For Laughing Out Loud

by Ed McMahon

  The worst moments of all came when a performer froze onstage. The pressure on these people was incredible, and sometimes they would forget the lyrics, or miss a step in their routine, or as happened with several comics, their minds just went blank. Watching a young performer struggling and not being able to help was just awful. We had a woman comic come out and start her routine and suddenly she just stopped. She couldn't remember a joke. The clock was in front of her, ticking away her career. I mean, can you imagine doing jokes while watching the clock? What I wanted to do, what I have done in other situations, was go over to her, put my arm around her, and tell her, "You know, the same thing happened to me one night in Toledo. It's the worst feeling in the world. I just looked for a hole to drop into. You know what I did, I took a couple of deep breaths. I just calmed down and all of a sudden the joke came back to me. Now what was the idea of the joke you were about to tell?" But I couldn't do that, this was a competition. It seemed like the longest 150 seconds of my own life.

  There wasn't anything anyone could do about it except watch her suffer. Center stage can be a very cruel place. At times, if we had a technical problem, we would stop the tape and start again. But this wasn't a technical problem. And maybe on three or four occasions when an act had fallen apart during the actual taping, we retaped their performance after the show for broadcast. There was nothing wrong with that. It didn't affect the judging—the performer had already lost. But it saved them from potential embarrassment and it gave them the opportunity to be seen at their best by producers and agents.

  Over the years the show changed. We dropped the male and female actor categories, we tried to include more contemporary music, we added a male spokesmodel category; Star Search had always been conceived as a variety show and we changed to make the show as entertaining as possible. But one category that never changed was female spokesmodel. Viewers always enjoyed looking at pretty women. And so did the host. With the media's celebration of the supermodel, we felt the category had its place. We were always trying to find the next Christie Brinkley. Who isn't?

  Most of our spokesmodel competitors were actresses or models. They usually were submitted to us by their managers or agencies. In later years we added a question-and-answer segment to the competition, but in our early days of production it was just show and tell. Mostly show. The requirements were that contestants possess "poise, beauty, and the ability to speak effectively in a variety of situations." Basically, an attractive woman who could talk. One of our champions later won the Miss U.S.A. pageant, and several others ended up with roles on soaps or sitcoms, but it was our first spokesmodel, Sharon Stone, who enjoyed the greatest success.

  Maybe my most embarrassing moment on the show occurred one night as I stood between two buxom young women waiting for the judges' decision. "This is it, ladies and gentlemen," I said. "You've seen them and you've heard them. Will our champion Tiffany come back next week, or will Stephanie be our new champion?" Then I paused and said, "I've never stood between two more beautiful treats in my life."

  Star Search was a wonderful show. I loved doing it. My greatest value to the show, besides serving as host, was to get out on the road and promote it. For several years, in fact, I packed up and went on long publicity tours to promote the show. The first year Pam and I traveled by plane to thirteen cities to plug the show. We'd visit the local TV station that broadcast the show, every radio station, and newspapers, anybody who would help promote Star Search. It was so successful that the next year we decided to tour the country by bus. We visited twenty-eight cities. This was the ultimate promotion tour, just about everything we did was sponsored. We traveled on a magnificent (Prevost) bus, a luxurious bus with a shower, Jacuzzi, queen-size bed, big kitchen, copy machines, fax machines, several phones. The Hilton Hotel chain provided beautiful rooms at night. Snapple not only helped finance the tour, they even sent Wendy the Snapple Lady with us. There was great flooding throughout the Midwest that year, so we enlisted the American Red Cross as our official charity. Wherever we stopped, we passed buckets around; we literally raised buckets of money. I can't even estimate how many interviews I did on that tour. Hundreds. I did just about every local show in twenty-eight cities, I even did The Today Show four times from cities on the tour. As we left one city at five in the morning, I'd be on the phone with radio stations in the next city telling them that we were on our way.

  The arrival of the Star Search bus was a big event in many cities. They welcomed our caravan with parades and dinners and special events, and wherever possible we held auditions in malls and at comedy clubs.

  That tour was so successful that the following year we went to thirty-eight cities in twenty-five days. The show was being taped in Orlando, Florida—we were a major attraction at Disney World—and we had a big sign on the bus announcing WE'RE ON OUR WAY TO DISNEY WORLD. Our charity that year was the Starlight Foundation, which grants wishes to children with difficult medical problems. In every city, we stopped at another one of our sponsors, Boston Market, where we held a drawing for a trip to Disney World and received two thousand dollars for the Starlight Foundation—all the while promoting the show. In Washington, D.C., the bus stopped at the White House, where one of the little boys from the foundation met Hillary Clinton. The Star Search tour was a promoter's dream; every sponsor got tremendous publicity out of it—I mentioned each of them in every one of the hundreds of interviews I did—and in Orlando I was able to give a check for fifty thousand dollars to the Starlight Foundation.

  All the work done by so many people paid off; Star Search was one of the most successful syndicated shows on television. Almost two hundred stations broadcast the station to just about the entire country. In some cities we were on five days a week. The move to Disney World had been so successful that on my dressing room door I insisted they put two mouse ears over the o in my name. I mean, the show had been on the air thirteen years and there was every reason to believe it could continue forever, even without me.

  But Al Masini had sold his company to a corporation that really wasn't interested in syndicated television. In cities like Chicago and Miami we were still doing extremely well, but in New York and Los Angeles our ratings had declined—mostly because we'd been moved out of a time slot accessible to the younger audience we attracted. And the syndicated market had changed. Hour-long shows were no longer desirable. Talk shows and reality-based shows like COPS, which were much less expensive to produce, and tabloid shows like Hard Copy had become very popular. So we were just eased out of existence. I pleaded with the producers, but they just decided to end it. They did the same thing to Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, which also could have gone on for a long time. As far as I'm concerned, Star Search was not ended with any sense of style or class. I just felt a show that had introduced so many talented performers deserved a little more respect. We should have ended with a celebration of our success, rather than just disappearing. When The Tonight Show ended, Johnny, Doc, and I walked away feeling as though we had done it about as well as it could have been done. There was a feeling of completeness. Not so with Star Search.

  But I took so many great memories away from that show—in addition to my red Mickey Mouse suspenders. For example, I'll never forget the adagio team who appeared on an international version of Star Search. I don't know what happened between this dance team before we went on the air, but in the middle of their act he tossed her high into the air—and then missed her completely as she landed on the stage. Then, without a word, he turned around and walked away. They did not win the competition.

  Nor will I forget the night comedian Bob Zaney won for the third time. As he walked toward me for the traditional interview—congratulations, very funny, see you next week—his feet suddenly went out from under him and he fell flat on his face. I didn't know what to do. But before I could help him, he looked up at me with a big smile on his face and said, "I've got news for you. My lawyer's in the audience. No matter what happens, I'm gonna walk away with that hund
red grand."

  Hosting Star Search required very little rehearsal and a lifetime of preparation. It was similar, in that way, to my job as cohost with Dick Clark on Bloopers and Practical Jokes.

  We had this great staff of producers, writers, and technicians who actually put the show together. I showed up on time wearing a clean shirt.

  Dick Clark is my oldest friend in the television industry, yet somehow he still doesn't look much over 1950. Dick Clark and I were a match made in Philadelphia. I think the most surprising thing was that with all of the different programs and commercials that we've both done, it was still almost forty years before we finally worked together.

  Since our days as neighbors in Philadelphia, Dick Clark has become one of the most successful producers in television history. Dick's like me; while he's busy working on two shows, he gets anxious if he has only three more shows in development. So trying to get the two of us together was sort of like trying to find a convenient time for a meeting of Workaholics Anonymous. When Bloopers and Practical Jokes was created I was busy doing The Tonight Show and Star Search while he was producing shows on all three networks as well as for syndication. Naturally both of us loved the idea of working together on another show.

  Carson Productions had created a program called Practical Jokes, while Dick created and hosted TV's Uncensored Bloopers. Both shows did very well in the ratings and NBC put them together. We were on for several seasons and then did a series of specials. The show was a combination of mistakes, miscues, technical errors, and very elaborately planned practical jokes. I mean, I've made my share of bloopers. I am the person who introduced "President Agnew" to a large audience. Gaffes happen, and when they do, there is really nothing you can do about them except just keep going and hope nobody noticed—and then let Clark and McMahon show them to millions of viewers. The bloopers ranged from outtakes from popular TV shows to tapes of news broadcasts, although we never used anything that was humiliating or would hurt someone's career. For example, while rehearsing a Golden Girls episode in which one of the girls was dating a younger man, Bea Arthur said seriously, "Why are you getting upset? You see older women with younger women all . . ." At that same rehearsal Bea walked all the way across the living room to answer the doorbell—which rang for the first time just as she opened the door. One news reporter covering a hurricane had just finished explaining that the winds were dying down—when he was blown right out of the picture. And a very serious and perhaps nervous newsman said somberly, "The stock market took a big dump . . . uh, dive . . ."

  The practical jokes were often elaborate and expensive to set up. I mean, for a single bit we would build a fifty-thousand-dollar set. Once, for example, we invited the football star Deacon Jones to what he thought was a costume party, for which he was beautifully dressed as a ballerina. So you can imagine his surprise when he walked into what appeared to be an ordinary restaurant wearing a tutu. The restaurant was actually an elaborate set and every person there was an actor.

  We convinced heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield that we had developed a cologne for him—and it was just about the worst thing you've ever smelled. I mean, it was just awful. He tried so hard to pretend he liked it, even offering suggestions about how with just a few little changes it would be even better.

  When Vanna White was launching her clothing line, we arranged a very special fashion show for her. As she described to "buyers" the dresses she'd designed, one of her models came out wearing her dress backward. Vanna kept going, calling it "very classy." The next model came out with a bizarre food-and-flower attachment sewed to the back of the dress. Vanna just kept smiling, even when Merv Griffin, trying to help a model out of a jacket, accidentally pulled off the entire dress.

  Not everybody immediately got the joke. A few days after Ernest Borgnine and his wife, Tova, had returned from a trip to a Third World country, she helped us get him out of the house. While he was gone we covered the entire house—and this was a big Hollywood home—with a canvas tent. When he came home he was stunned to find people wearing sealed space suits walking in and out of the house and very scientific-looking instruments all over the lawn. It looked as if he'd been invaded. Our "biological expert" told him that a strain of mysterious ants never before seen in North America had been found in the golf bag he'd brought back with him from the trip, and that the house had to be quarantined and fumigated. The setup looked completely authentic, and he was not happy. But when we finally told him the whole thing was a big joke— well, it took him a little while but we all breathed a sigh of relief when he laughed.

  For Mickey Mantle we arranged an autograph session— and just imagine how surprised he was when absolutely nobody showed up. He relaxed when a large group of people walked in yelling, "Mickey! Mickey!"—until they went right past him into the back room where Mickey Rooney was signing autographs. Now, I'm a marine, and I've spent a fair amount of time in the great saloons, but when Mantle found out he'd been fooled, he started laughing and strung together words in combinations I've never heard. We edited out the words but kept the laughter.

  Working with Dick Clark was about as easy as anything I've ever done on television. We taped two or three shows at a time. We'd show up at the studio on time wearing clean shirts and there would be a stack of cue cards five feet high ready to go. The director rolled the tape and we'd read our cards, ad-lib, and have fun, and finish within, oh, half a second of the allotted time—but only if we were being careless. When we needed to, we hit the time right on the nose. There was no pressure, no strain, just two old friends enjoying each other's company.

  Now, I enjoyed watching these practical jokes being played on other people. In fact, the best thing about practical jokes is that they are never played on you. I knew that I was just a little too savvy, a little too sophisticated to ever be tricked. They couldn't fool me. Not me. Couldn't happen.

  So I thought. There's a sign at the gate on the NBC lot informing drivers as they leave that their cars are subject to inspection. Now, the last time anyone was searched they had to look under the saddlebags. But one night as I left the NBC lot my limousine was stopped by a guard. I was in the backseat watching a World Series game, when my driver, Patrick Marwick, said, "Boss, they want you to get out of the car."

  "What?" I hadn't been paying any attention. Patrick had been working for me for sixteen years. He was my friend as well as my driver. I relied on him for many things. I trusted him completely.

  "Would you mind stepping out for a moment?" he asked. "I don't know how to handle this."

  I was tired, I didn't know what was going on, and admittedly I was a little irritated. But I got out of the car. Patrick and two NBC security guards were staring into the open trunk. When I looked into the trunk myself I was stunned. The trunk was crammed with NBC equipment and supplies. It looked like an NBC store. A guard asked me if I had a pass for all of that stuff. I mean, Patrick and I had been together sixteen years, I couldn't believe he was stealing from the network. "What the hell is all this, Patrick?" I asked.

  Patrick, my friend, my driver, immediately bailed out on me. "Don't look at me, boss," he said. "It's got to belong to you."

  One of the security guards started listing the items in the trunk. "There's a typewriter here, this is NBC stationery, bathroom tissues, paper towels, cups . . ."

  I didn't know what to think. Naturally, I tried to protect Patrick. "He's had the car all day," I immediately told the guard. "He dropped me off this afternoon."

  " . . . another typewriter, there's a pay phone in here . . ."

  A pay phone! "I have no idea how it got there," I said. "I don't know anything about it."

  " . . . an adding machine, some more stationery, pencils . . ."

  "That's not mine," I insisted. Patrick wasn't saying a word. I was stunned. I thought I knew him so well. I couldn't imagine him stealing. "You know anything about this, Patrick?"

  "Don't look at me, boss," Patrick repeated.

  The guard asked me, "You
know anything about this at all?"

  "I know nothing about this," I said firmly.

  Just then a lieutenant approached us and asked what was going on. He was hidden in shadows and his cap was pulled down partially covering his face. "He has no requisition pass," the guard explained. "He has no idea how this stuff got in here."

  "This your equipment?" the lieutenant asked me. He shook his head in disbelief. "This is incredible."

  Something about the lieutenant looked vaguely familiar. And as they started reading me my constitutional rights, I thought I recognized him. "Wha . . . ?" I asked, confused.

  "And welcome to our practical joke special," Lieutenant Johnny Carson said.

  I had been fooled completely. Tricked and caught on camera. I mean, naturally my first instinct was to protect Patrick. Or, as Carson acknowledged later, "You certainly stood up for him. He was on his way to the slammer, thanks to you."

  Eventually the practical jokes became too expensive and time-consuming to set up, so I dropped out and Dick Clark continued with the blooper specials. But when I look back on that show, I can't help but think of the Australian broadcaster who said at the end of his show, "Remember what I always say at the end of a show . . ." He paused and stared into the camera. "I always say the same thing . . . but I forget what it is."

  10

  When I was creating my own radio programs in Katie's parlor, I would insert a commercial between each song. At ten years old I knew that an important part of every radio announcer's job was to make the sponsor's product sound so good that every listener would immediately want to run out and buy it. So even at that young age I not only knew which side the bread was buttered on, I wanted to be the spokesperson for the dairy that sold the butter.