For Laughing Out Loud

by Ed McMahon

  Meanwhile, the mosquitoes had found me. I had taken a wrong turn somewhere and had gotten lost, then I'd run aground. There was nothing I could do but go to sleep until the morning and then hail a passing boat for help. At seven o'clock an elderly couple in a small boat were puttering by when I stood up in my boat and asked for assistance. Now, imagine this nice elderly couple just out for a nice morning on the water, when suddenly Ed McMahon stands up in a boat and asks for help. I guess it could have been worse; they could have found me standing in their living room.

  So as half of Avalon and the Wildwood Police Department searched for me, I was towed into the bay by this lovely couple in their tiny boat.

  So much for tradition.

  There were many nights when the kids were asleep by the time I got home. I often left messages for them to find in the morning. I had this little label maker; I would press letters into a plastic strip with an adhesive back and stick it to their mirror. So Michael would walk into his bathroom and see my reminder, SHAPE UP OR SHIP OUT, and Claudia, who used to stoop, would find my message telling her, KEEP YOUR SHOULDERS BACK, and Linda, who spoke like a baby when she wanted attention, would find DON'T TALK BABY-TALK on her mirror.

  But more than big presents or trips or ice cream, what I tried to give to my kids was a reasonable set of values. I tried to teach them to respect other people. I've always believed that we're here on earth for a purpose, and that is to do as much as we can with what we're given. It's my modification of the biblical credo, where much is given, much is expected. To me that means both working hard in whatever it is that brings you financial support as well as using whatever you have to benefit the people around you as much as possible.

  It means being thoughtful and courteous, being supportive of other people, caring for them when they need it, and giving back to others as much as possible. I'm so fortunate to have had a talent with which I've been able to make a fine living, but I also always felt I had an obligation to use my success to help other people. I know that sounds altruistic and I don't mean it that way. I mean it as I said it: it's an obligation and I don't think you really have a choice in the matter.

  I didn't try to tell these things to my children as much as try to set an example for them. I've always tried to be courteous and respectful to everyone, whether it's a waiter in a restaurant or the CEO of a big corporation. I've been active in hundreds of charities, especially the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Horatio Alger Association, which offers support to deserving young people who need help with college payments, and St. Jude's Ranch for Children, which provides a loving environment for kids who have been mistreated. And as a person who remembers seeing those despicable signs—IRISH NEED NOT APPLY— I've always fought bigotry when confronted with it. My kids had to listen to all my stories about growing up with Japanese kids and then having to defend them in many heated discussions during World War II. They've always seen me with friends of absolutely every race and color. Years ago we belonged to a country club in Westchester County. One weekend Claudia came home from college with her roommate, who was Chinese. This country club refused to let them in. Well, I liked that club, and many people who belonged to it were nice people, but my family didn't belong there. I went over there that day and resigned. I may have even raised my voice while doing so. Believe me, no McMahon ever set foot in that club again.

  Alyce and I also tried to teach our children the value of money. That can be a difficult thing to do when kids are raised in an affluent environment like Bronxville. But we tried. The kids all had chores and responsibilities around the house and they worked in the summers. In Avalon Michael worked at a gas station, Linda worked at a bakery, and Claudia was a waitress. When we were in the car, driving from New York to Bronxville, for example, I'd intentionally drive through some of the worst neighborhoods. I wanted my kids to see how less-fortunate people lived, I wanted them to see the drug addicts nodding out on the street, I didn't want them to be blind to real life.

  If the kids needed something, Alyce and I would get it for them. But if they wanted something, we often made them work for it. One year Claudia became enamored of figure skating. It became her passion and she wanted to go to a skating camp in Hershey, Pennsylvania. When we said no, she decided to earn enough money to pay for it herself. So she put a box in her closet with a Hershey bar wrapped in it to remind her of her goal and started saving her money. She saved her lunch money, her milk money; she charged me fifteen cents to iron my shirts, which was a bargain compared to the ten cents she charged for handkerchiefs. She worked so hard and saved so much money that eventually she had saved enough to convince Alyce and me to help her pay for it.

  The kids also spent time with Alyce's family in Lacoochee, Florida. Alyce didn't like to fly, so they would take a sleeper train down to another world. For two weeks they lived on the farm with their grandparents and cousins. They got to ride horses down the main street in town, they had chores, they experienced a lifestyle that didn't revolve around money, clothes, and cars. Believe me, no one in Bronxville kept pigs in their backyard. At their grandparents', they were exposed to things that they would never have to deal with in New York. For example, the only chickens Jeffrey had ever seen in Bronxville were on his plate. So for him, the animals on the farm—the pigs, horses, and chickens—were pets. Jeffrey didn't believe his grandfather when he told him he was going to slaughter the chickens for food. And he was devastated when his grandfather did just that.

  Bronxville was so small and exclusive that at times it was easy to forget that there was a big and sometimes rough world outside. The time the kids spent in Lacoochee reminded them that most people didn't live in big houses in fancy communities.

  We raised the kids in the Catholic religion. In fact, when we were living in Bronxville, Alyce took lessons from Monsignor Kaneely, a wonderful man and teacher, and was eventually baptized herself. The kids always went to early Mass on Sundays, even if on occasion Alyce and I didn't get there until much later, since early Sunday morning always followed late Saturday night. I've always believed that an understanding and appreciation of religion, any religion, is very important for children. A religious education teaches children to appreciate so many of the things that will really matter in their lives. And I have been fortunate enough to meet some extraordinary people in the Church. But when the kids were growing up, parochial schools enforced discipline much more harshly than today. And sometimes, I felt, the things done to my children had to be addressed.

  When Claudia was in second grade, for example, rehearsing for her confirmation, a nun put a wreath on her head and said, "You have such beautiful hair. Where did you get it?"

  "The sun," Claudia told her.

  The nun slapped her in the face. "No you didn't," she corrected her. "You got it from God."

  When Claudia told me that story at dinner, I threw down my napkin, got up, and went to the convent. I don't believe hitting a child is an effective teaching tool.

  And when Claudia was in sixth grade she got caught reading a comic book during a break in an exam. The nun warned Claudia that the next time she got caught reading a comic book, she was going to have to stay after class. And when it was pitch black, the nun was going to make her walk down the hallway and then press a button that would cause the floor to open up and drop Claudia into an alligator pit, and then the nun would close the floor and leave her there.

  That's not education, that's terrorism.

  I wanted my children to learn how to think for themselves. I wanted them to feel free to ask questions and find their own answers. The last thing I wanted them to do was accept any stereotype without at least examining the issue. So dinners at our house were very important; we'd sit at the table for a long time talking and often arguing about things. In my professional career I've always tried to keep my personal politics private. People guessed, but nobody ever knew how I voted or how I felt about national issues. For example, as a proud marine, I supported the troops fighting in Vietnam, but
in fact I did not support the war itself. For several years my kids and I all wore POW bracelets to remind us that Americans were suffering in North Vietnamese prisons, and I helped raise a lot of money for this campaign, but in 1972 I think I might have been the only person in Bronxville who voted for George McGovern.

  Being the oldest, Claudia, I think, was a lot like me. Of all the kids, she was the most rebellious. Unlike most of the other young women in Bronxville, she had absolutely no interest in being a debutante, although her mother would have liked it. She refused to participate in the traditional "coming out" activities, she wouldn't even join a sorority. At the end of her sophomore year, when everyone else was sunning at the pool, she went with a friend to Berkeley, where she painted apartments for eight dollars an hour, took courses at the university, and spent time with the Black Panthers. It was obvious even then that she just was not the kind of person who was going to get married right away, have children, and settle down. That wasn't Claudia.

  When she graduated from Syracuse University we gave her a round-trip ticket to Greece with an open return and a Eurailpass and let her go. She was very nervous about going to Europe by herself—she didn't know anybody—and we agreed that if she wanted to, she would come home in a few weeks. I asked her to do one thing for me. I have always been fascinated by the golden age of Greece; I had dreamed about seeing the Parthenon and the Acropolis and had never been able to do so. "I want you to go there for me," I said. "I just want you to stand there and tell me everything you see."

  Claudia was the first of my kids to leave the house and I was probably more nervous about this trip than she was. You really never know how successful you are as a parent until your kids go off on their own. I took the night off from The Tonight Show to watch her go. I actually missed a night of work, so you can imagine how important this was to me. None of us really knew what to expect, most of all Claudia. She really did think she'd be back in a few weeks.

  Thirteen months later she came home. From Greece she went to Afghanistan and Turkey, then India, England, Ireland, and Scotland. India was not quite as spiritual as she had anticipated—when she woke up her first morning, the owner of the hostel in which she was staying was trying to sell her to one of his friends. She went hiking for several days, ending up in a small Tibetan village, where she met the Dalai Lama standing outside a temple, and he invited her in for tea. This was the daughter I was so worried about. I think this trip might have been the first time in her life when being my daughter had absolutely no value. As Claudia pointed out, the Dalai Lama was one of the few people in her life who didn't say, "How 'bout that Budweiser commercial?" I'm quite sure the Dalai Lama had never seen The Tonight Show. Although you have to wonder how he might have interpreted Tiny Tim.

  Like me, Claudia had been inspired by President Kennedy. She had intended to join the Peace Corps when she returned, but after spending a year traveling around Europe—in which she earned almost all of the money she needed working as an English tutor or a housekeeper—she decided that there was very little a twenty-two-year-old woman could teach people in a Third World country. So she joined the Vista program and worked with black families in a tiny town in Kentucky. There, for the first time, she was exposed to racial hatred; crosses were burned on her front lawn. She lived with five other girls in a house with no hot water and a coal stove, trying to establish a food co-op for the poor people in that town. Not only did they fail, they had to leave when grocery store owners who were overcharging these people threatened them.

  At the time she didn't tell me about these things. I think we had reached the delicate stage in our lives where the child has to protect the parent. But if she had, I think I would have handled it well. I would have gotten right up off the floor where I'd collapsed, and handled it well. After Vista Claudia worked with emotionally disturbed children for eleven years, then became a social worker in Philadelphia. She worked in a last-chance program for kids who had drug and alcohol problems, or who were abused by their parents. These were all high school dropouts ordered by the courts to participate in this program or live in a juvenile detention center. Ironically, she worked in some of the same buildings I had pointed out years earlier when I wanted my children to see that not everybody was as fortunate as we were. Her office was in a condemned building with no heat, and she would begin just about every day by taking guns away from these kids.

  Finally, when funding for that program ran out, she decided it was time to earn a real living for herself. After sleeping on her sister's couch for several weeks, she got a job at Star Search through her family connections. Although initially she did have to deal with resentment from a few people who thought her talent consisted of being my daughter, she eventually became a senior talent coordinator—where she discovered Rosie O'Donnell, Drew Carey, and Martin Lawrence for the show. After Star Search went off the air, she moved into the news division at ABC, where I have no pull, and she has become a senior producer.

  When the kids were growing up I was never much of a disciplinarian. I was a much better threatener. When I got really angry at one of them I would tell one of the others, "Go upstairs and get the black belt." I assure you, no one ever got hit with that belt. And chances are that a half hour after I'd lost my temper I would be knocking on the door of their room apologizing.

  So most of the punishment was left up to Alyce. When she got mad she'd use southern threats; she'd warn the kids that she was going to go outside to the tree and get a switch. She did that just about as often as I used my belt. Most punishments consisted of their being confined to their room or not being allowed to watch their favorite TV shows.

  That worked fine with Claudia, Linda, and Jeffrey, but not with Michael. My son Michael was difficult. I think my celebrity affected him much more than his brothers and sisters. Being the son or daughter of a celebrity can be the toughest thing in the world. How do you find your own identity when your name is Frank Sinatra Jr. or Jean Paul Getty III? Or when your father is on TV every night? We named him Michael Edward McMahon—I wanted him to have a name all his own—but if he ever wanted to be Ed McMahon he had that option. But he was definitely a Michael McMahon, a big, handsome, charming Irish kid.

  He was the only one of my children who ever made me lose my temper. That's one of the things at which he was very good. From the time he was a little boy he was always getting into trouble. Always. There was an embankment behind our house in Philadelphia, and just about every night when I came home from the studio I'd have to climb down that steep embankment in the dark to retrieve toys and bicycles he had thrown down there, return them to our neighbors' children, and apologize for him. When we got a new gray couch, it was Michael who spilled an entire bottle of Mercurochrome over it.

  I loved to work with my hands and I built a beautiful bar out of Philippine mahogany, equipped it with a complete set of professional bar glasses, brandy snifters, beer glasses, martini glasses, and Alyce placed philodendrons growing out of bottles filled with colored water on either side. I was proud of my carpentry work. Linda was christened the day after it was finally finished, and we had invited all of our friends to come back to the house for a party. While we were gone, Michael climbed up on a stool and pulled over the entire bar. Every glass broke, the colored water spilled out and destroyed the carpet, liquor bottles broke. When we got home, my first reaction was fear—I was afraid he had killed himself. But when I saw he was all right, my second reaction was also fear—I was afraid I was going to kill him.

  As he got older he didn't change at all. I once gave him a pellet gun and we'd go out in back of the house and shoot cans. The next thing I knew the police were at the house reporting that he was shooting out the back windows of passing cars. I bought him a motorcycle and he drove it across the neighbors' lawns and almost drove through the plate-glass window of a car dealership. No matter how much Alyce and I tried, we couldn't seem to get through to him.

  He didn't respond to discipline. He spent a lot of his childhood restr
icted to his bedroom. Or so we thought. He had an extension ladder hidden in his room and he'd sneak out when we were asleep. I found out when someone told me they had seen him downtown in Bronxville when I had personally locked him in his room. As I discovered, he had been sneaking out that way for years. He always danced to his own music. Once, I remember, we left him to baby-sit Jeffrey. Now that was our mistake. He took seven-year-old Jeffrey to a big party where they both had a good time.

  He was such a charming kid that it was hard to stay mad at him for very long, but he helped me. This was the most frustrating thing I've ever had to deal with. He was my oldest son, I loved him about as much as was possible, and yet I couldn't get through to him. I didn't know what to do. After he died someone gave me a videotape of him doing wonderful impersonations. Now, I knew he did those imitations, I'd heard that he did a very funny Carson, Sammy Davis, Howard Cosell, Steve Martin, . . . and particularly me, but he would never do any of them for me. I don't know why; maybe he was worried I would be disappointed in him.

  He was strong and handsome. All the girls in the neighborhood were crazy about him. When he was in eighth grade a senior at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville gave him the key to her dorm room. Claudia and Linda were just crazy about him. To Linda he was the big brother every girl should have; her only problem with him was that she never knew if her friends were nice to her because they liked her or because they wanted to be around Michael. The girls were always covering for him, always protecting him. Once, I remember, he was on restriction, confined to his room, and he slipped out and ran away. He enlisted Linda to "find" his note a few hours after he'd left and give it to us, and he went up to Syracuse to stay with Claudia. We were on the phone with Claudia, who was in the infirmary with strep throat, telling her Michael had run away again and might be on his way to see her, when he walked into the infirmary with his big smile. As she looked right at him, Claudia told us, "He isn't here, but if he does show up I'll call right away."