Both on and off the air, two things made Johnny angry: rudeness and lack of professionalism.
Ray Charles was hardly unprofessional. However, while singing one night on the show, he suddenly called out to the drummer in Doc’s band, “Pick up the pace!” The moment the show ended, Johnny went to Ray Charles’s dressing room and said, “Ray, there’s a drummer in Doc’s band who needs an apology.”
And that drummer got one—after a suggestion from a man who always knew the right way to behave. In fact, Ray apologized to the entire band.
Johnny was never able to suffer incompetents, frauds, or people who were simply ungracious. I have just described half the people in show business, but Johnny managed to avoid most of them because he had keen radar for bad behavior. Hemingway said that the best thing a writer can have is “a built-in shit detector.”
Hemingway would have admired Johnny’s.
“My bugging point is low,” he once said.
Johnny’s standards were so high that Doc Severinsen told me he began to sweat every time Johnny came through the curtain because Doc was afraid he might screw up and have to face the wrath of a perfectionist who often sat alone for hours polishing his monologue.
Johnny had discovered Joan Rivers and created her stardom.
He felt a special kinship for Joan, who went on to be his guest host ninety-three times, more often than Bob Newhart, David Brenner, David Letterman, or Jerry Lewis. When she became pregnant, he announced it on the show and later he announced the birth of her daughter, Melissa. And when Melissa was just a few days old, Joan had her delivered as a gift to Johnny with a note that said, “I weigh four pounds, three ounces. I eat very little. Please bring me up Jewish.” Johnny held the sleeping baby in his arms for two hours, afraid to wake her.
“How’s that for a sweet guy?” said Joan. “You know, if it hadn’t been for Johnny, I’d still be playing lounges in Queens.”
The sweet guy stopped talking to Joan, however, after she forgot to tell him first about an offer from Fox to have her own show.
It was a mistake I never made. I always went to Johnny to clear every offer I got for outside work. And The Tonight Show led to plenty of it for me, not just as the spokesman for Budweiser, Alpo, and the American Family Publishers, but also to a game show, a new talent show called Star Search, a show called TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes, and as a substitute for Alan King in a Broadway play called The Impossible Years.
And as if all that weren’t glitter enough, The Tonight Show also led to feature films for me. One was a remake of An Affair to Remember, in which Warren Beatty and Annette Bening also appeared, though they might feel it wasn’t in that order. My favorite was a film with Jane Fonda called Fun with Dick and Jane, in which I played a heartily venal boss who fired George Segal. It was a great success for me. Columbia Pictures even took out newspaper ads to campaign for my getting an Oscar for best supporting actor. One reviewer said, “I knew Ed McMahon was in this movie because I saw the credits. But the moment I saw him on the screen, I forgot all about Johnny Carson.”
However, I did not forget about Johnny Carson because all Johnny did was give me my life. No Oscar or Nobel Prize could have lured me away from Fun with Johnny and Doc.
My affection for Johnny was no illusion and no film career or other television show could ever have lured me away from him. In 1961, when Johnny was doing Who Do You Trust? he was tempted to leave when Carl Reiner asked him to be the star of a new sitcom about a suburban comedy writer named Rob Petrie. When Johnny turned down the offer, the role went to a young dancer named Dick Van Dyke.
It makes you wonder about life’s turning points to think that coming home to Mary Tyler Moore and then falling over a hassock might have been the only man in show business who fell with as much comic flair as Dick Van Dyke.
Some of my outside work became a farm system for The Tonight Show.
There is a long tradition in American broadcasting of shows that discover new talent. A man named Major Bowes ran a talent scout show on the radio called The Amateur Hour, and one night he discovered a quartet called the Hoboken Four, whose tenor was a skinny kid named Frank Sinatra. And on television, Arthur Godfrey did a show called Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts and discovered many future stars, although one of the losers was a young man with a guitar named Elvis Presley.
Johnny studying the exquisitely timed stare of his idol, Jack Benny.
On Star Search, which ran for twelve years, I found people like Drew Carey, Rosie O’Donnell, Sinbad, Martin Lawrence, LeAnn Rimes, Dennis Miller, Beyoncé, and Usher. However, Star Search rejected Tim Allen and also Rodney Dangerfield. But maybe Rodney’s rejection helped him to learn what no respect was. I’ve always wondered how we could have rejected a man who said such things as, “If it weren’t for pickpockets, I’d have no sex life at all.”
FUN WITH DICK AND JANE
When I briefly became a movie star, Johnny couldn’t resist the chance to interview me.
“The Tonight Show is indeed honored tonight,” he said, “to have the first, and maybe the last, interview with America’s newest film star. Please welcome him now . . . Ed McCann.”
And out I came, saying, “It’s McMahon.
”
“Clark Gable it’s not,” said Johnny. “Or Lassie. Ed, you used to be in television, I understand.”
“I don’t think you understand much. But yes, I used to do a daytime program called Who Do You Trust?
”
“And what have you been doing since then?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“And now you’re in a new film called Fun with Dick and Jane with Jane Fonda and George Segal.”
“I like to think they’re in it with me,” I said.
“And there are men who like to think they are General Patton.”
Continuing to keep a straight face, Johnny said, “In this film, you play a spacey boss?”
“No, a boss in the space industry. Although I know a spacey boss.”
“Well, I hear you’re quite good in Fun with Dick and Jane. Perhaps it will lead to other films for you.”
For another five minutes, Johnny interviewed me in a tight two-shot, and then he said, “We’ve been joking here, of course—at least I think we have—but seriously, I want all our viewers to know that Ed is really good in this film. And I’m playing that as straight as I can play anything. Ed, you have my most heartfelt wish for a great film career.”
“Thanks, Johnny,” I said. “You know what that means to me.”
“I hope so,” he said. And then, when he stood up to shake my hand, the camera revealed that the bottom half of him was boxer shorts covered with hearts. He looked like an unmentionable valentine. I like to think that those hearts were for me, but they may have been for Dolly Parton.