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  My mother taught me ethics and manners. Her name was Eleanor Russell and she was a dark-haired beauty. She was Pennsylvania Dutch, a German-English mix. I called her "Muth," short for "mother." I probably got my love of performing from her. She had been raised in her grandmother's theatrical boardinghouse. I know my mother acted in a few local productions, but she surrendered whatever dreams she once had to the charms of my father.

  My mother insisted that I use proper manners. She was the only person who called me Edward; even today when I hear someone use that name I straighten my shoulders. She would always warn me, "Edward, you must do this or you'll displease me." "You'll displease me" was the biggest threat she would make, and most of the time it was enough. Occasionally she would punish me, but I knew her heart wasn't really in it. I was her only child at a time when big families were quite normal. But she had almost died giving birth to me. I weighed nine pounds ten ounces, and she was told by doctors it would be best not to have any more children.

  I was closer to my mother than to my father; I felt very protective of her, and I pretty much knew how to get whatever it was I wanted from her. As a parent, I think I've always been a lot like her. Once, for example, when Katherine Mary was about nine, she came running into my office and said excitedly, "Daddy, I have to ask you . . . ," and then she stopped and frowned. "Oh, I can't start with you," she said with all the wisdom of a nine-year-old, "because if you turn me down, there's nowhere else to go."

  My mother and father did not have a happy marriage. They lived on the road, following the carnivals and bingo games and fund-raising jobs. Eventually they separated. At times my father lived with us, and then one day he would be gone again. They never divorced, I don't know why, maybe because they were Catholic and at that time Catholics did not get divorced. But they were always civil with each other. I was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1923, when my parents stopped there on the way to a fund-raising job for the Shriners or the Rotary Club or the Kiwanis or the Elks Club or the Moose in Peoria, Illinois. My mother stayed in Detroit six weeks, not even long enough for me to get to know the kid in the next crib very well. We must have liked each other, though, because he cried when I left.

  I refer to Detroit as my hometown, pretty much by default. We never stayed anywhere for more than a few months. As my idol, W. C. Fields, would have said, "My dear, we changed towns more often than a nervous pick-pocket." By the time I was five years old I'd probably been through forty states. We lived in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Muskogee, Peoria, Bayonne, East Hartford— wherever there was money to be made. It was a terrible way to grow up. I had a lousy childhood. I attended several schools before I started high school—and then I went to three different high schools. When we lived at London Terrace I walked down the block to P.S. 23. When we couldn't afford that apartment anymore and were forced to move across the Hudson River to Bayonne, New Jersey, I wanted so desperately to continue at P.S. 23 that I commuted by Greyhound bus every day.

  I had no friends. None. We never stayed in one place long enough for me to get to know anyone. Most of the time we didn't stay long enough for the kids to even know my name, so they referred to me by the town I'd come from. I wasn't Ed McMahon, I was, "Hey, Lowell," or "Peoria." I was also painfully shy, and just to make things a little worse, I had bad acne. I'll tell you how bad it was for me: little Donnie Rickles probably had more friends than I did.

  I think it's pretty easy to figure out that the reason I wanted to be an entertainer gets right down to my desire to be accepted, to be needed and loved. That need was instilled in me very early in life. And when you combine that need with the exhilarating feeling you get when someone laughs at something you say, you're hooked. That feeling of pleasing people is addicting. The first time you do it is amazing, so you try to figure out how to do it a second time. And if somehow you can figure out how to do it a tenth time, well, then you're in show business.

  The happiest moments of my childhood were the summers I spent with my grandparents at their home in Lowell, Massachusetts. Joseph F. and Katherine Fitzgerald McMahon had emigrated to Lowell from Ireland during the potato famine. My grandfather became a master plumber and founded the J. F. McMahon Plumbing Company. He could walk into a building and determine at a glance exactly how many BTUs of steam would be needed to provide adequate heat and how much it would cost. All my uncles worked for him. For a few summers I worked with my Uncle Artie as a plumber's helper, the worst job I've ever had. I used to have to crawl underneath the Elks Club in Lowell to unclog the soil pipes, the pipes that drained the bathrooms. That turned out to be a very important job for me, because whatever I did after that, no matter how tough it was, it wasn't as bad as unclogging the soil pipes. Compared to that, listening to the unusual tones of Tiny Tim singing "Tiptoe through the Tulips with Me" was a great pleasure.

  My grandmother was my best friend. The proudest day of my life was the day I came home from flight school and pinned my Marine Corps pilot wings on her. I knew that my success was the greatest gift I could give to her. She died three months later. She was buried in a plain black dress bearing a single decoration, my gold wings.

  Katie was a member of the Fitzgerald clan of Boston. Her cousin, Rose Fitzgerald, married into the Kennedy family. At that time Joseph Kennedy was one of the richest and most powerful men in Massachusetts. He was a politician and a bootlegger, and of those two professions I think we respected him more as a bootlegger. I grew up knowing that the Kennedy children were my cousins. I don't think the Kennedy brothers knew Ed McMahon was their cousin. Joe Kennedy Jr., the oldest son, was a naval aviator who was killed flying an extremely dangerous mission. I knew he was a pilot and I desperately wanted to be one too. But I don't remember if my passion for flying originated with him. My own kids grew up knowing they were related to the Kennedys. In fact, my beautiful daughter Claudia often told people that the only reason she and John Kennedy Jr. weren't married was because they were cousins.

  My grandfather designed and built a six-bedroom house in Lowell, the only place in my entire childhood that I ever considered home. The six upstairs bedrooms opened to a central hall, but there was only one bathroom. My grandfather was a master plumber, but there was only one large bathroom. Downstairs was Katie's kitchen, the most important room in the house. I never needed an alarm clock because at five each morning I would be awakened by the most wonderful aromas of the bread and fruit pies she was baking in the wood-burning stove. I learned work ethics from my father and good manners from my mother. But from Katie I learned how to eat. Breakfast consisted of two pork chops, home fried potatoes with gravy, whatever fried cabbage was left over from the night before, apple pie with a wedge of cheese, and a small loaf of bread baked especially for me. That usually kept us full at least until lunch.

  Because Joe and Katie had survived the potato famine, potatoes were served at every meal. We had baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, home fries, cottage fries, potatoes O'Brien. And I always had to finish every last bite on my plate. "Finish your plate," Katie would tell me. "There are people starving in . . ." My grandmother had people starving in countries that hadn't been named yet. Iran was still Persia, but she already had people starving in Iran.

  To me, the most impressive room in the entire house was a tiny bathroom right off the kitchen. It wasn't even a full bathroom, it was just a john with a pull chain, but to me it represented real status. I'd never known anyone who had a bathroom in their kitchen. The house also had a dining room that sat twenty people, although it was used only on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I remember the lovely French doors with mullioned windows that led into the parlor were always closed; the parlor was used only for weddings and wakes. But it was in that parlor that I dedicated myself to broadcasting.

  I don't remember how old I was the first time my grandfather put his heavy crystal set headphones over my ears and I heard an announcer speaking clearly from station KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But I know that changed my life. It was absolutely a
stonishing to me that someone could be speaking hundreds of miles away and his voice would travel through the air right into our house at 452 Chelmsford Street. Sometimes it's pretty hard for me to believe that in my lifetime I've gone from listening to that single voice on a crystal set to appearing live and in full color in homes around the world standing next to a skinny guy from Nebraska who is dressed as an old woman and keeps hitting me in the crotch with a cane. Now that's progress.

  My grandfather had the very best, if not the first, crystal radio in Lowell. But rather than putting up a very tall antenna on the roof to catch the signal, he wrapped aerial wire around the house. Fifty years later auto manufacturers began doing the same thing. If you didn't live through the birth of radio it isn't possible to appreciate its impact. Radio changed the way we lived. For the first time we were able to learn what was happening anywhere in the world almost immediately; we were able to hear the actual voices of the president of the United States and the most famous performers, people like Al Jolson and Rudy Vallee, and we were able to be entertained in our own homes.

  Cigar box crystal set radios very quickly evolved into beautiful pieces of furniture. They were built into elegantly carved wooden cabinets. The radio became the focal point of the room. At night I would lie on my stomach on the floor and look at the radio and imagine what I was hearing. Sound effects were used to replace pictures. A whole new form of entertainment had to be created to fill the needs of radio. Amos 'n' Andy, with white actors playing black characters, became the very first situation comedy. It was so popular that when it was being broadcast live, entertainments like vaudeville and moving pictures would stop and a radio would be wheeled onstage so the audience could listen to the show. Otherwise no one would leave their homes when these shows were on the air. That's how powerful radio was.

  Comedians like Jack Benny began using the people who worked on their shows as comic foils: Benny's cast of characters included his bandleader, Phil Harris, who was supposedly a big drinker and party guy; Dennis Day, the boy singer who was always impeccably dressed; his large-sized announcer, Don Wilson, who laughed too loud at the boss's jokes and ate too much; and Rochester, Benny's chauffeur and valet, who was constantly insulting him. Apparently while I was lying on the floor of the house with my chin propped in my hands in Lowell, Massachusetts, listening to The Jack Benny Show, Johnny Carson was lying on the floor of his house with his chin propped in his hands in Lincoln, Nebraska, doing exactly the same thing, because years later he created his own broadcasting family. I was the character who drank too much and ate too much and laughed loudly at the boss's jokes; when Skitch Henderson led the orchestra he was our well-dressed dandy; Doc Severinsen wore the wallpaper; and bland Tommy Newsom was the man who did so much for the color brown. Johnny Carson learned from Benny that it didn't matter who got the laughs on his show. One night Rochester might have had the best lines, but Benny knew that in the office the next morning people would be talking about The Jack Benny Show. And one night on The Tonight Show Doc might have gotten the biggest laugh or Tommy Newsom might have gotten a big . . . well, maybe not Tommy. But the next morning everybody would be saying, "Wasn't Carson funny last night?"

  I loved radio, I just loved it. The first person in my life I ever asked for an autograph was Joe Penner, a radio comedian who became famous for asking, "Wanna buy a duck?" Of course, that phrase doesn't have the same beautiful grace and rhythm as "You may have already won ten million dollars," but it was the first national catchphrase. Everybody knew it and said it.

  But the biggest stars of early radio were the bandleaders. Frank Sinatra was the boy singer with Harry James, but Harry James was the star. Peggy Lee was the girl singer with Benny Goodman. Doris Day was the girl singer with Les Brown and his Band of Renown. Tommy Dorsey, Fred Waring, Guy Lombardo—the leaders of the great big bands were the stars. Glenn Miller was on three nights a week for fifteen minutes. Whatever I was doing I would stop and run home to hear his show. To me, listening to Glenn Miller on the Zenith was like being with a beautiful girl in the backseat of a car. Not that I had ever been with a girl in the backseat of a car, I just had a great imagination.

  For a time I tried to be a musician, just like these men I admired so much. The only thing that held me back was a complete lack of musical talent. I played the cornet. A cornet is a trumpet that never grew up. The truth is that I spent more time cleaning my instrument than playing it.

  Now there's a straight line for you.

  My father was in the American Legion, so I signed up to be in the Sons of the American Legion Drum and Bugle Corps. I marched in one parade, but I was just so awful that they drummed me out of the Drum and Bugle Corps. I was summarily dismissed. Marched out to the parade grounds at dawn and stripped of my epaulets! Not a pretty sight.

  I still wanted to lead a band, though, so I tried to become the drum major for the Lowell High School marching band. The drum major is the person who strides proudly at the head of the band, kicking his legs high into the air, thrusting his baton up and down to set the rhythm for the entire band. I practiced by myself in my grandmother's backyard, marching back and forth with no one behind me, singing loudly. I wasn't very good at it, though. Even when I was marching all by myself I was out of step. I never led the band.

  The people I most identified with on radio were the announcers. The only thing they had to do was speak clearly. And I could do that. The announcers introduced the songs, did the commercials, and bantered with the host. Men like Don Wilson, Harry von Zell, Bill Goodwin, and Norman Brokenshire were almost as well known as the orchestra leaders and the performers. "And now, ladies and gentlemen," they'd say smoothly, "from high atop the Taft Hotel in the heart of beautiful Manhattan, we are pleased to bring you the romantic renditions of Enoch Light and his Light Brigade. . . . And as we dance to the melodies that have haunted us so . . ."

  When I was about ten years old I decided to be an announcer. While other kids played baseball or football or cowboys and Indians, I played Broadcaster. I practiced doing commercials. I guess even then I knew where the big money was in show business. I would go into Katie's parlor with my dog, Prince Valiant, close the French doors so no one could hear me, and practice. I'd create my own shows. I'd hold a flashlight under my chin as if it were a microphone, cue up records on my grandfather's classic RCA Victor phonograph, and announce, "The Ed McMahon Show." I even had my own theme music, Benny Goodman's "Let's Dance." I'd pretend I was broadcasting from one of the grand ballrooms high atop one of the great cities. That sounded a lot more impressive than "I'm here in the parlor of my grandma's house in Lowell, Massachusetts, with my dog . . ."

  I was miserable in school, I had no friends—but in my grandmother's parlor I was a star. Being in radio was my dream, my fantasy. Radio was my escape. "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," I'd say in the deepest tones I could manage with my ten-year-old voice. "This is Ed McMahon. And here's a little number that Bing Crosby does with that great voice of his. And it goes something like this . . ."

  Actually, it went exactly like that. I mean, it was a record, it wasn't going to suddenly change. But "it goes something like this" was a cliché that disc jockeys used. And saying it made me feel very professional. Then I'd cue up one of my grandmother's 78 rpm records—cueing up without scratching the record was a skill—and play the song. After two songs I'd pause for "a commercial message," which was an ad I would read directly out of Time magazine. "Look at this," I'd tell my imaginary listeners and Prince Valiant. "Can this guy make you healthy? We'll find out in a minute, right after this beautiful number from Mr. Benny Goodman." Several years later, when I heard my recorded voice, I finally appreciated how valiant that dog really was.

  I tried to pattern myself after my idol, Paul Douglas, who later would become a movie star and somehow wind up at the end of every picture with Eve Arden, but at the time he was Fred Waring's announcer and second banana. On the show they had a rivalry; they were always arguing about football games or movies
and Paul Douglas never backed down to his boss. What I liked so much about Paul Douglas was his casual attitude. Most announcers were more like Graham McNamee or Milton Cross, who very . . . Carefully. Pronounced. Every. Single. Word. With. Perfect. Grammar. McNamee would read a Texaco commercial as if he were announcing the election of a pope. Not Paul Douglas. He was a casual kind of guy, the kind of guy you'd want to pal around with at the place on the corner. When he told America, "Yah gonna like the taste of Chesterfield," people believed him.

  Many years later I was costarring in the movie The Incident with Jan Sterling, who had been married to Paul Douglas. "You remind me of my husband," she said. "You could play every one of his roles." Well, that made me feel pretty good about myself, at least until she added, "Yes, Paul always used to say, 'One reason I'm successful is that when a woman looks at me, if she's being really honest with herself, I look like the guy she knows she's going to end up with.' "

  I desperately wanted to be in broadcasting. If I couldn't be a performer, a bandleader, or an actor, I was going to be a broadcaster. I didn't even know what that word, "broadcaster," meant exactly, but I knew it meant being in radio so I wanted to be a broadcaster. And I'll tell you something, if I hadn't made it as an announcer, I would have been a producer or director or sold commercial time or been an executive. Somehow I would have been in the radio industry.