Ed McMahon says farewell to Johnny Carson

That was one of the very few times I saw Johnny tearful. I can remember only three others: at Jack Benny’s funeral; when Alex Haley, the author of Roots, gave Johnny a leather-bound volume entitled ‘Roots of Johnny Carson — A Tribute to a Great American Entertainer’ with the inscription, “With warm wishes to you and your family from the family of Kunta Kinte” on the flyleaf; and when Jimmy Stewart read “I’ll Never Forget a Dog Named Beau,” a poem about his golden retriever. The poem was forgettable, but Johnny was moved by the way Jimmy Stewart delivered it. Jimmy was a blend of great actor and great person. Both Johnny and I were in tears. Just a couple of maudlin mutt mourners.

Achingly Missed
I don’t think I will ever be able to accept that Johnny is gone. His favorite song, “I’ll Be Seeing You,” is hard for me to hear now, much harder than hearing Stevie Wonder sing it to Johnny on one of the last shows. So often I look at a phone with a sinking feeling because I can’t pick it up and get to him.

“And well you know that sinking feeling,” Johnny would say, “from all the nights we went into the tank.”

Johnny Carson is achingly missed. The critic James Wolcott described him as “cool, unflappable, precise, Carson always knew how to pivot. He was comedy’s blue diamond, the master practitioner, the model of excellence.”

Yes, blue diamond, this large rhinestone remembers well how you pivoted with all those guests who suddenly made you dance with them. You weren’t Fred Astaire, but you weren’t Fred Mertz either. You danced endearingly one night with Pearl Bailey to “Love Is Here to Stay,” moving with an airy blend of comedy and grace. You danced courageously with Vlasta, the international queen of polka, who easily could have made you look like someone falling down stairs. And the night I watched you rhumba with that fat woman from Detroit, looking funny but not foolish, never mocking her but sweeping her along with that same airy blend, I wondered, Is there nothing this man can’t do?

For more than three decades, we performed together on two television shows and at road shows, conventions, and state fairs. We read each other so well that either of us could launch a bit and the other would know where to take it. When a dog in one of my Alpo commercials walked away from the food instead of eating it, Johnny knew how to jump right in. On all fours, he crawled over to the food bowl and became TV’s first animal understudy.

When Johnny said that one of Joan Embrey’s chimps was seven or eight years old and I said, “No, Johnny, I think he’s nine,” we looked at each other and were off on another flight from an unlikely launching pad.

“Let me get this straight, Ed,” said Johnny, tapping the pencil he often held. “You’re correcting me about the age of a chimp?”

“Sorry, Johnny,” I said, playing it just as straight, “but a man has got to have standards. You start with faking the age of chimps and then you fake elephants and the next thing you know, you’re five years younger yourself. You just work your way up.”

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