash by answering questions. Saturday mornings I was the chief clown on the station's most popular program, a circus show called The Big Top. And Sunday nights I hosted a series about submarine warfare called The Silent Service.

  Strictly for the Girls was the first breakfast show in television history. Breakfast chat shows had been very popular on radio, but nobody knew if viewers would be interested or have time to watch TV in the morning. I produced, wrote, and starred in the show, which really served as a prototype for the local morning shows produced in just about every major city. We had a little combo, a set divided into several different areas in which I would do interviews or commercials or our guests would perform, and several regularly appearing members of WCAU's morning family. At that time one of the most elegant shows on TV was a talk show broadcast from New York's famed Stork Club. That show opened with a shot of champagne being poured into a glass and an engraved place card inviting the viewer into the club. Strictly for the Girls opened with a similar shot, except that we showed steaming hot coffee being poured into two big mugs bearing the name of our sponsor, Horn & Hardart cafeterias, and a handwritten card welcoming viewers to the show. And then I would sing a song with our band.

  That's correct, I would sing. And I could do it without building a brick wall! I was sort of a saloon singer; the more time you spent in the saloon, the better I got. I might not have had the most beautiful voice in the world, but I could carry a tune across a stage. In fact, years later I would star in several musicals in summer stock. When I played Buffalo Bill in Ann
ie Get Your Gun, I got to sing the show business anthem "There's No Business Like Show Business." My breakfast show audience seemed to like my singing, although admittedly people don't require music in the morning to be as good as music later in the day.

  At first we lured an audience into the studio with free coffee, donuts, and prizes, but the show very quickly became hot and we actually had people fighting for tickets. And the prizes. My favorite segment on the show was called "The Big Three," in which I would sit around a table and interview three preschool-age children. For example, I would ask these kids, "When should a girl marry?" Their answers might include, "If she ever kisses a boy," "Not until she's six years old," and "I hate girls and I'm never gonna get married."

  Once I asked a little boy, "Do your mommy and daddy take care of you?"

  "Well," he replied, "it's mostly my mommy."

  "Well, does your daddy help?"

  "Sometimes," he admitted, "but my mommy's mad at him because he pees in the bathtub."

  The Big Top was my first network show. It was created by Charlie Vanda, who had been one of the creative giants of radio and had been hired to make WCAU a major television station. Originally Charlie hired me to be the ringmaster, which was just perfect for me. Having spent several summers touring with carnivals and circuses, I knew how to be a ringmaster. I even went out and bought a red coat, top hat, and whip. But a few weeks before we were scheduled to go on the air, Charlie took me out for dinner and broke the bad news to me: the CBS network had a commitment to give Jack Sterling, who was very hot on radio, a television show. The network wanted him to be the ringmaster. Charlie knew how disappointed I was, and said something like, "Ed, I've seen a lot of your work. Have you ever thought about being a clown?"