Ed McMahon

At 86 years old, Ed McMahon has this physical status:

Edward Leo Peter McMahon Jr. (March 6, 1923-2009) was an American announcer, game show host, comedian, and singer.

McMahon and Johnny Carson began appearing in their first TV series, "Who Do You Trust," spanning 1957 to 1962.

On NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson from 1962 to 1992, McMahon made his famous thirty-year appearance as Carson's sidekick, announcer, and second banana. He co-hosted television's Bloopers & Practical Jokes from 1983 to 1995, as well as presenting sweepstakes for the direct marketing firm American Family Publishers (not, as is often assumed, its key competitor Publishers Clearing House).

From 1973 to 2008, McMahon co-hosted the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon.

He anchored the team of NBC anchors assisting the network's coverage of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in the 1970s and 1980s. McMahon appeared in many films, including The Incident, Fun With Dick and Jane, Full Moon High and Butterfly, as well as briefly in Bewitched's film version.

He has appeared in several television commercials as well.

McMahon is regarded as one of the best "sidekicks" by Entertainment Weekly.

Early years

Edward Leo Peter McMahon, a fund-raiser and entertainer, and Eleanor (Russell) McMahon were born in Detroit, Michigan, and Eleanor (Russell) McMahon. He was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, and spent a lot of time visiting his paternal Aunt Mary Brennan at her Chelmsford Street home. McMahon, a three-year-old bingo caller in Mexico, Maine, served as a fifteen-year-old bingo caller in Maine. On the Atlantic City boardwalk, he earned his stripes in college as a pitchman for vegetable slicers. His first broadcasting gig was at WLLH-AM in Lowell, and his television work at WCAU-TV began in Philadelphia.

McMahon aspired to be a United States Marine Corps fighter pilot pilot. Both the Army and Navy wanted pilot candidates to complete at least two years of training prior to entering World War II. McMahon attended Boston College from 1940 to 1941. After Pearl Harbor was stricken, the college requirement remained in place, and he'd still had to complete his two years of college before applying for Marine Corps flight training, according to Howard Stern.

McMahon began his primary flight training in Dallas after finishing the college course. This was followed by fighter training in Pensacola, where he also obtained his carrier landing qualifications and was designated as a Naval Aviator. He served as a Marine Corps flight instructor in F4U Corsair fighters for two years, eventually being posted to the Pacific Fleet in 1945. However, his orders were suspended after the nuclear bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which resulted in Japan's unconditional surrender.

McMahon was recalled to active service during the Korean War as an officer in the Marine Corps Reserve. He flew an OE-1 (the original Marine designation for the unmanned single-engine Cessna O-1 Bird Dog) spotter plane, as an artillery spotter for Marine artillery batteries and a forward air controller for Navy and Marine fighter bombers. He served on a total of 85 combat missions, earning six Air Medals. He served in the Marine Corps Reserve following the war and retired in 1966 as a Colonel. McMahon was awarded a state commission in 1982 as a brigadier general in the California Air National Guard, an honorary award to honor his service to the National Guard and Reserves.

McMahon attended The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and graduated in 1949 after World War II. While attending under Gilbert Hartke and was a member of Phi Kappa Theta fraternity, he concentrated on speech and drama. McMahon was instrumental in raising funds for a theater to be named for Hartke and attended its dedication in 1970 with Helen Hayes and Sidney Poitier. McMahon served as the president of the national alumni association from 1967 to 1971, particularly for homecoming. McMahon and Bob Newhart performed at the university's centennial celebration in 1987. In 1988, he was named as an Honorary Doctor of Communication Arts.

"I owe so much to CU," McMahon said at one point. "That's where my career started." The Ed McMahon Endowed Scholarship supports undergraduates and seniors who are pursuing a bachelor's degree in either the Department of Drama or the Department of Media Studies within the School of Arts and Sciences.

Personal life

McMahon married Alyce Ferrell on July 5, 1945, when he was working as a flight instructor in the Marines. Claudia (b. ), the couple's four children. Michael Edward (1951-1995), Linda and Jeffrey, 1956. They married in 1972 and divorced in 1974. On March 6, 1976, McMahon married Victoria Valentine. Katherine Mary, Margaret Mary's mother, was adopted as a child in 1985. In 1989, the couple divorced. McMahon received $50,000 per month in spousal and child care. In a ceremony held near Las Vegas on February 22, 1992, three months before his Tonight Show appearance came to an end, McMahon married 37-year-old Pamela "Pam" Hurn, who had a son named Alex. Katherine McMahon's daughter was the best person at the wedding. McMahon, a long-serving summer resident of Avalon, New Jersey, was a long-time resident of Avalon, New Jersey.

McMahon was $644,000 behind on payments on $4.8 million in mortgage loans and was battling foreclosure on his multimillion-dollar Beverly Hills home, according to the newspaper in June 2008. Citibank also sued McMahon for $180,000. McMahon and his wife appeared on Larry King Live on June 5, 2008, to discuss this situation. People mistook McMahon's wife Pam's account of wealth for the McMahons because of their celebrity, according to McMahon's wife Pam. They don't have "millions" of dollars, according to Pamela McMahon. McMahon's financial condition suffered another blow on July 30, 2008. According to a complaint brought in federal court in Manhattan, McMahon failed to pay divorce counsel Norman Solovay $275,168. McMahon and his wife, Pamela, had hired Solovay to represent Linda Schmerge, his daughter from another marriage, in a "matrimonial case," according to Solovay's lawyer, Michael Shanker.

Donald Trump purchased McMahon's home from Countrywide Financial and leasing it to McMahon on August 14, 2008, so the property will not be foreclosed. McMahon's former spokesman Howard Bragman said he instead agreed to a private buyer for his hilltop home. Bragman refused to identify the customer or the selling price, but it wasn't Trump. In early September, after the second buyer's bid fell through, Trump renewed his bid to buy the house.

McMahon filed a more than $20 million lawsuit against his insurance company after contractors failed to properly clean up water leaks from a broken pipe on April 20, 2002. According to the Los Angeles County Superior Court lawsuit, McMahon and his wife, Pamela, became sick from the mold, as did members of their household staff. The McMahons attributed Muffin's death to the mold. Their complaint, one of many in recent years, was brought against American Equity Insurance Co., a pair of insurance adjusters, and several environmental remediators. It pleaded for monetary punishment for suspected misconduct, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

McMahon was awarded $7.2 million from several companies that were negligent for allowing hazardous mold to enter his home, sickening him and his wife, and killing their dog on March 21, 2003. McMahon was injured in a fall in 2007 and it was revealed in March 2008 that he was recovering from a fractured neck and two subsequent surgeries. He later sued Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and two doctors for alleged dishonesty, elder abuse, and emotional trauma, accusing them of discharging him with a broken neck after his fall and botching two later neck surgeries.

McMahon had been in an undisclosed Los Angeles hospital (later identified as Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center) for almost a month on February 27, 2009. He was in serious illness and in the intensive care unit, and was in danger. He was admitted for pneumonia at the time, but he was unable to confirm or deny accusations that McMahon had been diagnosed with bone cancer.

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Entertainment career

McMahon and Carson first worked together as announcer and host on the ABC daytime game show Who Do You Trust? running from 1957 to 1962.

The pair joined The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on October 1, 1962, on NBC. He describes what happened when the pair first met, the whole meeting being "about as exciting as watching a traffic light change". For almost 30 years, McMahon introduced the show with a drawn-out "Heeeeeeeeeeere’s Johnny!" His booming voice and constant laughter alongside the "King of Late Night" earned McMahon the nickname the "Human Laugh Track" and "Toymaker to the King". As part of the introductory patter to The Tonight Show, McMahon would state his name out loud, pronouncing it as , but neither long-time cohort Carson nor anyone else who interviewed him ever seemed to pick up on that subtlety, usually pronouncing his name .

Aside from his co-hosting duties, it also fell upon McMahon during the early years of Carson's tenure (when the show ran 105 minutes) to host the first fifteen minutes of Tonight, which did not air nationally. McMahon also served as guest host on at least one occasion, substituting for Carson during a week of programs that aired between July 29 and August 2, 1963, and again for two nights in October 1963. McMahon served as a counter to the notoriously shy Carson. Nonetheless, McMahon once told an interviewer that after his many decades as an emcee, he would still get "butterflies" in his stomach every time he would walk onto a stage and would use that nervousness as a source of energy.

His famous opening line "Heeere's Johnny!" was used in the 1980 horror film The Shining by the character Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson) as he goes after his wife and child with an axe. He did in-program commercials for many sponsors of The Tonight Show, most notably Budweiser beer and Alpo dog food, and also did commercials for them that ran on other programs.

McMahon was also host of the successful weekly syndicated series Star Search, which began in 1983 and helped launch the careers of numerous actors, singers, choreographers and comedians. He stayed with the show until it ended in 1995 and in 2003, he made a cameo appearance on the CBS revival of the series, hosted by his successor Arsenio Hall.

His long association with brewer Anheuser-Busch earned him the nickname "Mr. Budweiser" and he used that relationship to bring them aboard as one of the largest corporate donors to the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Since 1973, McMahon served as co-host of the long-running live annual Labor Day weekend event of the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. His 41st and final appearance on that show was in 2008, making him second only to Jerry Lewis himself in number. McMahon and Dick Clark hosted the television series (and later special broadcasts of) TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes on NBC from 1982 to 1993.

In 1967, McMahon had a role in the film The Incident and appeared as Santa Claus on The Mitzi Gaynor Christmas Show. From 1965 to 1969, McMahon served as "communicator" (host) of the Saturday afternoon segment of Monitor, the weekend news, features and entertainment magazine on the NBC Radio Network. The 1955 movie Dementia, which has music without dialogue, was released as Daughter of Horror in 1970. The newer version, which had a voice over by McMahon, still has music without dialogue, but with an added narration read by him. McMahon had a supporting role in the original Fun with Dick and Jane in 1977.

He then played himself in "Remote Control Man", a season one episode of Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories. In 2004, McMahon became the announcer and co-host of Alf's Hit Talk Show on TV Land. He has authored two memoirs, Here's Johnny!: My Memories of Johnny Carson, The Tonight Show, and 46 Years of Friendship as well as For Laughing Out Loud. Over the years, he emceed the game shows Missing Links, Snap Judgment, Concentration, and Whodunnit!.

McMahon also hosted Lifestyles Live, a weekend talk program aired on the USA Radio Network. Additionally, he also appeared in the feature documentary film, Pitch People, the first motion picture to take an in-depth look at the history and evolution of pitching products to the public. In the early 2000s, McMahon made a series of Neighborhood Watch public service announcements parodying the surprise appearances to contest winners that he was supposedly known for. (In fact, it is not clear whether the company McMahon fronted, American Family Publishers, regularly performed such unannounced visits, as opposed to Publishers Clearing House and its oft-promoted "prize patrol".)

Towards the end of the decade, McMahon took on other endorsement roles, playing a rapper for a FreeCreditReport.com commercial and in a Cash4Gold commercial alongside MC Hammer. McMahon was also the spokesman for Pride Mobility, a leading power wheelchair and scooter manufacturer. His final film appearance was in the independent John Hughes themed rom-com Jelly as Mr. Closure alongside actress Natasha Lyonne. Mostly in the 1980s through the 1990s, McMahon was the spokesperson for Colonial Penn Life Insurance Company.

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