Ed McMahon says farewell to Johnny Carson

Most comic teams are not good friends or even friends at all. Laurel and Hardy didn’t hang out together, Abbott and Costello weren’t best of friends, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis — well, there were warmer feelings between Custer and Sitting Bull. However, Johnny and I were the happy exception. Although he was my boss, we shared the unwavering affection of a couple of equals who drove themselves to work, finally found the right wives, and liked to lose themselves in drumming and singing while listening to jazz.

For forty-six years, Johnny and I were as close as two non-married people can be. And if he heard me say that, he might say, “Ed, I always felt you were my insignificant other.”

On his farewell show, I was deeply moved when Johnny told America, “This show would have been impossible to do without Ed. Some of the best things we’ve done on the show have just been ... well, he starts something, I start something ... Ed has been a rock for thirty years and we’ve been friends for thirty-four. A lot of people who work together on television don’t like each other, but Ed and I have been good friends. You can’t fake that on TV.”

No, you can’t. George Burns said, “In show business, the most important thing is sincerity. And if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” However, there was no faking what Johnny and I felt for each other.

Every year on our anniversary show, October 1st, Johnny would turn to me and say, “I wouldn’t be sitting in this chair for [fill in a number from two to thirty] years if it weren’t for this man beside me. He’s my rock.”

My booming laugh on The Tonight Show was never just a conditioned reflex, but always a genuine appreciation for the man who could come up with something like: “A woman was arrested out here in Los Angeles for trading sex not for money but for spaghetti dinners. Would that make her a pastatute?”

That line came from Johnny, not one of his writers, none of whom had wit that approached his.

On another night, Madeline Kahn and Johnny were talking about their fears.“Anything particular that you’re afraid of?” he asked her.

“Well, it’s strange, Johnny,” she said, “but I don’t like balls coming toward me.”

“That’s called testaphobia,” Johnny said.

Johnny always managed to come up with just the right line, or just the right gesture, or a blend of both.

Ice Water?
“Johnny Carson has ice water in his veins,” some people used to say.

To which Johnny once replied, “That’s just not true; I had all the ice water removed. I did it in Denmark many years ago.”

He also had a less comic reply: “Ed, I’m so tired of the same old crap: people telling me, ‘You’re cool and aloof.’ They always want to know why I’m cool and aloof instead of hot and stooped. You’ve known me for eighteen years. Am I cool and aloof?”

“No, my lord.”

Johnny had developed the reputation for being cold and aloof because he was uncomfortable with people he didn’t know, but I knew him better than anyone outside of his family and I can tell you there was never any ice water to remove. In July of 1995, when my son Michael died at forty-four from stomach cancer, Johnny called me with just the right words. And after speaking those words, he said, “There’s not a day when you won’t think of him.”

Ice water? When his own son Rick was killed in a car crash in 1991, Johnny gave a short, moving eulogy that let America know what flowed in his veins.

“I’m not doing this to be mawkish, believe me,” he said as he showed a picture of Rick and then some of Rick’s nature photographs. “Rick was an exuberant young man, fun to be around. And he tried so hard to please. You’ll have to forgive a father’s pride in these pictures.”

The final one was a sunset.

And America knew that warm flow again on the next to last Tonight Show, when Bette Midler sang to Johnny and his eyes moistened on hearing “You Made Me Love You” and “One for My Baby and One More for the Road.”

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