by Ed McMahon
There was one night I completely lost control. My children had heard all my stories about being a marine, but they had never seen me really lose my temper. With them I had always been a pushover, "mush," as Linda described me. But when Claudia turned eighteen we bought her a sports car for Christmas. A little MG. We were going to give it to her when she came home from school, so we put it in the garage and wrapped a big ribbon around it. Michael and his friends went into the garage and took it out for a drive. They were drinking and they had an accident. I don't know what happened, but Michael smashed in the side of the car. I was away when Alyce realized Michael and the car were gone. She was petrified something had happened to him. About one o'clock in the morning she was standing on the sunporch, which overlooked a long driveway, when suddenly Michael and his friends appeared, pushing this dented car up the hill, backward, the long celebratory ribbon dragging behind.
I don't know what I would have done to him if I had been home at that moment. As it was, when I found out, Alyce had to hold me back. All the anger, frustration, and, I guess, disappointment I had felt for years finally exploded. It was a terrible night, a terrible moment.
And yet, at times he was such a wonderful person and I was so proud of him. There was one day, one Saturday afternoon, that I will never forget. Michael was never a great student—when I look back on it now I think it's possible he had a learning disability—but he excelled on the football field. His senior year he made the all-county team. In his life, that was one place where being Ed McMahon's son was of absolutely no consequence. He was a running back and in the biggest game of the year, against Bronxville's archrival, Tuckahoe, Bronxville was losing by a touchdown. They scored to tie the game. Under the rules of football, when a team kicks off to the other team following a touchdown, either team can recover the ball after it goes ten yards. It's called an onside kick, and it very rarely works in the kicking team's favor. But with only minutes left in the game, Michael kicked the ball the required ten yards, then recovered it himself. On the very next play he broke through the line and ran for the winning touchdown. I think that might have been the happiest day of his life. I can just close my eyes and see him that day, the big smile on his face, so proud of himself.
I was the commencement speaker at Michael's high school graduation. "I would like to properly introduce myself," I said. "In these quarters I'm known as Michael McMahon's father . . . Michael's success on the football field has made me known around here, and that's nice . . ."
And it was nice for me—but especially for Michael.
It's amazing how a man and a woman can have four children, raise them in the same environment, and have them turn out so differently. Linda was my little angel. She was the typical teenage girl, very much into boys and her music. Of all the presents I ever gave her, the one she valued most was a used bedsheet. Not just any used bedsheet of course; this was a sheet from the Warwick Hotel in New York City, a sheet that one of the Beatles had slept on! She still has it, neatly folded in her linen closet and never used again.
I almost had a problem with Linda in school too. Her class was being taught the religious version of the story of creation, starring Adam and Eve, and Linda raised her hand and repeated the scientific version of evolution as I had told it to her. The sister apparently got very angry with Linda and told her that the story of evolution was heresy, to which Linda replied defiantly, "I know it's true because my father told it to me!"
When my daughter told me this story, I asked her the same question I occasionally find myself asking my young daughter, Katherine Mary, today: "What color would you like that Porsche to be?"
Linda has three children of her own now. She was the first of my kids to get married. She had a beautiful wedding, she looked radiant, she was marrying a wonderful man named Peter Schmerge, everything was absolutely perfect— except that when I was making my toast I mispronounced her new last name.
Is there a Dr. Freud in the house?
When Alyce and I separated, Jeffrey was the only one of our children still living at home. Our marriage ended in so many ways long before it was over. Maybe if I had been satisfied to stay in Philadelphia our marriage would have survived. But I wasn't. When I was offered opportunities I took them, and that meant leaving Philadelphia and, eventually, leaving New York. Besides The Tonight Show I was doing commercials and quiz shows, hosting events, and trying to run several different side businesses—I had a stationery company and a game company. Often after working all day, then doing the show, I'd have to meet with my business partners or investors, or Johnny Carson would want me to have dinner with him, or I simply wanted to go out with friends for a night on the town. I don't think I was overwhelmed by my success, but I wanted to enjoy it. And there was a time when being married became a burden. I just wasn't being married very well. I wasn't running around, I wasn't having affairs, but it seemed as though I was always traveling or always busy. I began to feel guilty. Very guilty. After a while I felt so guilty that our marriage wasn't working and that I wasn't helping it work that I asked Alyce for a separation.
That was some night. What I remember about it was that she said to me, "Go up and tell your son." Jeffrey was twelve years old at that time. And I think with his brother and sisters gone, the house must have felt empty to him. On those nights when I came home after the show he'd be waiting for me behind the front door. We'd watch television together for an hour while I ate my dinner. The night I told Alyce I wanted a separation I asked her if she wanted me to stay the night or leave, and she asked Jeff that same question. "If he's gonna leave," Jeff said, "he should go."
What made a painful situation even more difficult were some of the nasty and untrue stories written by a columnist named Jack O'Brien. O'Brien wrote that when The Tonight Show moved to California I went with my whole family in a limousine to the airport, got out of the car, held up one ticket, and said, "I'm going to California and you're not." Of course, there wasn't one shred of truth to that story, but it was printed.
The separation and eventual divorce were very difficult for Alyce and me and the older kids, but it was most difficult for Jeff. He was the child whose life was changed most drastically. I tried to be there for him as much as I could; on several occasions, after doing the show on Friday night I got on the red-eye, the late-night flight from Los Angeles to New York, to be there Saturday morning for a football or basketball game or other event, and on occasion he'd go with me on trips. I was always trying to find ways to compensate. When I was involved in a real estate development, for example, I had a lovely house in Florida right next to a lake. Well, a Florida development kind of lake. An if-you-left-the-water-running-for-the-weekend kind of lake. But it did have an alligator that would come up on shore at night and the fishing was good. One day I brought Jeff out back to show him the sign I'd made naming this great body of water Lake Jeffrey, making him the only kid in his class with a lake named after him. When I couldn't be there physically I always made my presence known with a telegram or phone calls or some sort of contact, but for a time I was out of his life.
In fact, for a time I was out of all my children's lives. They were so angry that they refused to have any contact with me. They were supportive of their mother. If you've ever wondered when it was hard to do The Tonight Show and appear to be just old happy Ed with the booming laugh, that was the time. That was the time when professionalism counted. At some time in their life, every performer has to work when their personal life is falling apart. I knew that—I saw Johnny Carson go through some rough times in his personal life without letting it affect his performance—but knowing it didn't make it easier to do. As it turned out, though, it was good practice for what was eventually going to happen.
At times like this Johnny Carson and I actually became closer. We had become close friends on Who Do You Trust? because we liked going out together to party and drink, but we became better friends on The Tonight Show because we commiserated with each other. Each of us knew when the other
one had personal difficulties he was trying to work through.
Finally Bob and Marti Gillin took it upon themselves to arrange for me and the kids to meet with a counselor. Talk about caring friends; I've been blessed with a multitude of them. I flew in from California. It took several sessions, and eventually we started speaking again. Several years earlier I had read a story about the Kennedy family on a rafting trip and I had decided that someday I wanted to do that with my family. I couldn't imagine there would ever be a better someday.
Claudia couldn't go, but Michael, Linda, Jeffrey, and I sailed on a raft down the Colorado River. It was a healing trip for all of us. We camped under the stars, had water fights all day long, drank the pristine waters of the river. We sailed past the cabin where Butch Cassidy and the Sun-dance Kid had hidden from the Pinkertons, past caves where Indians had lived before the birth of Christ; we sailed right past our problems.
At the end of the trip we flew directly from Lake Powell to Las Vegas and checked into Caesar's Palace. The difference between the peace along the Colorado River and the glitz of Las Vegas could not have been more pronounced, but after sleeping on the sand for five days, we all appreciated the satin sheets of the hotel. Sammy Davis Jr. was performing and we all went to see him, we gambled, and when we left, the rift between us had been healed. Things weren't perfect; a twenty-six-year marriage had broken up—and the pieces would never be put back together. I accepted the fact that some of the feelings could never be resolved, but my kids and I had found a way to communicate.
I had always thought that divorce was something that happened to other people, so I wasn't prepared for all the emotional and the financial complications. For a young couple who had started out with seventy-five cents, Alyce and I had done very well. How do you split up the assets of twenty-six years? Legally. Lawyers do it. And unfortunately in our case, publicly. A lot of things were written about me that weren't true. In that situation, I learned, there wasn't too much I could do except show up on time ready to work and laugh at Johnny's jokes. Boy, laughter helps.
After our divorce was final Alyce moved out to California so Jeff would be closer to me. Alyce was devoted to all of her children. We did make a brief attempt at a reconciliation, but it was too late, too much damage had been done. It was time for all of us to move on with our lives.
While Claudia, Linda, and Jeffrey moved forward in the world, Michael floundered. He was often "between engagements," as he described it. He tried a lot of different things: he had a handyman business, a private car business; I helped him get jobs at ESPN and Anheuser-Busch; he was always planning the next business—he was going to open a cheese store and a landscaping business—but he just was never able to find a place to be content. And I think every time he failed, he thought he had failed in my eyes, which made it even more difficult for him.
For a time he moved out to California and shared an apartment with my assistant, Corrine Madden. Like just about everybody else who spent time with him, she adored him. Michael always had a twinkle in his eye. And maybe a little like his grandfather and his father, he had just a bit of the fanciful in him. Corrine told me a story that was just typical of Michael. One afternoon she came back to the apartment after work and the sink was filled with Michael's dishes. She washed them and put them away, but the next day, and the day after that, the same thing happened. Finally, she said, "You know, Michael, when I come home from work I've been finding your dirty dishes in the sink and you're here all day . . ."
Michael calmly explained that he was intentionally allowing his dirty dishes to pile up in the sink because by cleaning all of them at one time he was saving soap and water. That was so typically Michael. Corrine told me that story at Michael's funeral.
The ironic thing about Michael's death is that it came just after he'd spent a year working with abused children at St. Jude's Ranch, which may have been the most satisfying time of his life. I started working with St. Jude's in the late 1960s. One night I was doing my nightclub act at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas when Charlie Vanda, one of the first people to give me an opportunity in Philadelphia, introduced me to an Episcopal priest named Father Herbert Ward. As I quickly learned, Father Ward was small of stature but very large of heart. He'd started a ranch for abused children in Boulder City, Nevada, near Lake Mead, and Charlie and Shirley Vanda wanted me to see it. On Saturday morning, as we drove out there, Father Ward told me about St. Jude's.
This was long before people realized that many American kids were being brutalized by their parents. Almost no one had even heard the term "child abuse." But Father Ward had created St. Jude's to be a safe place for badly abused children, children who had been taken away from their parents by the county or state. These were kids who had been slammed repeatedly against a wall until bones were broken, or kids who had been burned with cigarettes or scalded with boiling water, or had their clothes set on fire. I couldn't believe the stories he was telling me. His plan was to create a supportive environment in which small groups of children could live together safely with volunteer "parents." By the time we got out to Boulder City, Father Ward had me hooked—and then I saw St. Jude's Ranch.
It consisted of a few little shacks. It didn't look as if it could last the summer. But Father Ward is some terrific salesman—the man could have sold boardwalk meat slicers to a chef—and with the help of a lot of people he built St. Jude's into a modern forty-acre facility overlooking Lake Mead. He's changed the lives of hundreds and hundreds of kids. Of all the charities for which I've done work, St. Jude's has my heart. Maybe because it's so small that every little thing you do really does make a difference, maybe because it saves lives on a daily basis, and maybe just because I love seeing these children safe and smiling, I serve on the board of directors and have long been active in fund-raising. In fact, right on the campus there is a beautiful building known as the Ed McMahon Child Care Center.
Father Ward and I have become so close that when I remarried he performed the ceremony. Twice. But the one thing I never expected was that St. Jude's would be so valuable to one of my own children. When Michael finally ran out of options I suggested he try living on the ranch. Father Ward was glad to have him, and Michael seemed to blossom there. Children had always taken easily to Michael and he worked well with them. He used sports to help them regain confidence in themselves. Maybe because he got so deeply involved with their problems he didn't have time to concentrate on his own, and for the first time in so many years he appeared to be happy. But after a year he got restless again, he needed some time for himself, and went to Florida.
It was while he was in Florida that he first started feeling ill. I told him to see a doctor; he refused. Instead he drove to his mother's house in Philadelphia. He was so weak that for two days he could barely get out of bed. He complained of stomach pains. Alyce took him to her doctor, who diagnosed Michael's problem as a peptic ulcer. Minor. Treatable. We didn't think much about it. I mean, Michael was forty-four years old, big and healthy; there was no reason to believe anything was seriously wrong with him.
He drove across country to St. Jude's. Father Ward called me the day he got there. "Something's wrong with him," he said. "He really looks very bad." I insisted Michael fly to Los Angeles. The moment I saw him I knew that he was very sick. My doctor, Dr. Phil Levine, took a complete set of X rays. As Michael waited outside, the doctor held them up to the window. I could see right away that too much sunlight was blocked by big black spots on those pictures.
"Michael has cancer of the colon," he told me. Cancer? My son? That just didn't seem possible. He was only forty-four years old. "I'm going to start him on chemotherapy, radiation right away . . ."
"Will that cure it?" I asked.
He shook his head. "This isn't something that can be cured. But it'll prolong his life."
And then I asked a question that no father should ever have to ask about his son. "How long do you think he'll live?"
"Maybe six months."
I had to
fly that afternoon to Washington, D.C., for the annual meeting of the Horatio Alger Association. As a member of the board it was important that I be there, but I didn't know what else to do. At times you just keep going because you don't know how to stop. We met in the chambers of the United States Supreme Court—Clarence Thomas is a member of Horatio Alger. It was the first time I'd been in that room. To be standing a few feet away from the long bench where so much history has been made, and to be not guilty of anything, inspires a feeling of tremendous awe. For a few minutes it helped me forget the horror of that day.
Michael refused to believe that he had cancer. At one point I suggested to his oncologist, Dr. Larry Heifetz, that we just tell Michael the truth, and then Michael and I would go to Las Vegas for a few days and just raise hell. "No," Dr. Heifetz said, "you can't tell him. He knows I know the answer, and when he's ready to ask the question, he'll ask me. He won't ask you, his mother, his sisters, he'll ask me, 'How much time have I got? Am I gonna get out of this?' That's when he'll be ready to know."
Just a few years earlier I had seen the same spirit in Michael Landon. The last time he appeared on the show everyone knew he was dying, but he just wasn't going to admit it. His attitude was, I'm fighting this thing to the end and I'm going to win. Whether he was kidding himself, trying to live the lie that he was going to make it, or just clinging to the last bit of hope, it didn't matter. And I saw this once again in my son.
Finally, there came a day when Michael was ready to know. He asked Dr. Heifetz how much longer he had to live. "It's hard to know," the doctor explained, and then tip-toed around the answer as gracefully as possible. The number of days didn't really matter; it meant that Michael was ready to deal with it. At home we tried to be positive, we all tried to pretend that this was an illness from which he would eventually recover. We did the best we could, and we waited.