For Laughing Out Loud

by Ed McMahon

  Life with Pam is full of surprises. I knew she was planning something for my sixty-ninth birthday, for example, because my best friend Charlie Cullen had explicit instructions to take me out of the house early in the morning and make sure I didn't return until evening. I guessed she was having a nice dinner for about twenty people. But as I returned home after taping The Tonight Show, I was surprised to be greeted by a Marine Corps honor guard standing on the front steps of the house. The first thing I noticed was that Lex was in the middle of the honor guard. On the side a photographer kept snapping pictures. It took me a moment to realize that the photographer was my son Michael. I walked into the house and it was filled with people from my life. Friends from different parts of my life from all over the country. Pam had turned the house into Ed's Jazz Joint. The backyard had been tented, the furniture had been replaced by round tables with dripping candles, there was a band in the corner.

  "When Ed met Pam," I once wrote, "so the story goes; There wasn't much twinkle in those traveled toes. A life that was full had taken its toll; And the joie de vivre had left that merry old soul. But a blind lunch meeting had changed all that. And a beautiful brunette showed him where it was at. She was witty and honest, direct and wise; And you can see the sparkle in his weary eyes . . ."

  I was so lucky to meet her.

  9

  One of the important things I learned from Johnny Carson was the danger of overexposure. That was something I was always careful to avoid when, in addition to appearing nightly on The Tonight Show, I hosted daily quiz shows like Snap Judgment, Missing Links, and Whodunnit? as well as numerous parades, appeared on countless television specials, made records, did my nightclub act, acted in motion pictures and both on and off Broadway, sold items on the cable shopping channels, produced and served as master of ceremonies at events like Nixon's inaugural gala, the bicentennial celebration, and many fund-raisers, and hosted successful programs like Star Search and Bloopers and Practical Jokes.

  I couldn't even begin to estimate the number of parades in which I've marched, ridden, or broadcast, from Macy's spectacular Thanksgiving Day parade to Virginia's Apple Blossom Festival. I've been the King of the Rice Festival in Louisiana and the King of the Winter Carnival in Lake Placid, New York. You get three people standing on a corner waiting for the light to change, I'll describe it to you. For me, hosting a parade requires good assistants, people who provide correct information when you need it, and warm socks. Generally, when you broadcast a parade you stay in the same spot for several hours. Invariably your feet get cold. Very, very cold. One of the greatest presents I ever got was a pair of electric socks. Battery-operated socks. I put a triple-A battery in each sock and they warmed right up. People would laugh at my beloved electric socks, and they kept laughing until right about that moment when their toes began to turn blue.

  When I served as King of Bacchus in New Orleans's Mardi Gras parade I had to ride on a float for seven hours. Now, there are no bathrooms on a float, and parades do not make rest stops. So the other device that proved invaluable to me is called "the policeman's friend." It's a little pipe that runs down your leg and enables the Budweiser that comes in to go out without the whole parade having to stop and wait for you. That just worked for me; the year before the king of Bacchus had gotten a bit tanked and had fallen off the float. Now, on occasion I may have fallen off the wagon, but I was determined not to fall off the float. I guess you might say, thanks to my "policeman's friend," I stayed afloat.

  Ooooooooo.

  I did, however, fall off the roller-skating elephant. I've ridden on just about every type of conveyance in parades, from the Clydesdale horses in New York's Puerto Rican Day parade to the back of a convertible at the Indianapolis 500. But one Thanksgiving, producer Dick Schneider came to me with an unusual idea. Heading the parade that year was an elephant on roller skates, and Dick thought it would be just great if I opened the parade by riding in on that elephant. I don't even like to ride horses, and an elephant is as big as . . . as an elephant. I didn't particularly like this idea, but because Dick wanted me to do it, I agreed to. So at the proper time they got a stepladder and the elephant leaned down and I climbed up on his neck. Now, if you've ever noticed, when girls ride elephants in a circus they hold onto its ears and they lean way back. Apparently that is proper elephant-riding technique. But it's a little more difficult to do that when you're holding onto a microphone and leading a parade.

  "Well, here we are friends," I said when we went on the air. "This is the biggest parade you'll ever see, and I just had to arrive on the biggest animal you've ever seen . . ." And that was just about the time the elephant decided to get rid of whatever was on his neck. He flipped his head and I went flying off. I was caught in midair by several policemen. Which is why I consider myself one of the policeman's friends.

  Now, broadcasting a parade is not particularly difficult as long as everything proceeds as planned. The prepared copy provided all the information I needed to describe the great high school marching band, the floats, the balloons, and the dancers. Here they come, there they go, weren't they marvelous . . . But things rarely go as planned. One Thanksgiving, for example, I was just beginning my introduction for the Snoopy balloon. "Coming down Broadway next is my favorite character. This is the part of the parade I look forward to every year . . ."

  And as I was describing Snoopy, I suddenly heard Dick Schneider screaming into my earpiece, "Don't mention Snoopy. Snoopy just blew up!"

  How do you tell all the little children watching the parade and waiting for Snoopy that he's exploded? How many nightmares will that cause? Listen, I knew it wasn't the Hindenburg. It was Snoopy. "But that will be coming a little later in the show," I continued, without a pause, "so right now let's look at the beautiful costumes on the . . . "

  Although I've participated in numerous parades, there are some things that even I can't adequately describe.

  Macy's parade always ended with Santa Claus, which announced the beginning of the Christmas season. One year, as he climbed down off his sleigh a little girl handed him a bunch of balloons. He held the balloons in one hand, took the little girl's hand with his other hand, and together they started walking into the store. And as he did, on national television, his pants fell down to his ankles. As I watched, Santa Claus started waddling into the store in his long johns. "And so, ladies and gentlemen," I said as quickly as I thought of it, "if you want to know what to get Santa for Christmas, get him a belt."

  For most performers, it's their success on the stage or screen that gets them invited to appear on talk shows. It was just the opposite with me. Nobody really knew if I could act, but producers believed viewers would buy tickets to see me in a different role. I wasn't a classically trained actor, but I had performed in several plays at Catholic University and I was familiar with basic stage terminology, words like "stage" and "script." I started my acting career working in off-Broadway theaters. Way, way off-Broadway. Several states off-Broadway. Ohio.

  During my vacations from The Tonight Show, I did theater-in-the-round in big tents for Lee Guber, who was later married to Barbara Walters, in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. I played Rusty Charlie in Guys and Dolls, I played Buffalo Bill in Annie Get Your Gun, and I got to sing the magnificent song "There's No Business Like Show Business." I believed every word of that song. And to get to sing it every night, that was thrilling.

  Robert Ludlum, who eventually became one of the best-selling writers in America, owned a theater in a mall in Paramus, New Jersey. I did Anniversary Waltz for him. The moment The Tonight Show finished, I'd get in a car and race to New Jersey for the performance. On matinee days, I'd do the show, drive into New York to tape The Tonight Show, then turn right around and make it back just in time for the opening curtain.

  I starred with singer Carmel Quinn in Wildcat in summer stock for a great producer named John Kenley. On closing night the cast did everything they could to try to upset me. In one scene, for example, I dropped a coin into a
wishing well. Unbeknownst to me, that last performance a crew member was hiding in the well. I gently dropped my coin, and in response a bucketful of water came splashing out of the well all over me. In another scene I had to enter a jail cell through a door. The crew installed the set upside down, so that while saying my lines I had to climb up and over the transom into the cell. See, these are the kind of professional problems an actor has to learn to overcome on his way to the Broadway stage.

  I made my Broadway debut in 1966. My friend Alan King was appearing on Broadway in the comedy The Impossible Years. When he had to leave the show for two weeks to fulfill a nightclub commitment, he asked me to substitute for him. Actually, I'd worked on Broadway before. I'd sold Morris metric slicers and toy gyroscopes out of a Broadway storefront with great success. Obviously this was very different, this time the audience paid before they saw my performance.

  I rehearsed for several weeks in the afternoons, and by the time I opened I was well prepared. Not only did I know my lines, I knew everybody else's lines, I knew the stage manager's cues, I knew the ushers' names, I even knew the guy who stood in the front of the theater at intermission asking for money. One of the sweetest sounds I've ever heard was my first laugh on opening night. Believe me, the first laugh is always the toughest. Until that moment I was nervous, uncomfortable. After that, I just sailed through my performance. You know, when an audience doesn't have expectations, it's very easy to fulfill them. Nobody really knew what to expect when they saw me onstage, and I like to think that I surprised them. The theater critics were very nice about my performance, but perhaps my favorite review came from a friend of mine, who said, "You know, you didn't remind me of you at all."

  The worst review I've ever received—for anything I've ever done—was Women's Wear Daily's review of my nightclub act. I had never really considered doing a nightclub act. I mean, what was I going to do—sell slicers? But as I became known, people wanted me to host luncheons and banquets and affairs. I'd put on my tux and do the regular hello, how are you, did you hear the one about, let's hear it for our honored guest, thank you for coming. With four kids to put through college, the added income was welcome. And I enjoyed myself, I enjoyed meeting people, I enjoyed good food. While doing this I became friendly with a man named Frank Banks, who was running the St. Regis Hotel. He began urging me to put together a nightclub act and play the Maisonette Room at the St. Regis. Finally, he pinned me down to a date. It was almost a year in the future, so far away it didn't seem it would ever actually arrive.

  But the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Both Johnny and Doc would often do weekend concerts and nightclub dates and earned considerably more in one night than I received for a month of dinners. I decided to put together an act. With my talents, I had absolutely no idea what to do. I hired writers, I took singing lessons, and I put together an act unlike anything previously seen in New York. My set consisted of a theatrical trunk covered by a piece of black velvet. I walked out onstage and removed the velvet to reveal . . . a Morris metric slicer! "Ladies and gentlemen," I began, "let me introduce to you the famous Morris metric slicer. Now forget about the two dollars they were made to sell for . . . that's all right, madam, I was astonished to hear myself say that too . . ." I did the whole pitch, I showed how to cut a potato in a curlicue so that it popped right back. When I threw in the plastic juicer, I drained several gallons of water from a grapefruit—then showed the audience how I filled it in a bucket of water "for the next generation." And I closed that pitch with the line that always got the biggest laugh on the boardwalk—and I prayed to God that it would work in a sophisticated club— "with this slicer you can slice a tomato so thin you can read a newspaper through it. That's right, I know a lady in Bayonne, New Jersey, who had one tomato last her all summer long . . ."

  It worked. The audience laughed. Oh, maybe I didn't sell any slicers, but it got my act off to a great start.

  Then I sang several songs. I'd always been able to carry a tune, just not too far. Once, I remember, I sang with Count Basie's band at the Riverboat in the Empire State Building. On the show, I'd sung a little when we played Stump the Band, although the way I sang some of those strange songs, it was more like Confuse the Band. But in preparation for my nightclub act I took singing lessons with a vocal coach. In the act, I sang the pitchman's anthem, "Trouble" from The Music Man, I did a medley of rainy day songs, a medley of songs about New York, and some Cy Coleman songs.

  And finally I did a whole bit about the "Drinkers' Hall of Fame." For this I needed no coach. I'd conclude this with a tribute to W. C. Fields. I did an impersonation of him; as I sang a final song, I'd slowly put on his gloves and his hat and his bulbous nose and finish as Fields. It was a nice act.

  Overall, my reviews were very good. The New York Times wrote that I proved a "genial second banana also can be a genial top banana . . . he has the ability to handle complicated lyrics . . . altogether the results are likable." Count Basie said, "His act is a bitch!" In fact, the only negative review came from Women's Wear Daily, whose critic wrote, "This is the worst act I've ever seen!"

  Compared to what, I wondered. Armed with that review, I took the entire back page of Variety and printed almost all of the reviews—and right in the middle of it included that terrible review. That might be the worst review ever used in an advertisement.

  While getting ready to do my act I was terrified. I didn't know how people would respond to me. But once I did it, and got good reviews and a wonderful response from the audience, I decided to take my act to Las Vegas. All the hotels had great shows. I knew I wasn't ready to play Vegas. My act was about an hour long; in Vegas an opening act was always less than a half hour—the hotels want their guests back in the casinos as quickly as possible—so I decided to tour with my act until I had refined it to twenty-eight killer minutes.

  For two years I performed in the smallest and strangest places you can imagine. I played a restaurant in Westchester County, New York; after dinner they pushed the tables out of the way and brought in a small stage. I played Great Falls, Montana; Moscow, Idaho; Akron, Ohio; Chicago, Houston, Lake George. In one small town I performed at the county fair; I showed up at the fairgrounds wearing my tuxedo and the guard didn't want to let me in—he wanted proof I was the entertainment. I mean, I was wearing my tuxedo. I don't know what kind of town this was, but I sort of assumed most people did not put on their tuxedo to go to the fair. In the middle of my performance one of the band members sitting behind me started eating a meal from Burger King. In one small town in Illinois, my business manager, Lester Blank, didn't trust the men running the fair, so he told my assistant, Corrine Madden, not to leave the grounds without our check. At the end of the show, Corrine went to get the check and Lester and I waited in the limousine with the motor running. She leaped into the car with the check and screamed, "Okay, let's go!" We handed her a glass of wine and took off.

  Not fast enough, as it turned out. The check bounced.

  Now, it's well known that music groups make demands when they sign a contract. They want certain beverages in the dressing room, they want bowls of M&M's with the blue ones removed, they insist on all types of perks. Well, I had some pretty specific demands written into my contracts too: I insisted that they supply half a head of cabbage! And not only that, I also demanded a tomato, a potato, and a grapefruit. I mean, when I arrived in a town I didn't have time to go grocery shopping for my act.

  After two years of preparation I knew I was ready to play Las Vegas. I was the opening act at the New Tropicana Stage for Ann-Margret. She had a colossal show, set changes, backup singers, lavish costumes, even motorcycles. I had my Morris metric slicer. Opening night in Las Vegas was one of the very few times I've ever been nervous before a show. So many of my good friends had successfully played Vegas, the audience was filled with people I knew. But as soon as I got that first laugh I relaxed. I was well rehearsed and I knew from two years of experience that my act worked.

  My
backup "group" was Corrine Madden. At one point in the act I began talking about Budweiser beer and that was her cue to stick a can of Bud through the curtain. Supposedly I didn't know it was there. That can of Bud always got a big cheer. But as time passed, Corrine's hand got stagestruck. Instead of simply holding up the can, she'd stick it through the curtain, then when I turned around, she'd draw it back, or she'd wave it back and forth. This might be one of the few times in show business history that the performer was upstaged by the can.

  I played Las Vegas for five years. I was the opening act for top names like Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gorme, Shirley MacLaine, and Mac Davis. I worked every big stage: the Tropicana, the MGM Grand, the Frontier, Caesar's Palace.

  For a long time I would finish The Tonight Show in Los Angeles and race to the Burbank airport, where a private plane was waiting for me with its engines running. I'd change into my tuxedo on the plane, a car would meet the plane in Las Vegas, and by four minutes of eight I'd be tying my bow tie as I walked toward the stage. I'd do two shows, have dinner, and go to bed, then take a commercial flight back in the morning.

  Although I had a wonderful time performing, I never made any money. I was paid twenty-five thousand dollars a week, which was tremendous for an opening act, but the private plane would cost me fifteen thousand dollars, and after I finished paying everybody else and tipping the waiters, I barely broke even. I did, however, get to keep all the cabbages I could carry.