by Ed McMahon
With that, the representative of the Vatican, who was sitting directly in front of him, turned and said, "Namedropper."
Afterward astronaut Gene Cernan took us on a private tour. We had to walk across one building on a metal cat-walk about ten stories high. I took one step, stopped, and froze. With my fear of heights, there was absolutely no way I could cross that walkway. Johnny, of course, was very sympathetic. In fact, I was worried about him. He was laughing so hard I thought he might fall off. I guess I was one of the few people who could get him to loosen up. On occasion, when both of us were single, we'd go to Ft. Lauderdale for what we called our "Raise Hell" weekends. It was our way of escaping the pressure of the show. Many nights in Florida and later at the great restaurant Sneaky Pete's in California we'd end the evening up on the bandstand. I'd be singing my ad-lib blues, making up lyrics about everybody in the place, and Johnny would be backing me up on the drums. For a while, when The Tonight Show was not yet the phenomenon it was to become, we were as tight as brothers.
Johnny even spent several weekends with my family in Gulph Mills. Only later did Claudia tell me that she had a big crush on him, or as she admits, he was the first older man she didn't look at and think "Ugh." It was at that house that I threw a big surprise birthday party for him. I think I was more surprised by the fact that I was able to successfully surprise him than he was by the actual surprise. How do you surprise Johnny Carson? Very carefully.
The offices of TV Guide were not far from this house. We convinced Johnny that TV Guide wanted to put us on the cover but that they wanted to shoot the cover photo at their headquarters. He didn't want to do it—being on the cover of TV Guide was not particularly important to him—but his manager convinced him to do it. We agreed that he would pick me up on his way. When he got to the house, one of the kids told him I was out back by the pool. He walked outside to find seventy friends, relatives, and business associates waiting for him. He was shocked, and touched.
On the last Tonight Show Johnny introduced the members of his family who were in the audience that night, telling them, "I realize that being the offspring of somebody who is constantly in the public eye is not easy . . . I want you to know that I love you and I hope your old man hasn't caused you too much discomfort . . ."
Those words struck my home. They were the same words I might have used. For thirty years The Tonight Show dominated my life. My personal life was lived around the demands of my career. If someone invited me to an event or a dinner a year in advance, I would have to look in my book to see if we were doing a live show or a repeat that night before I could accept it.
I missed my daughter Linda's birth because I was in Korea, but I missed my son Jeff 's birth because I was between shows. Jeff was born while I was doing Who Do You Trust? We did two shows on Friday, between shows Johnny and I went to Sardi's. While I was there someone came over to me and said, "Congratulations, you've just had a son."
I can't even begin to estimate the impact of the show on my family. Certainly it dominated all of our lives. An actor creates a character on the stage or screen that has nothing to do with real life, but on a free-flowing television program like The Tonight Show real life is the central theme. People who'd never met me thought they knew me. I remember I had an audition with Goodson and Todman for a game show very early one morning. I was standing on the traffic island in the middle of Park Avenue when a cab driver leaned out the window. "Hey Ed," he shouted, "it's eight o'clock in the morning. You sober?"
"Yes," I said.
"Good boy," he said, then drove off. I understood that. That was his frame of reference, that's what he knew about me. I accepted this kind of kidding in the manner in which it was intended. When Alyce and I returned from our honeymoon, I had seventy-five cents in my pocket. The Tonight Show made possible the kind of financial success we had never even dreamed about. It enabled me to provide my family with a very comfortable lifestyle, even though I often couldn't be there to enjoy it.
The Tonight Show certainly contributed to the end of my first marriage. Alyce raised our children while I was out building my career. She did all the things that a mother and father were supposed to do. For years I commuted to New York every day because Alyce and the kids were comfortable in Philadelphia. And some nights I'd end up staying in New York for meetings. There was no such thing in our home as a family dinner. When it became obvious after the first few years that The Tonight Show was going to be on the air for a long time, Alyce finally agreed to move to the lovely community of Bronxville, about a half hour outside New York.
We rented a gigantic house in Bronxville; I think it had twelve bedrooms. After we left, it became the Icelandic Embassy. But by the time I got home at night the kids were in bed and Alyce was upstairs. I'd end up making myself a greasy cheeseburger, opening a bottle of wine, and listening to the radio. That's when our marriage really started falling apart.
Eventually we bought our own home in Bronxville and tried to become part of the community. The kids went to school there, we joined the clubs, but that didn't make things any better. Usually the taping of the show ended about eight o'clock and a lot of nights I had business meetings after that. The truth is, I was leading a very exciting life and I was enjoying it. I felt very guilty that I wasn't doing more to save my marriage but I didn't know what to do. Eventually I asked Alyce for a separation. I never planned to get divorced because I never planned to get married again.
When the show went to Hollywood in 1972, Alyce stayed in Bronxville. Being forced to move to Los Angeles was the breaking point for our marriage. I was going—there was never any doubt in my mind about that. Finally, she moved to Los Angeles with the family and we made an attempt to reconcile, but it was much too late. When we were married in 1945 neither one of us could have anticipated the opportunities that would be available to me, and I took advantage of them. My career didn't break up my marriage, but it made it easier to end it.
At times my career was rough on my kids. Being the child of any celebrity is difficult, but the fact that I was on television all the time and so much was publicly known about my private life made it much harder on them. My daughter Linda once admitted to me that she secretly wished I'd been a plumber, like my grandfather and my uncles had been, because her life would have been more normal.
The kids were constantly being reminded that Ed McMahon was their father. It must have seemed to them that every time they turned around, there I was. My presence was inescapable. Except at home. Once, when Linda was in elementary school, they allowed her class to watch the broadcast of a space flight. But when they cut to a commercial, there I was, Linda's father. When Claudia was at Syracuse University, Budweiser distributed life-size cardboard displays in which I was holding a six-pack to retailers all over the country. Many students knew that Claudia was my daughter, and she couldn't stroll across the campus without strangers telling her, "Pick a pair of Bud" or "This Bud's for you."
My kids were embarrassed about all the attention they received for things over which they had no control. My celebrity made it difficult for them to establish their own identities. Apparently, for example, it was considered extremely important at Bronxville High School to appear in candid photos in the yearbook. Only a very few people from each class made it. When Linda was a freshman they ran two pictures of her; the caption under one of them read, "Heeeeere's Linda," and under the second picture, in which she was holding a soft drink, "Bud Makes Me Wiser." She was horrified. Crushed. Maybe it seems like a small thing, but Linda knew it had nothing to do with anything that she herself had accomplished except being my daughter. "Where am I in all this?" she wondered. She was so upset that she insisted on transferring to another school.
After spending years doing social work with children, Claudia decided to go into show business. I was doing Star Search and I was able to get her a job with the production company. Obviously she got the job because she was my daughter, but what parent wouldn't help his child? Particularly a person like C
laudia who had spent so many years working with underprivileged kids or in poverty programs. And the trade-off for getting the job was that she had to deal with a lot of animosity from a few people who resented her being there. To compensate for that, she made sure she was the first one there in the morning and the last one to leave at night. As "the child of," she knew, she had to work harder than most people to prove she was capable of doing the job.
And my son Michael . . . my oldest son, Michael, was never able to find his own place in life. He struggled with my celebrity his entire life, resenting it, fighting it, sometimes using it, but never successfully dealing with it. Of all my children, Michael was the one who suffered the most because of my work.
Jeff, my youngest son, just accepted it. When Jeff was a child he didn't quite understand exactly what it was that his father did, except that every time he turned on the TV his father seemed to be talking to him. Eventually he figured it out, but it didn't make any difference. Very early one Sunday morning he was in Dallas driving to a golf course with a friend, he turned on the car radio—and there I was, promoting one of my projects. "It's eight o'clock Sunday morning and I'm in Dallas, Texas," he told his golfing partner, "and there he is."
One of the consequences of my fame was that all of the kids were more sensitive to their mother's feelings. Often when Alyce and I were out together people would approach me and ignore her. I'd always introduce her, but I know that was unpleasant for her. That wasn't the kind of life she wanted. The kids saw that happening and they didn't like it. They had to put up with it too. We'd be out somewhere and people would ask me for an autograph; I tried to be nice, but the kids wanted to get wherever it was we were going. And as they got older, people would tell them, "Please say hello to your Dad," to which they would often respond, "I have a mother too."
Only Claudia was old enough to really remember what life was like before I started doing The Tonight Show. Claudia remembers the day she had to wait with her mother until I earned enough cash by pitching a holiday toy for us to celebrate Christmas. My other children grew up with The Tonight Show. To them it was nothing special; it was their father's job, part of their life, something they just had to put up with. I used to have a summer home in Avalon, on the New Jersey shore. It was a wonderful community, and Johnny would often make jokes about it. Everybody knew where our house was, and too often late at night teenagers would pull into our driveway, honking the horn and screaming, "Where's Johnny?" "Heeeeere's Ed." This was the kind of stuff, and much of it was well meaning, that the kids had to put up with their whole lives. That was tough for them. When someone was nice to them, they never knew if it was because of who they were, or because they were Ed McMahon's children. As a result they became very close. They knew they could trust each other. Throughout their childhood they were each other's best friends.
They didn't often watch the show on television, but they enjoyed coming to the studio, especially if someone they wanted to meet was going to be on that night. They knew everybody on the crew—Linda even took guitar lessons from band member Bucky Pizzeralli. They were allowed to watch the show from backstage and even go into the green room where some guests were waiting. Most of the time it was exciting for them. Most of the time. Jennifer O'Neill was on the show one night, I remember, and during a commercial break Claudia came out and told me, "She's so beautiful, I wish I could ask if I could borrow her face for one night." Well, I made the mistake of telling that to Johnny, and when we went back on the air, Johnny said, "We're always hearing how jealous women are of each other and how quick they are to criticize each other, but Ed's daughter Claudia just said the nicest thing . . ." And then he proceeded to repeat it to ten million viewers. Claudia was so embarrassed as only a high school girl can be. I thought she might never speak to me again. Or at least until the next time we had Cher or the Jackson Five on the show.
My children and Johnny's kids and Doc's kids all got to know each other. Our families never socialized very much— maybe that was because of all the divorces—but the kids certainly had an unusual bond. In some way, all of their lives revolved around The Tonight Show. They knew that the show was responsible for so many of the wonderful things in their lives, as well as the difficult ones.
I tried to include the kids in as many things as I possibly could. It was one way of spending more time with them. In Philadelphia, for example, Claudia and Michael appeared in commercials with me. For several years Jeff pushed the red button to light the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, and he even got to play a junior astronaut on a record album I did titled What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up? And Linda would go with me when I hosted America's Junior Miss pageant.
They also got to meet a lot of tremendously interesting people because of The Tonight Show. I mean, how many kids get to have Jonathan Winters spend a weekend at their home? For two days the kids just followed him around the house in Gulph Mills. All I heard that weekend was the sound of laughter, interrupted only occasionally by someone saying things like, "I don't think we're supposed to walk on that table," "Boy, Dad never lets us touch that," and "What do you think'll happen if we open this one up?" If you can imagine what it would be like to have Robin Williams on fast-forward in your house, that's a hint of what it was like to have Jonathan Winters as a houseguest. Let me put it this way, by the end of the weekend it was the kids who were exhausted.
One Thanksgiving I took Jeff to dinner with me and my second wife, Victoria, at Frank Sinatra's house in Beverly Hills. Jeff was in college at this time. As we walked in, Frank was playing with his dogs, and Sammy Davis Jr. was standing at the bar. I loved and respected Sammy Davis. Jeff had met him several years earlier, but hadn't seen him in a long time, and went over to him to say hello. He said politely, "Hi, Mr. Davis, I'm Jeff McMahon, I'm sure you don't remember . . ."
Sammy stopped him. "Babe," he said, "you kidding? I remember you when you were only as tall as I am."
David Steinberg was a frequent guest on the show and he and Linda became good friends. When he was dating Carly Simon he'd take Linda to her concerts, and they would often have dinner together. But he completely shocked Linda one day when he told her, "I love your Dad. He's cool."
That was perhaps the last thing she ever expected to hear from him. "You think my father is cool?" She couldn't believe it. "My father? You think my father is cool?" Of all the things I had ever been in her life, cool was not one of them. As anyone who has played the role knows, "cool" is the antonym of "father."
My children were in the audience when we taped the final Tonight Show . And when Johnny told his kids that he hoped the discomfort they had suffered because of the show had been worth it, my children looked at each other . . . and shrugged. That's an equation to which none of them knew the answer.
One thing my kids really disliked about the show was the fact that I was portrayed as a big drinker. That was an important aspect of the character Johnny created for me. Let me admit at this point that this was not a difficult role for me to play. I didn't even have to draw on my acting lessons; in this case I was more of a method actor. And my method was, sure, I'll have another one.
Until recently, until society began to look at alcoholism as a serious problem, there was a tradition of happy, friendly drunks, good-time guys, heavy-drinking characters in show business. It has been used as a comic device throughout the entire history of show business. I was one of a long line of people—admittedly it was a long wavy line—that started in vaudeville and minstrel shows. On Jack Benny's radio show, for example, Phil Harris was the resident carouser. Dean Martin claimed he was once stopped by the Los Angeles highway patrol; when they told him to stand on one leg he stood on one leg, and when they told him to close his eyes and touch his nose with his forefinger he closed his eyes and touched his nose with his forefinger, but when they told him to walk a straight line he objected. He looked right at them and said, "Not without a goddamn net I won't!"
In my nightclub act I quoted the great W. C. Fields, c
ertainly the most famous inebriate in show business history, who said, "A man must believe in something, and I believe I'll have another drink." George Gobel once claimed, "I have never in my life been drunk. Frequently, however, I have been overserved." Jackie Gleason played a wonderful drunken character, Crazy Guggenheim, and Foster Brooks did a hysterical drunk act even though privately he didn't drink.
It's a character who has served as the basis for endless jokes. Actually, maybe "served" isn't really the proper word here. But the guy who likes to have a good time, who enjoys a good drink, or even a bad drink, has always been a good target for a joke. It was a role that fit me well. I mean, I'm a big tall Irish guy, I'm gregarious, and for a long time I enjoyed it. For example, when Jay Leno was hosting the show, he said to me, "Now you seem like the kind of guy, perhaps one night . . . ," and with that he pretended to lift a glass to his lips.
Naturally, I objected to that. "What does this mean?" I asked, repeating his gesture. "One night?" I continued, perhaps even a bit insulted. "How about every night? I mean, why only one night? Is there a drought?"
I got the joke. Fortunately, I usually got the drink too. Johnny created my character on Who Do You Trust? After doing the show Johnny and I would often go to Sardi's or Danny's Hideaway and end up at Jilly's and we'd have a wonderful time. Johnny would actually have a more wonderful time than I did, but on the show the next day Johnny would tell stories about my behavior. "Ed and I were out last night, and I asked him why he drank so much," was the kind of thing Johnny would have said, "and he said he drank to forget. So I asked him, 'To forget what?' and he said, 'What was that question again?' "
Now the truth is, as Johnny has often admitted, he was the one who did not hold his liquor very well. Three drinks and he was broadcasting from a distant network. But by the time we got The Tonight Show my character was well established. It worked very well for us. And it was based on fact. I drank. Sometimes I drank a lot. I'm a big man and I could hold a lot of alcohol. And I did. I was never an alcoholic—I never needed alcohol to get through the day—and I never drank when there was work to be done, but when it was time to play, I played. I don't know when or why I started drinking. No one in my family was a serious drinker. My father usually had a couple of beers when he came home from work, occasionally he had a glass of scotch or maybe he'd have sherry with dinner, but I don't think I ever saw him have a martini. Nor did any of my uncles drink excessively. I don't remember ever seeing a McMahon get drunk.